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A COURSE IN MIRACLES

INTRODUCTION ACIM(c)

T-in.1. This is a course in miracles. 2 It is a required course. 3 Only the time you

take it is voluntary. 4 Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. 5 It

means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. 6 The course does

not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. 7 It does

aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your

natural inheritance. 8 The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no

opposite.

T-in.2. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

2 Nothing real can be threatened.

3 Nothing unreal exists.

4 Herein lies the peace of God.

Chapter 1.

THE MEANING OF MIRACLES

I. Principles of Miracles

T-1.I.1. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. 2 One is not "harder" or "bigger"

than another. 3 They are all the same. 4 All expressions of love are maximal.

T-1.I.2. Miracles as such do not matter. 2 The only thing that matters is their Source,

which is far beyond evaluation.

T-1.I.3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. 2 The real miracle is the

love that inspires them. 3 In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

T-1.I.4. All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. 2 His Voice will direct

you very specifically. 3 You will be told all you need to know.

T-1.I.5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. 2 They should not be under

conscious control. 3 Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

T-1.I.6. Miracles are natural. 2 When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

T-1.I.7. Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.

T-1.I.8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those

who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.

T-1.I.9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. 2 Like all expressions of love, which are

always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. 3 They bring

more love both to the giver <and> the receiver.

T-1.I.10. The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of

their purpose.

T-1.I.11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. 2 It is a means of communication of the

created with the Creator. 3 Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is

expressed.

T-1.I.12. Miracles are thoughts. 2 Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of

experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. 3 One makes the physical, and the

other creates the spiritual.

T-1.I.13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal

order. 2 They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go

forward. 3 They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.

T-1.I.14. Miracles bear witness to truth. 2 They are convincing because they arise from

conviction. 3 Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and

therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.

T-1.I.15. Each day should be devoted to miracles. 2 The purpose of time is to enable

you to learn how to use time constructively. 3 It is thus a teaching device and a means to

an end. 4 Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.

T-1.I.16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as

to receive. 2 They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength

to the receiver.

T-1.I.17. Miracles transcend the body. 2 They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away

from the bodily level. 3 That is why they heal.

T-1.I.18. A miracle is a service. 2 It is the maximal service you can render to another.

3 It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. 4 You recognize your own and your

neighbor's worth simultaneously.

T-1.I.19. Miracles make minds one in God. 2 They depend on cooperation because the

Sonship is the sum of all that God created. 3 Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity,

not of time.

T-1.I.20. Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar

of truth. 2 This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.

T-1.I.21. Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. 2 Through miracles you accept

God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

T-1.I.22. Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness

can hide. 2 You believe that what your physical eyes cannot see does not exist. 3 This

leads to a denial of spiritual sight.

T-1.I.23. Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. 2

This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.

T-1.I.24. Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made

sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. 2 <You> are a miracle, capable of

creating in the likeness of your Creator. 3 Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not

exist. 4 Only the creations of light are real.

T-1.I.25. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when

completed, is the Atonement. 2 Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.

T-1.I.26. Miracles represent freedom from fear. 2 "Atoning" means "undoing." 3 The

undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.

T-1.I.27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. 2

It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

T-1.I.28. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear. 2 Revelation induces a state

in which fear has already been abolished. 3 Miracles are thus a means and revelation is

an end.

T-1.I.29. Miracles praise God through you. 2 They praise Him by honoring His creations,

affirming their perfection. 3 They heal because they deny body-identification and

affirm spirit-identification.

T-1.I.30. By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them

in proper alignment. 2 This places spirit at the center, where it can communicate

directly.

T-1.I.31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. 2 You should thank God for what

you really are. 3 The children of God are holy and the miracle honors their holiness,

which can be hidden but never lost.

T-1.I.32. I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. 2 They intercede for

your holiness and make your perceptions holy. 3 By placing you beyond the physical laws

they raise you into the sphere of celestial order. 4 In this order you <are> perfect.

T-1.I.33. Miracles honor you because you are lovable. 2 They dispel illusions about

yourself and perceive the light in you. 3 They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from

your nightmares. 4 By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they

restore your sanity.

T-1.I.34. Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. 2 By atoning for lack they

establish perfect protection. 3 The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions.

T-1.I.35. Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable

effects.

T-1.I.36. Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth

as God created it.

T-1.I.37. A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. 2 It acts as

a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. 3 This places

you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed. 4 Until this has

occurred, knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible.

