Overview

TOC

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Commentary on the Introduction

Commentaries on Chapter 1: THE MEANING OF MIRACLES

I. Principles of Miracles

II. Revelation, Time and Miracles

III. Atonement and Miracles

IV. The Escape from Darkness

V. Wholeness and Spirit

VI. The Illusion of Needs

VII. Distortions of Miracle Impulses

Commentaries on Chapter 2: THE SEPARATION AND THE ATONEMENT

I. The Origins of Separation

II. The Atonement as Defense

III. The Altar of God

IV. Healing as Release from Fear

V. The Function of the Miracle Worker

VI. Fear and Conflict

VII. Cause and Effect

VIII. The Meaning of the Last Judgment

Commentaries on Chapter 3: THE INNOCENT PERCEPTION

I. Atonement without Sacrifice

II. Miracles as True Perception

III. Perception versus Knowledge

IV. Error and the Ego

V. Beyond Perception

VI. Judgment and the Authority Problem

VII. Creating versus the Self-Image

Commentaries on Chapter 4: THE ILLUSIONS OF THE EGO

Introduction

I. Right Teaching and Right Learning

II. The Ego and False Autonomy

III. Love without Conflict

IV. This Need Not Be

V. The Ego-Body Illusion

VI. The Rewards of God

VII. Creation and Communication

Introduction

Foreword

The Text is the foundation of A Course in Miracles. Doing the Course is simply a process of learning and internalizing its thought system, and the Text is where that thought system is laid out. It is an unparalleled spiritual tour de force. Careful study of it will change your outlook in ways that perhaps nothing else can.

Many students, however, find the Text to be very hard going. Many do not finish it, and even those who make it through, perhaps repeatedly, wish they had a deeper grasp of what they were reading.

For this reason, in 2006, the Circle of Atonement offered the Text Reading Program. This was a year-long tour through the Text of A Course in Miracles with commentary on each paragraph, written by myself and Greg Mackie, both teachers for the Circle. Before each weekday, we would send out to all the participants via e-mail the reading for that day. This would usually consist of a single section from the Text, accompanied by our commentary as well as practical exercises.

We often supplemented these sections with material from the Urtext, the original typescript of the Course. Our experience was that, especially in the early chapters of the Text, material from the Urtext that was eventually edited out was very helpful and clarifying. So when we felt it was useful, we included this Urtext material in brackets, and let it inform our commentary. We also indicated where a word had been emphasized in the Urtext, as this too often added clarity.

The reason we developed this program has a bit of history to it. In 2000, we offered a local program in Sedona that included a daily Text class, using a schedule that took us through the entire Text in a year of weekday readings. (On the sixth and seventh days, we rested!) Our friend, student, and colleague John Perry attended that program. When it ended, he began guiding people through the Text using the same schedule, only doing so online. He sent out the Text material for a given day and interspersed it with his own clarifying comments. In fall 2005 he felt guided to suggest we do something similar. Our guidance told us to go ahead, and so that's what we did. Without John's suggestion, however, it is safe to say we never would have done this.

2006, the year of the program, was an intense one. I would write commentaries for three weeks. Then I got a breather for a week while Greg wrote the commentaries. And then the schedule started over. Each day we wrote the commentary that needed to go out the next day. In addition, we led a weekly phone class for participants, in which we summarized the previous week's sections. (The recordings are still available to students who sign up for the online version of the Text Reading Program.)

The response to our program far exceeded our expectations. We have included a few edited comments at the front of the book, but if you want to read the unadulterated student reactions, straight from the various horses' mouths, then go to www.circlepublishing.org and click on the link for the Text Reading Program. During the year of the program, and actually ever since, we have had consistent requests that we put this material into published form.

So here it is, presented in book form as a multi-volume set. We hope you find these commentaries illuminating, and that they do indeed deepen your understanding of the spiritual masterpiece, A Course in Miracles.

Robert Perry
September 2009
Sedona, Arizona

Excerpts

I. Principles of Miracles
Robert Perry

Most of these principles, especially the later ones, were originally interspersed with other material, some related, some unrelated. Their original number was 46. This was later expanded to 53 (in the Hugh Lynn Cayce Version), and then condensed to 50 for the First Edition, at which time the material in between the principles was moved elsewhere or edited out. In addition, several current principles were simply statements that Helen and Bill (in their role as editors) upgraded to the status of miracle principles.

1. 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.

