16-Point Summary of the Teaching of A Course in Miracles

16-Point Summary of the Teaching of A Course in Miracles

1. Our home is reality, Heaven, the Kingdom of God, a spiritual realm of pure oneness and boundless joy which can never be threatened.

• Since nothing real can be threatened, then the world is not real.
• Reality is formless, spaceless, timeless oneness, beyond all limitation, opposition and distinctions
• God is a Being of limitless, changeless Love Who is incapable of anger or attack.
• God extended Himself to create His Son, the Christ, Who is one with God and is the single Self of the Sonship.
• Extension is the dynamic of reality, in which reality timelessly extends itself and eternally increases.
• Reality is maximal; it is the supreme joy; it is absolute perfection.
• Reality is home, the longing of our hearts, the object of all our desires.
•  

2. We tried to attack reality, to separate from it, thus making a separate identity—the ego—and the world of space and time.

• We tried to separate, motivated by a desire to elevate ourselves above our brothers and above God.
• The ego is the belief behind the separation; it is our core self-concept which says we are separate, autonomous beings.
• When we tried to separate, we seemed to shatter reality into countless separate fragments.
• We made the world by selecting and organizing the fragments.
• The world we made is the diametric opposite of Heaven in every way.
• God did not make the world; we did.
• The ego has one need: to stay in business, to confirm itself, to reinforce its reality, to protect itself from God's Love.
• We made this world of separate places and different moments to confirm the ego by "proving" that separation is an objective reality.
•  

3. But the separation occurred only in our minds; in reality it never happened.

• The separation had no effect, for nothing can change the Will of God.
• We did not actually separate; we merely withdrew our awareness from reality into a private mental state.
• The world is not an objective reality; it is only a dream, a projection of our belief in separateness.
• We are not who we think we are; we are the Sons of God with amnesia.
• We are not here in this world or in these bodies. We are in Heaven dreaming that we are here.
• The instant the separation seemed to occur, God created the Holy Spirit, Who awakened us that same instant. We are now only reviewing a journey that is over.
•  

4. Yet we believed we had really done it. We thought we had sinned and had thereby thrown our happiness away forever.

• We thought that we had separated ourselves from all that we loved and consequently experienced a state of lack.
• We thought that we had sinned against God, that we had launched a real attack which caused real destruction.
• The result of sin was a massive sense of guilt, which we denied and so pushed into the unconscious.
• Guilt says that we deserve punishment. This belief is the source of all of our suffering.
• We project our belief that we deserve punishment onto God and so perceive a punitive, fearful God.
• Guilt, then, gives rise to fear, which really is the expectation of punishment. Fear is the dominant emotion of this world.
•  

5. We then projected the cause of our suffering onto the world, producing the illusion that it had sinned against us and had robbed us of our happiness.

• A law of mind is that mind causes its own experience.
• Projection is the dynamic whereby causation is thrown outward: what our mind has caused now seems thrust upon us from without.
• Projection is motivated by the desire to get rid of our guilt, but its deeper motivation is the desire to make us powerless to change our beliefs.
• Projection produces a world that seems to have enormous power over us.
• Through projection, our self-imposed pain appears to come from an attacking world.
• Our guilt, projected outward, has produced a punishing world.
• Our primary experience of this world is that it attacks us in manifold ways, that it has done us wrong, that it has taken our happiness from us.
•  

6. Our solution: acquire happiness by rearranging our external world.

• Our conscious self-image is "the face of innocence," that of a good self trying to make its way through an unjust world.
• We respond to the world's attacks by defending ourselves.
• We attempt to fill our needs with external things, situations, and events, based on the belief that we are inherently lacking.
• A major need we seek to satisfy is the need to feel innocent.
• Another major need is the need to feel special.
• In our search for happiness, the body is both a means and an end.
• The crowning gift we seek, which incorporates all of the other gifts, is special love.
• All of our seeking attempts to get something from the world, for which we generally must pay something back.
•  

7. Our search for happiness is actually an expression of resentment and a quest for vengeance on the past.

• Underneath our conscious face of innocence is the victim level, a place in us where we are enraged over what we think the world has done to us.
• The victim's primary perception is that other people are sinful.
• In this place we believe that past injustices have given us the right to resentment, restitution, and revenge.
• Our attempt to rearrange the world is based on anger, resentment, grievances.
• In our giving and in our suffering we constantly send the message, "I suffered because of you. Therefore, you owe me."
• We seek vengeance through subtle attempts to re-enact the past and reverse past "injustices" against us.
•  