T-1.I.38. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. 2 He recognizes both God's

creations and your illusions. 3 He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive

totally rather than selectively.

T-1.I.39. The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false

or unreal. 2 This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness

automatically disappears.

T-1.I.40. The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine. 2 It is a way of

perceiving the universal mark of God.

T-1.I.41. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. 2 They thus correct, or

atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

T-1.I.42. A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your

false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.

T-1.I.43. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of

miracle-readiness.

T-1.I.44. The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the

acceptance of His Atonement.

T-1.I.45. A miracle is never lost. 2 It may touch many people you have not even met,

and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.

T-1.I.46. The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. 2 Miracles do not

involve this type of communication, because they are <temporary> communication devices. 3 When

you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the

need for miracles is over.

T-1.I.47. The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. 2 It

establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. 3 In this sense it

is timeless.

T-1.I.48. The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling

time. 2 Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.

T-1.I.49. The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. 2 It is a

device for perception correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the

direction of the error. 3 This is its true indiscriminateness.

T-1.I.50. The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in

accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false.

II. Revelation, Time and Miracles

T-1.II.1. Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. 2 It

reflects the original form of communication between God and His creations, involving the

extremely personal sense of creation sometimes sought in physical relationships. 3 Physical

closeness cannot achieve it. 4 Miracles, however, are genuinely interpersonal, and result in

true closeness to others. 5 Revelation unites you directly with God. 6 Miracles unite you

directly with your brother. 7 Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced

there. 8 Consciousness is the state that induces action, though it does not inspire it. 9

You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.

T-1.II.2. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. 2

That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. 3 Revelation induces only

experience. 4 Miracles, on the other hand, induce action. 5 They are more useful now because of

their interpersonal nature. 6 In this phase of learning, working miracles is important

because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you. 7 Revelation is literally unspeakable

because it is an experience of unspeakable love.

T-1.II.3. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly

applicable. 2 It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful,

implying that one of a lesser order stands before his Creator. 3 You are a perfect creation,

and should experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection. 4 The miracle

is therefore a sign of love among equals. 5 Equals should not be in awe of one another

because awe implies inequality. 6 It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. 7 An elder

brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and obedience for his greater

wisdom. 8 He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and to devotion if he is

devoted. 9 It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. 10 There is nothing about me that

you cannot attain. 11 I have nothing that does not come from God. 12 The difference

between us now is that I have nothing else. 13 This leaves me in a state which is only

potential in you.

T-1.II.4. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way

separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. 2 The statement

is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. 3 You stand

below me and I stand below God. 4 In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without

me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. 5 I bridge

the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the

other. 6 My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render

complete because I share it. 7 This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are

one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is

greater.

T-1.II.5. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close to the Holy

Spirit, and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. 2 I can thus bring down to them

more than they can draw down to themselves. 3 The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower

communication, keeping the direct channel from God to you open for revelation. 4 Revelation is not

reciprocal. 5 It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God.

T-1.II.6. The miracle minimizes the need for time. 2 In the longitudinal or horizontal

plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve

almost endless time. 3 However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to

vertical perception. 4 This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both

emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. 5 The miracle thus has the

unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it

spans unnecessary. 6 There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time

it covers. 7 The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of

years. 8 It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver

on which the miracle rests. 9 The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus

eliminating certain intervals within it. 10 It does this, however, within the larger temporal

sequence.

III. Atonement and Miracles

T-1.III.1. I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. 2

When you offer a miracle to any of my brothers, you do it to <yourself> and me. 3 The

reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at

the end in case you fail temporarily. 4 My part in the Atonement is the cancelling out

of all errors that you could not otherwise correct. 5 When you have been restored to the

recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. 6 As you

share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great

crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. 7 The

power to work miracles belongs to you. 8 I will provide the opportunities to do them, but

you must be ready and willing. 9 Doing them will bring conviction in the ability, because

conviction comes through accomplishment. 10 The ability is the potential, the achievement is its

expression, and the Atonement, which is the natural profession of the children of God, is the

purpose.

T-1.III.2. "Heaven and earth shall pass away" means that they will not continue to

exist as separate states. 2 My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass

away because life is eternal. 3 You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and

wholly loving. 4 This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is

what he is.

