A Course in Miracles

by Helen Schucman

This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear.

Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world, it is essential that they fully understand the fear of release.

To amplify an earlier statement, spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction. The body does not exist except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it cannot create. It is obvious, then, that inducing the mind to give up its miscreations is the only application of creative ability that is truly meaningful.

Physical medications are forms of “spells,” but if you are afraid to use the mind to heal, you should not attempt to do so. The very fact that you are afraid makes your mind vulnerable to miscreation.

It is essential, however, that the miracle worker be in his right mind, however briefly, or he will be unable to re-establish right-mindedness in someone else.

If your miracle working inclinations are not functioning properly, it is always because fear has intruded on your right-mindedness and has turned it upside down.

All forms of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement for yourself. If you do accept it, you are in a position to recognize that those who need healing are simply those who have not realized that right-mindedness is healing.

This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only heal. By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others.

By affirming this you release the mind from overevaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner.

Spirit is already illuminated and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning. The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.

This often entails fear, because you are afraid of what your spiritual sight will show you.

The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequivocally that healing is necessary.

This is because healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if you cannot perceive it in yourself.

Charity is a way of looking at another as if he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishments in time.

The charity that is accorded him is both an acknowledgment that he needs help, and a recognition that he will accept it. Both of these perceptions clearly imply their dependence on time, making it apparent that charity still lies within the limitations of this world.

out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply.

Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion.

Only right-mindedness can correct in a way that has any real effect.

Miracle-minded forgiveness is only correction. It has no element of judgment at all.

Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents me from giving you my control. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind. This removes them from my control, and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels.

The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.

Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it.

It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness.

You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.

The correction of fear is your responsibility.

These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate.

Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.

Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do.

In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do.

Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind.

Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but w...

Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain because wanting and doing are discordant. This can be corrected only by accepting a unified goal.

Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps may be summarized in this way: Know first that this is fear. Fear arises from lack of love. The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love. Perfect love is the Atonement.

It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement. You have done something loveless, having chosen without love.

However, as soon as you accept the remedy, you have abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs.

However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating.

You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them.

There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.

The miracle worker must have genuine respect for true cause and effect as a necessary condition for the miracle to occur.

You have been fearful of everyone and everything.

You are afraid of God, of me and of yourself. You have misperceived or miscreated Us, and believe in what you have made. You would not have done this if you were not afraid of your own thoughts. The fearful must miscreate, because they misperceive creation.

When you miscreate you ar...

The conflict is therefore one between love and fear.

The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love.

Nothing and everything cannot coexist.

Fear is really nothing and love is everything.

However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement.

The state does not imply more than a potential for a change of mind.

Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished.

only real mastery is through love.