8. Our "solution" is an attack and so, like the original problem, is an attack on ourselves.

• Beneath the victim level is the ego proper, which is pure, unprovoked attack.
• The victim level is an excuse to attack, produced by projecting our own attack outward.
• The ego promises that attack will get us safety and happiness. This simply tricks us into accumulating guilt, to which it is attracted.
• The ego promises that getting will fulfill us and defending will protect us. This tricks us into accumulating lack and vulnerability.
• The ego promises us joy through bodily pleasure. This tricks us into making separation real.
• The special relationship is the biggest false promise of all, the one that motivates us to pursue all of the ego's false promises.
• Through our normal daily activities the ego is carrying out its ancient attack on God.
• All that the ego does is really designed to attack us, kill us and send us to hell.
•  

9. We have lost touch with reality and so need the Holy Spirit's help to be restored to sanity.

• God created the Holy Spirit to bridge the gap in communication between Him and His children.
• The Holy Spirit's function is to heal our minds by leading us into a thought system that reflects reality. This is how He guides us home.
• The Holy Spirit bridges the distance between reality and illusion. By seeing our illusions in light of reality, He places them in true perspective.
• All that we made for ego He takes and uses for our awakening.
• We accept Him as our Teacher by resigning as our own teacher.
•  

10. The Holy Spirit's message is that we never sinned, never changed ourselves. We need only change our minds.

• The guilt and pain produced by the ego is stored in an unconscious level of mind which also contains our call for God's Love and help.
• The Holy Spirit's answer to our guilt is that we did not do it, that we are still as God created us, because the separation never occurred.
• The journey home is an illusion. We need not purify ourselves or make sacrifices. Instead, we can wake up at any time we choose.
• The holy instant is a moment when this is realized, applied, a moment of doing nothing.
• The miracle is a free deliverance from the imprisonment of the human condition. It is our right, because we never sinned.
•  

11. Changing our minds means allowing the Holy Spirit to heal our perception.

• To awaken in Heaven all we need is a change of perception.
• Projection makes perception.
• Step one: Identify the cause of your pain as your own perception, and bring this illusion to the light of truth.
• Step two: Let go of your perception; have a little willingness for the Holy Spirit to remove it and replace it with truth.
• Step three: The Holy Spirit will replace your perception with His; He will give your mind a miracle.
•  

12. We heal our perception by forgiving the world for what it did not do.

• Forgiveness is the answer to our separated condition.
• Forgiveness is the Course's unique and original message, yet is also the heart of the Holy Spirit's message to humanity.
• Conventional forgiveness, in which we forgive another for his sin against us, is not real forgiveness.
• Real forgiveness is a shift in perception, in which we let go of the perception that a sin occurred.
• The Course's thought system is one big rationale for the idea that sin is unreal and that forgiveness is justified.
•  

13. Extending forgiveness to others reveals to us that we too are forgiven. This becomes our one function.

• Forgiveness releases us from our fixation on our separate self and allows our love to flow out to the world.
• We first allow forgiving perception into our minds and then extend this perception to others.
• Extending forgiveness to others heals them in mind and body. This is the main sense of the word "miracle."
• Extending forgiveness to others is a psychological device for convincing us of our own innocence.
• Extension will become our only function. The Holy Spirit will give us a special form of this called our special function.
•  

14. Forgiveness also undoes the blocks that separate us from others, allowing us to experience the fact that we are one.

• Forgiveness wipes away that which maintains our sense of separateness from others.
• Forgiveness looks past differences and reveals our underlying sameness.
• The holy relationship is a gradual reversal of the special relationship, in which two people slowly realize their sameness.
• When two or more people join in a truly common goal, holiness enters the relationship at a deep level and makes it a holy relationship.
• The relationship will go on a journey, as the holiness that entered it slowly rises and transforms the relationship.
• As the relationship's holiness rises to the surface, it will then reach out beyond the two people. They will be given a joint special function.
• The journey to God is not a lonely journey. Through joining with others we discover our own wholeness and clear the way for uniting with God.
•  

15. With forgiveness as our practice, we journey toward the goal of true perception.

• True perception is a different mode of perception which looks past bodies to the light of Christ in everyone and everything.
• True perception looks on the real world, which is composed of the holiness in all minds and the loving thoughts in those minds.
• Looking with true perception on the real world is the happiest experience we can have here. It is the goal of the spiritual journey.
• The spiritual journey is the gradual making of a single choice, which slowly restores us to our right mind.
•  

16. When we and the entire world have attained true perception, God Himself will take the final step and lift us home.

• Eventually, we will collectively devote ourselves to applying forgiveness and returning home.
• The Second Coming of Christ is when the world collectively awakens to the Christ, the Self we share.
• The Last Judgment is a process by which we judge all past thoughts and retain only the pure.
• When we are perfectly healed we are ready for God to take the final step. In that step we remember God and our true Identity. 
•  

 Robert Perry