This principle is referred to throughout the Course as the first principle of miracles. Imagine really believing this. Imagine how you would look on problems. You would really believe what Lesson 38 has you say: "In the situation involving_______in which I see myself, there is nothing that my holiness cannot do." Please take a moment now to repeat this and apply it to a problem facing you.

2. Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, Which is far beyond evaluation.

3. 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. [Ur: …Don't get embarrassed by the idea of love. Embarrassment is only a form of fear, and actually a particularly dangerous form because it reflects egocentricity....I love you, and I am not afraid or embarrassed....]

Both of these principles make miracles an earthly expression of a spiritual source-in the first case, God, in the second case, love. Both make that source itself more important than its expressions in the world.

The centrality of love runs throughout these early principles. This one says that love by its very nature is miraculous. Love by its very nature shines away all that is not love. Just by being itself, love heals all sickness, lifts all sorrow, wipes away all hatred. It is, as the Introduction said, unopposed by an opposite.

I have always found the comments about embarrassment fascinating. Since embarrassment is a form of fear ("a particularly dangerous form" because it's so egocentric!), being embarrassed about love means reacting to love with its opposite, fear. How inappropriate.

4. 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. [Ur: (Plan ahead is good advice in this world, where you should and must control and direct where you have accepted responsibility. But the Universal Plan is in more appropriate hands. You will know all you need to know. Make no attempts to plan ahead in this respect.)]

This point is really about you not taking charge of your function as miracle worker. In regard to giving miracles, don't worry about the specifics, don't plan ahead. Keep in touch with God's guidance and He will direct you. If you're in the world's mode, you better plan ahead or you're toast. But if you're in God's mode, you should leave the planning in more able Hands.

5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. [Ur: Otherwise they may become undemocratic.] Consciously selected miracles can be misguided [Ur: and may destroy the talent].

Miracles should just happen through you. They should be involuntary, like blinking when an object rushes toward your eyes. Expressing love should be just as involuntary as protecting your body.

This principle has been heavily edited and has lost the original contrast. The original contrast was between involuntary miracles and miracles that you select based on your personal preferences. When miracles just happen through you spontaneously, they will go out toward the stranger as easily as toward a loved one. When you select them, you will tend to be selective. You will play favorites. And this will cause the power to become undependable, sometimes working, sometimes not (see M-25.5:6).

6. Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

In our world, miracles are the exception, but they ought to be the rule. This principle is referred to many times throughout the Text. It must, therefore, be important.

7. Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.

Course students often ask about what this purification is. This cannot refer to purification of the body. That would be very un-Course-like. It also can't refer to purification of the soul. Our spirit is already pure. It must refer to the purification of our thinking. Here is another passage that says the same thing: "Your ministry [as a miracle worker] begins as all your thoughts are purified" (W-pI.151.15:2).

8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.

Course students usually think of miracles as an internal thing, an internal shift in perception. But in these early principles, miracles are clearly depicted as a healing gift that passes from one person to another. Surprisingly-and importantly-that is how they are primarily characterized throughout the Course.

9. 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 both to the giver and the receiver.

Our reluctance to give mainly comes from fear of loss, since when we give something we lose it. Yet a miracle is really just love, and we know that when we give love, our own love expands.

10. The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose. [Ur: They are really used for and by believers.]

Miracles aren't there as proof that you should believe. They are a gift that grows out of belief. They are the fruit of belief. This is not so much belief in religion. Rather, it seems to be belief in the loving power of God being able to express itself through miracles. We see this emphasis on belief in Jesus' miracles, where he repeatedly told those who received them, "Your faith has made you whole."

11. 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.

When we give a miracle to another, we don't give from our own limited store. We first receive from God in prayer, and then we give from His unlimited store.

12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. [Ur: This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking.] One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual. [Ur: and we believe in what we create.]

13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order [Ur version of last phrase: It thus abolishes time;]. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.

A miracle abolishes time because it is the beginning and ending of the story all at once. That long, arduous middle part is cut out. What would otherwise be a whole progression is accomplished in an instant. When this happens, the miracle wipes away the past and opens up a whole new future. And what greater need could we have than to have our past wiped away and a new future opened up before us?

14. 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.

Miracles are not displays of power designed to show how amazing you, the miracle worker, are. To do a miracle, you have to really mean it. You have to really love this person you are giving the miracle to. You have to have real conviction in his unlimited worth. And you have to not care about showing off.

15. 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.

