Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time (T-1.I.25:1-2).
Forgiveness here refers to right seeing. It refers to the process of correction in our minds, whereby perception is aligned with reality – with Creation as created – to the maximal extent possible.
Miracles facilitate this process by effectively cleansing our minds of error, especially in the very contexts that we find ourselves. So if there is a dispute in our life, or if there is a grievance or a conundrum, then the miracle is what heals that.
Miracles are not necessarily comforting, at least not at first. In fact, we may experience them as discomforting, because they are shifting our thinking away from the familiar (which is ego, which is dominanted by fear and chaos, and misdirection).
We are accustomed to separation, and it can take time and energy to investigate it in a truly healing way.
The references to time here have to do both with the experience of Atonement in time – e.g., I have to study A Course in Miracles, I have to practice forgiveness, I have to go to therapy and yoga, I have to avoid using food to ignore my feelings et cetera. They encompass the so-called life hacks that can be very helpful in our acceptance of the Atonement for ourselves.
But it also – especially in the phrase “dimensions of time” – makes clear that Atonement transcends our limited ideas about what we are and what the world is. Atonement can heal the past in the present; it can heal the future in the present, and it does all this by restoring the present to our awareness.
When we are fully capable of living only in the present moment, which the Course calls the holy instant, then we recognize the way in which time is a construct – it is always relative to an observer, to an ego – and it becomes easier to perceive beyond it.
There are no mysteries that A Course in Miracles is given to solve. It is not introducing us to some supernatural codex with the secrets of the universe encoded within.
It is simply restoring to memory our true self, in a way that cashes out in awakening from the dream of separation. Once awakened – once knowing oneself only in terms of Atonement – then the need for time and learning ends. That we are not there yet is not a problem; it is not a crime against God or nature.
Rather, it is an opportunity to embrace uncertainty and imperfection, and to accept without qualification or condition experience as it is given to us. This is healing; and nothing else matters.
