This is a course in miracles and is the first working document

Introduction

This is a course in miracles. You must learn the lessons in it but you choose when you want to learn them. Free will does not mean that you choose what it is you need to learn but that you choose what you want to learn at any given time. This course does not teach the meaning of God’s Love because that is beyond what can be taught. But it does teach you how to remove your obstacles to God’s Love, Which is your natural State of Being. Fear appears to be the opposite of God’s Love but God’s Love is all that there is and It has no opposite.

This course can be summed up in this way:

God cannot be changed.

Only God exists.

To know this is to have the Peace of God.







Chapter 1: The Meaning of Miracles

1: Principles of Miracles[1]

1. Miracles are extensions of God’s Love in your awareness. They are always whole and complete, no matter their seeming form or size. Your every extension of God’s Love is a miracle. Miracles do not always produce results that are visible to the body’s eyes and they may affect situations of which you are not aware.

2. Miracles are not spectacles to make others believe in God or in your own power. They are the result of your true prayer, or communion, with God. Through prayer you receive God’s Love; through the miracle you extend your experience of God’s Love. The real miracle is God’s Love; Its expression in the world that you perceive is not important. Your True Mind and Holy Spirit, Which are God’s Love, are miracles.

3. Experiencing miracles is necessary for you as the means for you to remember that you are One with God. By extending God’s Love you become aware that God’s Love is within you. You receive the Love that you give because you strengthen the awareness of God in your mind as you extend Love. All the miracles you experience join in the plan of the Atonement, which is the complete correction of your perception of separation from God.

4. All of your fear and your sense of lack and limitation come from your belief that you are separate from God. Your experience of the miracle atones for, or corrects, your misperception by reminding you that you are One with God. By overcoming your fear, your experience of the miracle prepares you for direct revelation of God, in Which you experience no fear.

5. Your experience of miracles comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God in your mind. The Holy Spirit inspires and is in charge of miracles. It is the Holy Spirit in your mind that is really important, not the expression of the miracle. You cannot experience miracles in the personal mind, which is separate from God. Attempts by you to manifest “miracles” with the personal mind will lead you to a further sense of separation from God. Inspired by your Spiritual Mind, your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are One with God and releases you from your belief that you are a personal self.

6. God’s Love is natural to you because you are One with God. When you do not experience miracles it is because you are not open to God. You can always, without exception, experience miracles but you must overcome your obstacles to God first.

7. When you believe that what the body’s eyes show you is reality you fear God’s Love, Which is Reality. You can have only one identity: the Holy Spirit or the personal self. Your experience of the miracle unifies your mind because it overlooks the appearance of separate personal selves and looks only on God’s Love.

8. Because it comes from the Holy Spirit within you, your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are Spirit, not a body, healing your mind of its misidentification with a body. All forms of illness are the result of your identifying with a personal self in a body.

9. As an expression of your Oneness with God the miracle heals your guilt for perceiving that you separated yourself from God in the past and it frees you from fear of future punishment for this. Your experience of a miracle comes to you from the Oneness of Eternity and it overlooks separation and time. Your experiencing miracles is the only real purpose time has for you.

10. Gratitude is due to the miracle as an expression of your Real Identity. You can deny that you are One with God but you cannot alter this Fact. You need to experience miracles as a means to remind you that you are One with God. When you return to full awareness of God you will no longer need the miracle.







2: Revelation, Time and Miracles

1. A revelation is an experience of Oneness with God in Which you experience no doubt and no fear. In the world that you perceive you often seek for this Oneness in physical relationships but they cannot achieve It. A revelation unites you directly with God; a miracle extends your awareness of God in your perception. You experience both the revelation and the miracle in the individual mind but they do not originate there. The individual mind induces action but it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and your actions attest to what you believe.

2. The experience of the revelation cannot be described. It is pure experience that is beyond words. Your experience of the miracle inspires you to action in the world that you perceive and is more important in the early phase of your learning because you must first learn to overcome your sense of separation from God in your mind’s perception. God’s Love as you experience it directly in revelation transcends all perception.

3. Because God is the Perfect Whole of Which you are a Perfect Part it is appropriate for you to view God as greater than you and therefore to look on the revelation with wonder. Wonder is not an appropriate response to your experience of the miracle, which extends God’s Love outward in your perception from the Holy Spirit in your mind. Wonderment is inappropriate toward Jesus, Who is not greater than you, but Who modeled the Christ Mind, Which is also in your mind. Jesus is due your love, respect, obedience and devotion because He is a model for your complete awareness of God, which is still only a potential in you.

4. Time is the only thing that seems to separates you from your Christ Mind, Which was modeled by Jesus. As you rise in your awareness of your Oneness with God you will shift in your identification from the personal mind to the Christ Mind. It is necessary for you to attain the Christ Mind to prepare you for God. Christ is the Whole Truth in your mind. It is the part of you that is One with God.

5. A direct revelation of God comes to you through your Christ Mind when you are open to it. A revelation reminds you that you are One with God, Which God has not forgotten but you have.