Devoting each day to a spiritual purpose is a theme that will run throughout the Course, especially the Workbook. Imagine waking up and seeing the day as having only one purpose: the giving of miracles. This is where that earlier prayer is so useful: "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today." I highly recommend using that. When we have learned to use each day only to give miracles, time will have nothing left to teach us, and we will awaken from its sleep into the daylight of eternity.

Students find these principles rather dense and cryptic. Each one introduces a new idea, yet has no explanation attached to it. This is mostly a product of heavy editing that was done to this section. Originally, many of the principles did have explanatory material that followed them. That material, however, has either been edited out or moved to other locations in Chapter 1.

This means that today's commentary will be unusually long compared to the length of the Text material covered. The actual principles do very little explanatory work for us, which requires me to do extra work in my commentary.

16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the [Ur: reserve] strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver. [Ur: Be very careful in interpreting this.]

Like principle #9, this one emphasizes what will become a crucial Course idea: that when you give you don't lose; instead, you gain. Even if you may feel drained in the moment, the overall reserve from which you draw has grown. Further, real giving doesn't weaken the receiver (by seeing him as broken and needy). Being based on a view of his true dignity, it strengthens him.

17. Miracles [Ur: are the absence of the body.] transcend the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from the bodily level. That is why they heal.

"Shifts into invisibility" is a reference to the miracle worker experiencing a moment of true vision, in which he sees past the body to the perfection in the receiver-which, of course, is invisible to the physical eye. This true perception is what heals.

18. 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.

Here is the Course's notion of service. To serve another is to give him a miracle. This doesn't negate service in a more concrete, conventional sense, but it does say that when you give a homeless person money or clothing, the real gift behind it is supposed to be the miracle-your recognition of his unlimited worth, your perception that he is more than a body, that he is greater than any earthly king.

19. 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.

This principle has unfortunately been garbled in the editing. It originally read, "Miracles are an industrial necessity. Industry depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on miracles." Here the point is pretty clear: Miracles are necessary to allow industry-in the sense of collective labor for the creation of value-to occur. This is because industry (collective labor) depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on miracles.

This makes sense. As anyone who has served on a committee knows, it takes a miracle for people to cooperate! More specifically, real cooperation in a collective endeavor consists of miracles being given back and forth, knitting everyone together in web of mutual benefit, making collective action possible. Unfortunately, the editors turned this around, saying, "They [miracles] depend on cooperation." What on earth does that mean?

Jesus then gave a correction:

Correction: And don't lose sight of the emphasis on cooperation, or the not singular. That point about "industrial necessity" should read "corporate", referring to the body of Christ which is a way of referring to the Church. But the Church of God is only the sum of the souls he created, which is the corporate body of Christ. Correct to read: "A Miracle makes souls one in God, and leave in the next part about cooperation."

The essence of this correction is to clarify who exactly is getting together to engage in collective labor. It is not just a bunch of workers in a factory. It is the body of Christ, the sum total of all the Sons that God created. This corporate work, then, is not producing cars. Rather, it is the work we are all called to join in down here: the work of saving the world.

So let me rephrase what I think the meaning of this principle was originally intended to be: If the Sonship is really going to join together to save the world, its members will have to really cooperate, and this cooperation will have to rest on a bed of miracles. Miracles bring people together. Miracles allow them to act together. Miracles make people one.

This principle, then, turns out to be a very practical thing for anyone who is involved in group work. If a group is experiencing friction, it needs more than better policies, fresher coffee, and nicer meeting rooms; it needs miracles.

20. 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.

As principle #17 said, miracles heal by seeing past the body, by seeing that the spirit, not the body, is the real truth about someone. The original dictation of this principle described the body as a cobweb, "as an airy and temporary home, which can just be blown away with a slight breeze." Acknowledging this obvious fact feels safe only if you are also willing to recognize that beyond this cobweb is something unshakable and eternal-the spirit. This recognition is the healing ingredient within the miracle.

Related Products

SKU: B132	The Illuminated Text Volume 2 The Illuminated Text is drawn from the Text Reading Program, the Circle's one-year study program of the Text of A Course in Miracles. It provides detailed commentary on this spiritual masterpiece. Volume 2 covers Chapters 5-9. $17.95 Manufacturer: Circle of Atonement
SKU: B133	The Illuminated Text Volume 3 The Illuminated Text Volume 3. Drawn from our online Text Reading Program, it will guide you through each paragraph of the chapters 10-13 of the Text. $16.95 Manufacturer: Circle of Atonement
SKU: B134	The Illuminated Text Volume 4 The Illuminated Text Volume 4. Drawn from our online Text Reading Program, it will guide you through each paragraph of chapters 14-17 of the Text. $16.95 Manufacturer: Circle of Atonement
SKU: B135	The Illuminated Text Volume 5 The Illuminated Text Volume 5. Drawn from our online Text Reading Program, it will guide you through each paragraph of chapters 18-21 of the Text, enabling you to get a deep understanding of this spiritual masterpiece. $16.95

