Hi,
I'm Teresa Hubbard.
Welcome back to our continued reading of the text to A Course in Miracles.
We begin today in Chapter 1,
The Meaning of Miracles,
Section 1,
Principles of Miracles.
Section 1 of Chapter 1 introduces us to the miracle.
We learn that miracles praise God through us by honoring His creations,
Affirming their perfection.
Creations refers to you and me,
Often referred to in the text as the sons of God or the sonship.
Section 1 lays out the meaning of miracles and describes how miracles transform us from earthly beings of limitation and lack into spiritual beings of wholeness and empowerment.
We learn that miracles are expressions of love and forgiveness.
We each are offered miracles,
Yet we must have our thoughts purified so that our perceptions are open to the awareness of miracles.
We learn that the Holy Spirit is the bridge,
The communication link that purifies our perceptions so that we can create in the likeness of our Creator.
Next I will share some definitions to a few terms you will be hearing in this reading.
The reason for this is that the course uses traditional Christian terms in a very non-traditional manner.
In helping me put these definitions together,
I used a reference called Glossary Index for A Course in Miracles,
8th edition by Kenneth Wapnick,
Ph.
D.
It's important to remember that the course uses male pronouns with the understanding that these pronouns simply point to spiritual beings having no gender.
Also,
The course is written in first person and although the author is not directly introduced to the reader,
It becomes clear that the words are spoken by Jesus,
Who offers quotes directly from the New Testament of the Bible often throughout the reading.
Jesus speaks to us through the course as our equal,
Our brother.
On a personal note,
I am grateful to have been made aware of the language used within the course before beginning my study of it.
Otherwise,
I may have closed myself off,
Limiting my understanding because of the words used within it.
So please keep in mind as you listen that the words used in the course are simply pointers to the truth,
Nothing more.
The definition of terms used within this reading are miracle,
The change in mind that shifts our perception,
Transcending the laws of this world to reflect the laws of God.
The miracle provides the means to heal our own minds and the minds of others.
Holy Spirit,
This is the communication link between God and us,
Bridging the gap between the mind of Christ and our human minds.
Through this bridge,
Our worldly perception of sin,
Guilt,
And fear is transformed into the reality of love and forgiveness.
Christ,
The self that God created by extension of his spirit.
For me,
This represents the potential within each of us.
Magic,
The attempt to solve a problem where there is none.
Trying to solve a problem in the mind through physical or mindless measures.
Alter,
This is not an external structure,
But an attitude.
It represents the part of our minds that chooses the world of God,
Truth,
Or chooses instead the earthly world,
Illusion.
Whichever attitude we choose,
This is our alter.
Atonement,
The Holy Spirit's plan of correction,
Healing our minds from the earthly world of illusion to God's world of truth.
Revelation,
Direct communication from God to his sons.
That's you and me.
It represents the original form of communication present at creation.
Once our minds are healed and we remember our truth,
The Holy Spirit,
Our bridge of communication is no longer needed.
Sonship,
All of us,
The creations of God,
You and me.
And so now,
Onto the reading.
A Course in Miracles,
Chapter 1,
The Meaning of Miracles.
Chapter 1,
Principles of Miracles.
There is no order of difficulty in miracles.
One is not harder or bigger than another.
They are all the same.
All expressions of love are maximal.
Miracles as such do not matter.
The only thing that matters is their source,
Which is far beyond evaluation.
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.
The real miracle is the love that inspires them.
In this sense,
Everything that comes from love is a miracle.
All miracles mean life,
And God is the giver of life.
His voice will direct you very specifically.
You will be told all you need to know.
Miracles are habits and should be involuntary.
They should not be under conscious control.
Mostly selected miracles can be misguided.
Miracles are natural.
When they do not occur,
Something has gone wrong.
Miracles are everyone's right,
But purification is necessary first.
Miracles are healing because they supply a lack.
They are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.
Miracles are a kind of exchange.
Like all expressions of love,
Which are always miraculous in the true sense,
The exchange reverses the physical laws.
They bring more love to both the giver and the receiver.
The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose.
Prayer is the medium of miracles.
It is a means of communication of the created with the creator.
Through prayer,
Love is received,
And through miracles,
Love is expressed.
Miracles are thoughts.
Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience or the higher or spiritual level of experience.
One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual.
Miracles are both beginnings and endings,
And so they alter the temporal order.
They are always affirmations of rebirth which seem to go back but really go forward.
They undo the past and the present and thus release the future.
Miracles bear witness to truth.
They are convincing because they arise from conviction.
Without conviction,
They deteriorate into magic,
Which is mindless and therefore destructive,
Or rather the uncreative use of mind.
Each day should be devoted to miracles.
The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively.
It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end.
Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.
Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive.
They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.
Miracles transcend the body.
They are sudden shifts into invisibility,
Away from the bodily level.
That is why they heal.
A miracle is a service.
It is the maximal service you can render to another.
It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.
You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously.
Miracles make minds one in God.
They depend on cooperation because the sonship is the sum of all that God created.
Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity,
Not of time.
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.
Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness.
Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.
Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness can hide.
You believe that what your physical eyes cannot see does not exist.
This leads to a denial of spiritual sight.
Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective.
This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.
Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself and can therefore abolish both.
You are a miracle capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator.
Everything else is your own nightmare and does not exist.
Only the creations of light are real.
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.
Miracles represent freedom from fear.
Atoning means undoing.
The undoing of fear is an essential part of the atonement value of miracles.
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.
Miracles praise God through you.
They praise Him by honoring His creations,
Affirming their perfection.
They heal because they deny body identification and affirm spirit identification.
By recognizing spirit,
Miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment.
This places spirit at the center where it can communicate directly.
Miracles should inspire gratitude,
Not awe.
You should thank God for what you really are.
The children of God are holy and the miracle honors their holiness which can be hidden but never lost.
I inspire all miracles which are really intercessions.
They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.
By placing you beyond the physical laws,
They raise you into the sphere of celestial order.
In this order,
You are perfect.
Miracles honor you because you are lovable.
They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you.
They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares.
By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions,
They restore your sanity.
Miracles restore the mind to its fullness.
By atoning for lack,
They establish perfect protection.
The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions.
Miracles are expressions of love but they may not always have observable effects.
Miracles are examples of right thinking,
Aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.
A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me.
It acts as a catalyst,
Breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly.
This places you under the atonement principle where perception is healed.
Until this has occurred,
Knowledge of the divine order is impossible.
The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles.
He recognizes both God's creations and your illusions.
He separates the true from the false by his ability to perceive totally rather than selectively.
The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal.
This is the same as saying that by perceiving light,
Darkness automatically disappears.
The miracle acknowledges everyone is your brother and mine.
It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God.
Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.
They thus correct or atone for the faulty perception of lack.
A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation,
Deprivation,
And lack.
Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind or a state of miracle readiness.
The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of his atonement.
A miracle is never lost.
It may touch many people you have never even met and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.
The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium.
Miracles do not involve this type of communication because they are temporary communication devices.
When you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation,
The need for miracles is over.
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.
The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time.
Every revelation transcends it,
Having nothing to do with time at all.
The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception.
It is a device for perception correction,
Effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error.
This is its true indiscriminateness.
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.