6. In time it seems as though it will take forever for you to recognize the Oneness of your Mind. Your experience of the miracle saves you time by bringing Oneness to your mind now. It does not bring you to a full awareness of God but each miracle you experience is a step toward your full awareness of God.







3. Atonement and Miracles

1. Your Christ Mind is in charge of the plan of the Atonement, which is the full correction of your perception of separation from God. When you extend God’s Love you increase your own awareness of God’s Love within you. By following only your Christ Mind you will correct all of your perceptions of separation from God. This is your only purpose in the world that you perceive. When you have accepted complete correction you will be Christ, Which is the correction.

2. Your split mind will become united again. The personal mind will give way to your Christ Mind because your Christ Mind is Eternal. As a Part of God you are Love and you must remember to think of yourself this way.

3. By accepting your Christ Mind as your Identity you let go of, or forgive, your perceptions of personal selves in a world separate from God. This is the plan of the Atonement. Your experience of miracles, which are inspired by your Christ Mind, unite your mind and its perceptions in Oneness and release you from your perception of separation from God.

4. Your Christ Mind is the awareness that you are One with God and therefore your Christ Mind is the Atonement. Only the Christ in you can inspire your experience of miracles, which are extensions of God’s Love. Your purpose is the Atonement and you must put aside the personal mind and be open to the guidance of your Christ Mind to fulfill It. Experiencing miracles will lead you to be open to direct revelation of God.

5. Your error in perceiving yourself as separate from God does not threaten God but God does threaten your error. You are free to see yourself as a personal self separate from God or to see the Truth that you are Spirit, Eternally loved by God in Oneness with God. The Atonement recognizes the latter and undoes all fear. So when you are frightened by God it is because you are defending a personal self as yourself. When you project the source of your fear onto the world of separation that you perceive you reinforce fear in your mind. But if you choose instead to extend God’s Love in place of the world of separation that you perceive you undo fear in your mind.

6. Your behavior follows from your interpretations of the world that you perceive. To behave appropriately you must learn to look out from the Holy Spirit in you to the Holy Spirit in all that your mind perceives.

7. Your Christ Mind extends God’s Love even when you are not aware of It. You will experience the miracle when you are open to it, overlooking the personal mind and its perceptions, and uniting with Christ in your perception. Your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are One with God and extends Oneness to be all that you perceive.

8. Your experience of miracles always bless you, even if you cannot see a manifestation of them in the world. God’s Love is always present and your Christ Mind, not the personal mind, is in charge of any action that should be taken. Only your Christ Mind is aware of what is needed to correct your perception of separation from God.

9. You will experience miracles when you are ready for them. You accept as much of God’s Love as you can at any given time but your experience of the miracle does not really have a “size” since God’s Love is always Whole. When you accept God’s Love for yourself it is inevitable that you will extend It in your awareness.







4. The Escape from Darkness

1. Denying that you are One with God does not change the fact that you are One with God. Recognizing that you are in denial will threaten your identification with a personal self and make you fearful but accepting that you are One with God will dispel all fear since denying the Truth is the actual source of your fear. When you are no longer in denial and you are willing to remember that you are One with God you will naturally experience Peace and Joy.

2. Denying the Truth frightens you because on some level you are aware that you are deceiving yourself. This deception takes a lot of effort and it results in a personal self that you work hard to make real to you. As an extension of God’s Love, your experience of the miracle reminds you that only God is Reality and it corrects your perception of yourself as a personal self. Accepting this correction is your only real purpose and it abolishes your fear by abolishing your denial of Truth that is the source of your fear.

3. Denying that you are One with God leads to your sense of lack and to your making of a personal self to seek for the Wholeness that you gave away. In God you have Everything and the purpose of the Atonement is to correct your perception of separation from God to remind you of this.

4. You overcome your fear and sense of lack, which are inspired by your denial of your Oneness with God, by forgiving, or overlooking, your error of perceiving yourself as a personal self. By extending God’s Love the miracle reminds you that Christ is your Reality and it undoes all of your fear and lack. Jesus taught forgiveness by demonstrating the unreality of the personal self and the Reality of Christ by overcoming death. The idea that you should be punished for separating from God fails to acknowledge that your perception of separation from God is only an error. By allowing God’s Love to be extended through you, you correct this error.







5. Wholeness and Spirit

1. Both the miracle and the body are temporary learning aids that you will put aside when you return to full awareness of your Oneness with God. The body is neutral and it can be used by your mind to extend God’s Love or to perpetuate your sense of separation from God. You can put off your awareness of your Oneness with God but you can never make your separation from God real. You can destroy the body but you cannot destroy What you really are. You are One with God.

2. For you to be miracle-minded is for you to be open to the awareness that you are One with God now. Every miracle that you extend reduces the time that you need to fully remember that you are One with God. When you have remembered this you will no longer need an individual self.

3. When you have extended correction of your perception of separation from God to all that your mind perceives you will be aware only of Oneness. If you perceive yourself as a personal self separate from God you deny God’s Oneness. You must accept that you are One with God to know yourself.