Reviews

Reviewer: Sylvia and Cap Lyons

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert Perry and Greg Mackie are experts at making the sometimes challenging Text not just understandable, but rich with meaning and poignancy. This is a priceless gift to anyone who wants to fully understand the awesome teachings of A Course in Miracles. I can think of no better form of support than this!

—Sylvia and Cap Lyons

Reviewer: Connie Porter

10/16/2009 12:00am

A very powerful tool to keep me on track, reading and absorbing just a few pages each day. This process has been an invaluable source of inner peace during this past year.
—Connie Porter

Reviewer: Julia Simpson

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert Perry and Greg Mackie are experts at making the sometimes challenging Text not just understandable, but rich with meaning and poignancy. This is a priceless gift to anyone who wants to fully understand the awesome teachings of A Course in Miracles. I can think of no better form of support than this!
—Julia Simpson

Reviewer: Dietrun Buchman

10/16/2009 12:00am

The Text commentaries offer insights I could not have had alone, because of the deep understanding Robert and Greg have.
—Dietrun Buchman

Reviewer: Sharon Edwards

10/16/2009 12:00am

An amazing journey into the genius and magnitude of this material. Don't miss this opportunity.
—Sharon Edwards

Reviewer: Loretta M. Siani

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert and Greg's insights illuminate Text principles like never before.
—Loretta M. Siani, Ph.D

Reviewer: Wendy Finnerty

10/16/2009 12:00am

I have studied the Text and read it through at least once a year for the last 19 years. I thought I knew it pretty well. However this year has been a real eye-opener. Many of those little question marks I made in the margins have been erased. I shall be forever grateful for this year of Text study.
—Wendy Finnerty

Reviewer: Ulla Wallin

10/16/2009 12:00am

After 20 years with the Course, I now understand it on a much different level.
—Ulla Wallin

Reviewer: Amy Ellison

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert and Greg's intelligence, insight, and wit, create a fun climate of spiritual scholarship that helps make the Text more intelligible and alive. They're extraordinarily gifted.
—Amy Ellison

Reviewer: Nancy Nevitt

10/16/2009 12:00am

The clear and down-to-earth commentary has helped me connect with the Text as never before.
—Nancy Nevitt

Reviewer: Jan Worley

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert and Greg have a tremendous comprehension of the Course and provide down-to-earth explanations. I know of no better way to learn the message of the Text than this program.
—Jan Worley

Reviewer: Katherine LaTorraca

10/16/2009 12:00am

Translates the beautiful poetry of the Course's Text into everyday common language, making the valuable meaning of each sentence easily understood.
—Katherine LaTorraca

Reviewer: David Colwell

10/16/2009 12:00am

Previously, I had never succeeded in completely reading the Text. Participating was the best thing that I did for myself this year.
—David Colwell

Reviewer: George Porter

10/16/2009 12:00am

There is nothing else in my years of studying the Course that has helped me so much!
—George Porter

Reviewer: Barbara Olson

10/16/2009 12:00am

I can honestly say I'll finally complete the reading of the entire Text-and I've been at this for 20 years!
—Barbara Olson

Reviewer: Jo Chandler

10/16/2009 12:00am

Robert and Greg's insights helped me understand and assimilate the Course's otherwise complex and difficult passages. I will do this again next year, and the next, and the next. This program is amazing.
—Jo Chandler

Reviewer: Don De Lene

10/16/2009 12:00am

Your program has been a revelation.
—Don De Lene

Reviewer: Kathy Chomitz

10/16/2009 12:00am

I would like to say that this year has been too amazing to actually put into words.
—Kathy Chomitz

Reviewer: Mirkalice Gore

10/16/2009 12:00am

Having studied the Course faithfully for 28 years, I never imagined the insights and miracles I would receive from these commentaries on the Text!
—Mirkalice Gore

Reviewer: David Flemming

10/16/2009 12:00am

I can truly say that this program has made an incredible difference to my life. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
—David Flemming

Reviewer: Rev. Jerry Cusimano

10/16/2009 12:00am

Nothing less than totally inspiring.
—Rev. Jerry Cusimano

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