Understanding "Order of Difficulty" in A Course in Miracles
The concept of “order of difficulty” stands as the very first principle introduced in A Course in Miracles, and its placement is no accident. The Course opens with the startling declaration that there is no order of difficulty among miracles, meaning that one miracle is not harder, bigger, or more demanding than another. All miracles are the same, and all expressions of love are maximal. To grasp what this principle truly means, we must understand what the Course is rejecting and why this rejection forms the foundation of its entire thought system.
The World’s Framework of Hierarchy and Degrees
The world we perceive operates entirely on the assumption that order of difficulty is real. Everything in ordinary experience appears to exist along a spectrum of greater and lesser, harder and easier, more and less significant. We naturally assume that curing a common cold is simpler than curing cancer, that resolving a minor misunderstanding requires less effort than healing a deep betrayal, and that some problems are simply too intractable to be addressed at all. This hierarchical perception extends to every domain of human life: we rank people by worth, tasks by difficulty, sins by severity, and suffering by magnitude.
The Course argues that this entire framework of degrees and hierarchies belongs exclusively to the ego and the world it has made. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything precisely because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. The ego’s thought system depends on fragmentation, comparison, and judgment. It cannot function without making distinctions between greater and lesser, because its very existence rests on the belief that separation is real and that differences matter.
Why Miracles Cannot Have Degrees
The Course’s teaching that miracles have no order of difficulty rests on a profound metaphysical insight: miracles are all maximal expressions of love, and love by its nature has no range. Something that is maximal cannot have degrees because there is no spectrum along which to measure it. The Course uses an illuminating analogy to explain this. If you place three apples on a table and then remove them, it is true that the three apples are no longer there. But it is not true that the table is now “minus three apples.” When there is nothing on the table, the concept of amount becomes meaningless. Similarly, when we speak of miracles as maximal, the concept of “more” or “less” simply does not apply. The non-maximal only appears to have a range because we measure it against the maximum and note how much it falls short. But this measurement, while theoretically conceivable, has no practical application to what is already complete.
This principle extends directly from the nature of God and creation. Every part of creation is of one order because God created it so. The whole power of God is present in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. Since all of God’s Sons are of equal value, and since their equality is their oneness, there can be no hierarchy among the miracles that restore awareness of this truth. A miracle simply recognizes what is true and responds to every call for help with the same complete response. It does not judge which call is louder or greater or more important because such judgments would contradict the fundamental equality that miracles exist to reveal.
The Belief in Order of Difficulty as an Obstacle to Healing
The Course is emphatic that belief in an order of difficulty among miracles is not merely an intellectual error but a practical impediment to healing and salvation. It describes this concept as a “real foundation stone” of the thought system it teaches, insisting that you cannot perform miracles without believing in this principle because it is fundamentally a belief in perfect equality. The healers who could not heal themselves, who moved no mountains despite their faith, failed precisely because their faith was not whole. They may have healed the sick at times, but they could not raise the dead because they still believed that some illnesses were more real, some errors more substantial, some separations more permanent than others. Unless the healer heals himself, he has not truly accepted that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed because God created it whole.
The text explains that when you maintain there must be order of difficulty in miracles, what you really mean is that there are some things you would withhold from truth. You believe truth cannot deal with certain problems only because you insist on keeping those problems from truth. This lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from the wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy. In other words, the belief in hierarchies of difficulty is a defense mechanism that protects certain illusions from being dispelled. By declaring some problems too big for miracles, the ego ensures its continued existence.
The Source of the Illusion
The illusion of order of difficulty persists as long as we give parts of our mind to different teachers. When we assign some aspects of our experience to the ego’s interpretation and others to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we learn to deal with part of truth in one way and another part in a different way. This fragmentation of truth destroys its meaning. The Course calls “orders of reality” a perspective without understanding, a frame of reference that cannot actually be compared to reality at all. Truth is whole; it cannot be divided into portions that are more or less true, more or less accessible to healing.
The world we seem to live in is a world of limits, and within this world it does appear that things without order of difficulty cannot occur. This is precisely why the miracle has a unique function: it brings the laws of another world into this one. The miracle is the one thing we can do that transcends order, because it is based not on differences but on equality. From the world’s viewpoint, the lack of order of difficulty is impossible. Yet this impossibility is what marks the miracle as coming from elsewhere, from beyond the ego’s domain of hierarchy and comparison.
The Practical Meaning of No Order of Difficulty
What does it mean practically to accept that there is no order of difficulty in miracles? The Course offers several answers. First, it means offering the same full appreciation to everyone, without a range in what you give to each other. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God. Second, it means applying miracles to all situations without exception. You will recognize that you have truly learned this principle when you apply it to everything, for there is no situation to which miracles do not apply. Third, it means understanding that every miracle is essentially the same: each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. The overcoming of any barrier, whether it appears enormous or trivial, requires the same shift in perception.
The Course reassures us that to overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount our “little wall,” because in the miracle of holy relationship, without barriers, every miracle is contained. Guilt can raise no real barriers against the appeal of love. What seems to stand between us must fall away when we answer love’s call, because guilt itself is an illusion that has no power against truth.
Perception, Projection, and the End of Chaos
The order of difficulty in miracles is ultimately meaningless because perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes perception; the world we see is what we have given it. It is the outside picture of an inward condition. Therefore, we are instructed not to seek to change the world but to change our mind about the world. When perception shifts to vision, everything looked upon is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without vision means anything, and where there is no meaning, there is chaos.
The belief in order of difficulty creates chaos by fragmenting reality into competing levels of importance and accessibility. The acceptance that all miracles are the same restores meaning by reunifying what the ego had split apart. In this holy perception we are made whole, and the Atonement radiates from our acceptance of it to everyone the Holy Spirit sends for blessing.
Conclusion
The phrase “order of difficulty” in A Course in Miracles refers to the ego’s entire system of ranking, comparing, and hierarchically organizing reality. This system is foreign to God, to truth, and to the Holy Spirit. It belongs only to the world of separation, where the ego needs degrees and levels to maintain the illusion that some illusions are more real than others. The Course’s first principle demolishes this entire framework by declaring that miracles, being maximal expressions of love, have no range and therefore no hierarchy. Every error is equally unreal; every call for help receives the same complete response; every mind is equally worthy of healing because God created each one whole. To accept this principle is to accept perfect equality, and in that acceptance lies the foundation for genuine healing and the recognition that we have never truly been separate from God or from each other.