Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and one of the foremost teachers of A Course in Miracles, which he has been working with since 1973, when he joined Dr. Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, and Dr. William Thetford at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He has written more than 25 books on the Course, including Love Does Not Condemn, Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of 'A Course in Miracles,' The Message of 'A Course in Miracles,' and many others. He has also produced over 150 audio and video titles discussing the principles of the Course. He is President and co-founder, with his wife Gloria, of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles in Temecula, California.
From pages 6-8:
The best definition of what a miracle is, then, is that it is a correction for a misthinking or a misperception, and therefore A Course in Miracles will never advocate that you do anything about changing your behavior....This does not mean, by the way, that the Course would not advocate many times doing something to shift your behavior. All that it would say is that you not believe that by changing your behavior you have changed the problem. It could be a useful step towards changing a problem, but the basic problem is never out in the world or the body -- it is in the mind. This idea, of course, is absolutely essential to everything that the Course teaches and everything that we will be talking about. Certainly it is essential for understanding what the miracle is. The simplest definition of a miracle is that it is a correction for how we perceive or for how we think.
One of my favorite lines in the Course, which really is a perfect definition of a miracle even though it does not use the word, says that "the holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love" (T-26. IX.6:1). Someone whom we hate, hatred being the ego's way of looking, becomes someone whom we love, and that vision of love is given to us by the Holy Spirit. What we are talking about are two different ways of looking at the world and, more specifically, looking at the relationships in our lives. One is the ego's way of looking, which is a way of seeing more and more separation, anger and guilt, justifying our anger, and making sickness real here in the body. All these perceptions really reinforce the basic ego premise that we are separate from each other and from God. The correction for that is to go from the ego's way of looking to the Holy Spirit's way of looking, and it is that shift from the ego to the Holy Spirit that is the miracle. The identical word for that process of shifting from the ego's perceptions of someone else to the Holy Spirit's, is "forgiveness."
When we do forgive, what we are really doing is healing the problem, because the basic source of the problem is our interpretation of it, and this is based on our guilt. So all of our problems -- whether they be physical, financial, or social -- are not found out here in the world of the body but are found, rather, in our minds, and they all can be traced back to a problem of guilt. Another term for guilt would be "lack of forgiveness." It is when we forgive that our problems are healed, so we can then say that the words "miracle," "forgiveness," and "healing" represent basically the same process.
We can see, therefore, that a miracle is the answer to the problem, which is guilt, and we can define this even further and say that all of guilt comes from the belief that we are separate. So, these two words, "separation" and "guilt," are also virtually synonymous, because one comes from the other. From pages 73-74: 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.
That is, again, the same idea, that truth and holiness are not found in the body; they are found in our minds. When our minds are totally healed we will recall that truth is in our Identity as spirit. Later on, the Course talks about the temple of the Holy Spirit as a relationship (T-20.VI.5:1). It is not in the body; it is in the relationship. The Holy Spirit cannot be in the body because there is no body. God would not place the Holy Spirit in a place that does not exist and where there is no problem. Bodies do not get sick, nor do they get well. It is only the mind that can be sick, and only the mind that can be healed.
I said earlier that when the separation seemed to occur, God created the Holy Spirit. He placed the Holy Spirit, Who is also defined in the Course as being God's Answer and His Voice, in the place where He is needed (T-5.I.5; T-5.II.2). Where the Holy Spirit is needed is not out here in the world, because the world is not the problem. He is needed in our mind. That is where the altar of truth is. The body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit; it is the use of the body that is, which is always found in terms of a relationship: joining in a common purpose. For the Course, the temple of the Holy Spirit, where He is made manifest and where He is found, is in a relationship. There is a passage where Jesus says that he stands within the holy relationship (T-19.IV-B. 5:3; 8:3). This does not mean that he is not present in an unholy relationship. What it means is that when we are in an unholy relationship, which is what A Course in Miracles calls a "special relationship," a relationship where guilt is the goal and separation is the principle, then the one who manifests forgiveness and joining will become invisible to us. If we are choosing to hear the ego's voice of guilt and separation, we are not going to hear the voice or experience the presence of the one who represents joining, forgiveness, and healing. It is not that Jesus is not present in a special relationship, but his presence is obscured.
When he says he stands within the holy relationship, he means that when we truly forgive and shift the purpose of the relationship from the ego's guilt to his forgiveness, then we will know he is there. The veils of guilt that kept him hidden are removed. He says in the Course at one point, "Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you" (T-11.VI.7:3-4). The way that we demonstrate that Jesus is alive and well, and that he did do what he said he did, is to live according to the same principle that he did: the principle of forgiveness or transcendence of the body; totally shifting from a perception of seeing oneself as a victim to seeing oneself as joined with all people, living that out in the relationships of our personal lives. That is how we demonstrate that he is living in us. In words based on John's gospel: "They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another" (Jn 13:35). The Course's version of that would be: "They will know you are my disciples by your forgiveness of each other."