T-1.III.3. The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. 2 Being filled with spirit,

they forgive in return. 3 Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for

this is the plan of the Atonement. 4 Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the

Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations.

T-1.III.4. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am

the Atonement. 2 You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. 3 Ask me

which miracles you should perform. 4 This spares you needless effort, because you will be

acting under direct communication. 5 The impersonal nature of the miracle is an essential

ingredient, because it enables me to direct its application, and under my guidance miracles lead

to the highly personal experience of revelation. 6 A guide does not control but he does

direct, leaving it up to you to follow. 7 "Lead us not into temptation" means "Recognize your

errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance."

T-1.III.5. Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. 2 Only

the error is actually vulnerable. 3 You are free to establish your kingdom where you see

fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember this:

4 Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

5 Your reality is only spirit.

6 Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.

7 Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the source of fear. 8

Whenever you experience God's reassurances as threat, it is always because you are defending

misplaced or misdirected loyalty. 9 When you project this to others you imprison them, but only

to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made. 10 This makes them

vulnerable to the distortions of others, since their own perception of themselves is distorted.

11 The miracle worker can only bless them, and this undoes their distortions and frees

them from prison.

T-1.III.6. You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. 2

The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 3 This

means that the perception of both must be accurate. 4 The Golden Rule is the rule for

appropriate behavior. 5 You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. 6 Since you

and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do

to both. 7 You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness

of others.

T-1.III.7. Miracles arise from a mind that is ready for them. 2 By being united this

mind goes out to everyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. 3 The

impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all creations with

their Creator. 4 As an expression of what you truly are, the miracle places the mind in a

state of grace. 5 The mind then naturally welcomes the Host within and the stranger without.

6 When you bring in the stranger, he becomes your brother.

T-1.III.8. That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not

recognize is not your concern. 2 The miracle will always bless <you>. 3 Miracles you are not

asked to perform have not lost their value. 4 They are still expressions of your own state

of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by me because of my

complete awareness of the whole plan. 5 The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures

your grace, but only I am in a position to know where they can be bestowed.

T-1.III.9. Miracles are selective only in the sense that they are directed towards

those who can use them for themselves. 2 Since this makes it inevitable that they will

extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded. 3 However, this selectivity

takes no account of the magnitude of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists

on a plane that is itself unreal. 4 Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of

reality, it would not be useful if it were bound by laws that govern the error it aims to

correct.

IV. The Escape from Darkness

T-1.IV.1. The escape from darkness involves two stages: First, the recognition that

darkness cannot hide. 2 This step usually entails fear. 3 Second, the recognition that there is

nothing you want to hide even if you could. 4 This step brings escape from fear. 5 When

you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into

communion but will also understand peace and joy.

T-1.IV.2. Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself

about it. 2 This deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it <is>

a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality. 3 The miracle sets

reality where it belongs. 4 Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle

acknowledges only truth. 5 It thus dispels illusions about yourself, and puts you in communion with

yourself and God. 6 The miracle joins in the Atonement by placing the mind in the

service of the Holy Spirit. 7 This establishes the proper function of the mind and corrects

its errors, which are merely lacks of love. 8 Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but

spirit is eternally free. 9 If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty

shell and is unaware of the spirit within. 10 But the Atonement restores spirit to its

proper place. 11 The mind that serves spirit <is> invulnerable.

T-1.IV.3. Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. 2 It has no unique

properties of its own. 3 It is an example of the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can

proceed. 4 Truth is always abundant. 5 Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have

everything have no needs of any kind. 6 The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to

you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. 7 You were given everything when you were

created, just as everyone was.

T-1.IV.4. The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. 2 That is

what the Bible means by "There is no death," and why I could demonstrate that death does

not exist. 3 I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. 4 The law itself, if properly

understood, offers only protection. 5 It is those who have not yet changed their minds

who brought the "hell-fire" concept into it. 6 I assure you that I will witness for anyone

who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. 7 Your witnessing demonstrates your

belief, and thus strengthens it. 8 Those who witness for me are expressing, through their

miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they

have learned belongs to them.

V. Wholeness and Spirit

T-1.V.1. The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids for

facilitating a state in which they become unnecessary. 2 When spirit's original state of direct

communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. 3 While you believe

you are in a body, however, you can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of

expression. 4 You can make an empty shell, but you cannot express nothing at all. 5 You can wait,

delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing. 6 But you cannot

abolish it. 7 You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential. 8

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