4. Your mind will be healed of your sense of separation from God. Your experience of the miracle calls you to remember that you are One with God even if you choose to deny this. God is One and Whole and this is What Holiness is. God cannot be made un-whole. Your experiences of miracles affirm the Oneness of God.

5. God is the Eternal Truth and cannot change or be changed. God’s Holy Spirit within you is Perfect and cannot be changed. But you are free to choose if your mind will serve the Holy Spirit or the personal self. In your perception of separation from God these are the only choices available to you. If you choose to have your mind serve the Holy Spirit you will become aware of your Oneness with God again and you will be Limitless in your awareness. If you choose to have your mind serve the personal self you will still be One with God but denying This will limit you and introduce you to the perception of lack. To truly change your mind you must open it to Truth.

6. Your experience of the miracle is a sign that you are following your Christ Mind. This heals your sense of lack and limitation. Your identification with a personal self will not satisfy you and the means that you have employed to make yourself feel whole again have not worked. As you let go of your identification with a personal self you will be disoriented for a while but the means that you have employed to feel whole have only increased your sense of lack and limitation.







6. The Illusion of Needs

1. You can only be at Peace by completely forgiving, or releasing, your perception of separation from God. You will only learn how to do this when you accept that you need to do this and when you want to do this. In God there is no lack and therefore no needs. But by perceiving yourself as separate from God you deprive yourself of your sense of Wholeness and you make lack and needs. You act according to the needs that you perceive and this depends on how you perceive yourself.

2. The only lack that you need to correct is your sense of separation from God. By making a personal self you seem to split your mind in two and this leads to your sense of lack. Your sense of lack manifests as the personal self’s many needs. Believing these needs are real the personal mind orders them according to perceived importance, distracting you from recognizing that you really have only one need. Only by recognizing that you have only one need can you act in a way to truly correct it.

3. Your mind seems to be split into two levels: God and the personal self. Before you can recognize that your mind is not really split and that only God is your Real Mind you have to acknowledge that it is a mistake to believe in a split mind. Until you do no real correction can occur. An error must be corrected on the level where it seems to occur.

4. Your perception of a world is the level of your mind where the error seems to occur. The personal mind is like God’s Mind in that it believes in what is in it. You cannot find your own way out of a fearful world because you made it and your belief in it makes it your “reality”. But from the Holy Spirit’s point of view the purpose of the world that you perceive is to correct your perception of separation from God.

5. All forms of fear are not real because they do not come from God. Your perception of separation from God is corrected by questioning whether what you believe in is One with God. This is how your experience of the miracle helps you sort out the false from the true:

God’s Love undoes fear.

If you experience fear

Then you are not experiencing God’s Love.

And:

Only God’s Love is Real.

If you experience fear

Then you are experiencing an illusion.

You only need to accept this to be free of fear, lack, and limitation. Only God’s Love can undo fear.







7. Distortions of Miracle Impulses

1. Your perception of yourself as a body makes it hard for you to be aware of God’s Love within you. Your desire to physically “love” another is a distortion of your desire to experience God’s Oneness. Real pleasure can come only from extending God’s Love. When you don’t extend God’s Love you deny that you are One with God and you validate your illusion of a personal self that is separate from God. But extending God’s Love corrects this misperception. You will never be at Peace using a body to try to be whole.

2. Do not forget that you are One with God and that only God can satisfy you. For a while you must extend God’s Love through a body because you are not yet aware enough of your Oneness with God to see beyond it. The only real use the body has is as a learning device through which you learn to remember that you are One with God.

3. Your perception of yourself as separate from God - a personal self in a body within a world - is a distortion of your mind; a fantasy. Your reactions and actions in the world that you perceive stem from your unawareness that it is a fantasy. This fantasy, which includes the fantasies that you have in the world and recognize as such, are attempts to satisfy the false needs that have arisen from your sense of separation from God. They are destructive in nature because they are an attempt to undo Reality but they are real only to you who make them and believe in them. If you extend God’s Love instead of the fantasy of separation the experience of the miracle will be real to you because you will believe in it. Your belief in it will strengthen God’s Love in your total awareness. Your fantasies will fall away as the satisfying nature of God’s Love will make fantasies unnecessary. God is lost to you as you try to make another reality and defend it. As long as you believe in personal selves and bodies you will think that you are lost to God. Your only real goal is to extend God everywhere.

(Here, at the end of this first chapter, the Text diverges from its above topic to discuss the importance of these early concepts)[2].

4. This is a course in mind training and it requires attention and study. It is important to carefully study the concepts in these earlier parts because later parts will rest on them. These early concepts will imply things to you that will be expanded on later but first you need an awareness of God’s Love to undo your fear of what is to come.

5. You have a tendency to fear God as something separate from you rather than to know God as the Whole of Which you are Part. So it is important to lay down a solid foundation of trust so that you do not fear God. Your experience of God’s Love undoes fear because the miracle reminds you that you are One with God. Some later steps of this course will involve your direct approach to God and you need the experience of miracles to prepare you for this. It is your awareness of your Oneness with God that heals your mind. This is what this course explains. You might occasionally experience this Oneness through direct revelation with God but to bring your Oneness with God into your full awareness you need to experience the miracle.