A Course in Miracles

by Helen Schucman

founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation and death.

All this we must learn to forgive, not because we are being “good” and “charitable,” but because what we are seeing is not true. We have distorted the world

by our twisted defenses, and are therefore seeing what is not there.

Our sense of inadequacy, weakness and incompletion comes from the strong investment in the “scarcity principle” that governs the whole world of illusions.

The “little I” seeks to enhance itself by external approval, external possessions and external “love.”

Heaven is the natural state of all the Sons of God as He created them. Such is their reality forever. It has not changed because it has been forgotten.

what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.

Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver.

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

They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from the bodily level. That is why they heal.

Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.

A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

Miracles are a way of earning release from fear. Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means and revelation is an end.

Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.

The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear.

Revelation induces only experience.

working miracles is important because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you.

There is nothing about me that you cannot attain.

I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else.

The miracle minimizes the need for time.

This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been.

The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years.

The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence.

Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you needless effort, because you will be acting under direct communication.

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

When you project this to others you imprison them, but only to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made.

The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly.

Miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. 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.

First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually entails fear. Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could. This step brings escape from fear.

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.

Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. This deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it is a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality.

The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.

Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness.

You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing. But you cannot abolish it.

The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are One.

Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve.

If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than Authoritative control.

As a result it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.

All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you.

You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness.

A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct.

The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected.

Ultimately,

space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs.

You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them. Belief produces the acceptance of existence. That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true. It is true for you because it was made by you.

All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all.