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A Course in Miracles Chapter 1 - Meaning of Miracles Principles of Miracles
Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond human 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. Consciously 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 in that 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 both to the giver and the receiver.
The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is wrong, or better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used for and by believers.
Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent lower-order or higher-order reality. This is the basic distinction between intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in what we make or create.
Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus alter the temporal order. 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.
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 man to learn to use it constructively. Time is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.
Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.
Miracles are the transcendence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from a sense of lower-order reality. That is why they heal.
A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service one individual can render another. It is a way of "loving your neighbor as yourself." James 2:8 The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor’s inestimable worth simultaneously.
Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation because the Sonship is the sum of all the Souls God created. Miracles therefore rest on 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 expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God’s forgiveness by extending it to others.
Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacious belief that darkness can hide. Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark. This is a very primitive solution and has led to a denial of the Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit).* The escape from darkness involves two stages:
*The term “Spiritual eye” is later replaced by the Holy Spirit and the physical eye becomes the ego. The emphasis on the two ways of seeing, however, remains throughout.
Miracles rearrange perception and place the levels of perception in true perspective. This heals at all levels because sickness comes from confusing the levels. When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy. Your commitment is not yet total, and that is why you still have more to learn than to teach. When your equilibrium stabilizes, you will be able to teach as much as you learn, which will give you the proper balance.
Miracles enable man to heal the sick and raise the dead because he made sickness and death himself and can abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is only 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. This process works all the time and in all the dimensions of time. I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle unto any of my brothers, you do it unto yourself and me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. The purpose of my part in the Atonement is the canceling out of all lacks of love which men could not otherwise correct. The word “sin” should be changed to “lack of love,” because “sin” is a man-made word with threat connotations which he made up himself. No real threat is involved anywhere. Nothing is gained by frightening yourselves, and it is very destructive to do so.
Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” really means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you, or rather to restore it to your awarness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was. When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is “Listen, learn, and do;” – Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing, since you are already able. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability since conviction really comes through accomplishment. The ability is the potential; the achievement is its expression; and the Atonement is the purpose.
A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The disciples were specifically told "to be physicians of the Lord and to heal others." Luke 9:2 They were also told to heal themselves and were promised that "I would never leave them or forsake them." John 14:18 Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God because they have professed me.
You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is.
Miracles are a means of organizing different levels of consciousness. Miracles come from the below or subconscious level. Revelations come from the above or superconscious level. The conscious level is in between, and reacts to either sub- or superconscious impulses in varying ratios. Consciousness is the level which engages in the world and is capable of responding to both. Having no impulses from itself and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong. Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. It represents the original form of communication between God and His Souls, involving an extremely personal sense of closeness to creation which man tries to find in physical relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve this. The subconscious impulses properly induce miracles, which are genuinely interpersonal and result in real closeness to others. This can be misunderstood by a personally willful consciousness as impulses toward physical gratification. Revelation unites Souls directly with God. Miracles unite minds directly with each other. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. This is essential since consciousness is the state which induces action, though it does not inspire it. Man is free to believe what he chooses, and what he does attests to what he believes. The deeper levels of the subconscious always contain the impulse to miracles, but man is free to fill its more superficial levels, which are closer to consciousness, with the impulses of this world and to identify himself with them. This results in denying himself access to the miracle level underneath. In his actions, then, his relationships also become superficial, and miracle-inspired relating becomes impossible.
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. [In this sense, they work together.] Miracles do not depend on revelation; they induce it. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot actually be translated into conscious content at all. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is usually incomprehensible.
Miracles are more useful now because of their impersonal nature. In this phase of learning, working miracles is more important because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you.
Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring His creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly.
Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy, and the miracle honors their holiness. God's creations never lose their holiness, although it can be hidden. The miracle uncovers it and brings it into the light where it belongs. Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but man can deceive himself about it. This illusion makes him fearful because he knows in his heart it is an illusion, and he exerts enormous efforts to establish its reality. The miracle sets reality where it belongs. Eternal reality belongs only to the Soul, and the miracle acknowledges only the truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself and puts him in communion with himself and God.
Christ inspires all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for man’s holiness and make his perceptions holy. By placing him beyond the physical laws, they raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, man is perfect. The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind needs Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of the mind and corrects its errors.
Miracles honor man because he is lovable. They dispel illusions about him, and perceive the Light in him. They thus atone for his errors by freeing him from his own nightmares. They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself, and by freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity. Man’s mind can be possessed by illusions, but his Spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love it perceives an empty shell, and is unaware of the Spirit within it. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.
Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack, they establish perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and they forgive in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers. The forgiven are the means of Atonement. Those released by Christ must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the Plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds which serve the Spirit unite with Christ for the salvation, or release, of all God’s Creations.
Miracles are expressions of love, but it does not follow that they will always have observable effects. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately because I am the Atonement. You have a role in the Atonement, which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you exhaustion, because you will act under direct communication.
Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christ-guidance is personal. The impersonal nature of miracles is an essential ingredient, because this enables me to control their distribution. Christ-guidance leads to the highly personal experience of Revelation. This is why it involves personal choice. A guide does not control, but he does direct, leaving the following up to you.
Remember that error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is really vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember this...
Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the real source of fear. Whenever God’s reassurances are experienced as threat, it is always because you are defending misplaced and misdirected loyalty. That is what projection always involves. Error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he does imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others, since their own perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle worker can only bless, and thus undoes their distortions, and frees them from prison.
Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer’s perceptions are aligned with truth as God created it.
A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception, and reorganizing it properly. This places man under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed. Until this has occurred, revelation of the Divine order is impossible.
The Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit) is the mechanism of miracles because what It perceives istrue. It perceives both the Creations of God and the creations of man. Among the creations of man, It can also separate the true from the false by Its ability to perceive totally, rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the false and the true.
The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit) identifies error as false, or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light darkness automatically disappears. Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the “scarcity” fallacy, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind.
The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God in them. The specialness of God’s Sons does not stem from exclusion, but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships. Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit. “God is not mocked” is not a warning, but a reassurance. God would be mocked if any of His Creations lacked holiness. The Creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness.
Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It thus corrects, or atones for, the faulty perception of lack anywhere. Here we begin to make the fundamental distinction between miracles and projection. The stimulus must precede the response, and will also determine the kind of response that is evoked. Behavior is response, so that the question “response to what?” becomes crucial. Since stimuli are identified through perception, you first perceive the stimulus and then behave accordingly. It follows, then, that: As ye perceive, The Golden Rule asks you to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate. The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior depends on lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion always results in variable reality testing, and therefore in variability in behavioral appropriateness. Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so you will behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness, and perceive the holiness of others. The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love, because love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in “fate,” or level confusion.
I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection to man. It is those who have not yet “changed their minds” who entered the “hellfire” concept into it. I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief, and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them.
A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing man from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation and lack. Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance. Whatever is true and real is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. The mind, if it elects to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul creates along the line of its own Creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential, but places itself under tyrannous rather than genuinely authoritative control. As a result it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of True Authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by Christ in His service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. all shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you.The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reversal of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, the fact is that nothing is less stable than an orientation that is upside down. Nor can anything which holds it that way be really conducive to greater stability.
Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being one, this state of mind goes out to anyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. The impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all creations with their Creator.
The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ, and the acceptance of His Atonement. The mind is then in a state of grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother.
A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you do not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware. That is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. The miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle should be Christ-controlled because of His complete awareness of the Whole Plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only Christ is in a position to know where grace can be bestowed.
Miracle-mindedness means miracle-readiness. Readiness means that you should always keep your perceptions straight, so that you will always be ready, willing and able. These are the essentials for “listen, learn and do.” You must be ready to listen, willing to learn, and able to do. Only the last is involuntary, because it is the application of miracles which must be Christ-controlled. The other two, which are the voluntary aspects of miracle-mindedness, are up to you.
Awe is an inappropriate response to miracles. Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands before a greater one. This is the case only when a Soul stands before its Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and should experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection. The miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of love among equals. Equals cannot be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and also to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a potential in you.
It does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, which does not really exist at all. Actually, the quotation is more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me and I stand below God. In the process of “rising up,” I am higher. This is because, without me, the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to man on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent to which I can share it. This may appear to contradict the statement “I and my Father are one,” but there are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition that the Father is greater. (The original statement was “are of one kind”). The Holy Spirit is the Bringer of Revelations. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me, because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus bring down to them more than they can draw down to themselves.
The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication because they are temporary communication devices. When man returns to his original form of communication with God, the need for miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower communication, keeping the direct channel from God to man open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It is always from God to man. The miracle is reciprocal because it involves equality.
The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane, the recognition of the true equality of all the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of shortening time by rendering the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. It substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does this by the underlying recognition of perfect equality and holiness between the doer and the receiver on which the miracle rests. We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does this by a process of collasping it and thus abolishing certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval which is not under the usual laws of time. Only in this sense is it timeless. By collapsing time it literally saves time, much as daylight saving time does. It rearranges the distribution of light.
The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends time, having nothing to do with time at all. The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids which aim at facilitating a state in which they are unnecessary. When the Soul's original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. While he believes he is in a body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. He can make an empty shell, but he cannot express nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity to almost nothing, and even introduce a developmental arrest or even a regression. But he cannot abolish his creativity. He can destroy his medium of communication but not his potential. Man was not created by his own free will alone. Only what he creates is his to decide. The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle-worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly because he recognizes that every collapse of time brings all men closer to the ultimate release from time in which the Son and the Father are one. Equality does not imply homogeneity now. When everyone recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His Children have His total love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike.
You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. You never really wanted peace before, so there was no point in being told how to achieve it. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it. While the concept of lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in the creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference. A need implies lack by definition. It involves the recognition that you would be better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.
This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them. After the separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. The belief that he could be better off is the reason why man has this mechanism at his disposal. Each one acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he establishes for himself. His hierarchy, in turn, depends on his perception of what he is—that is, what he lacks.
This sense of separation would never have occurred if he had not distorted his perception of truth and thus perceived himself as lacking. The concept of any sort of need hierarchy arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with different needs. As he integrates he becomes one, and his needs become one accordingly. Unified need produces unified action because it produces a lack of ambivalence. The concept of a need hierarchy, a corollary to the original error that man can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. Man cannot behave effectively while he operates at split levels. However, while he does, correction must be introduced from the bottom up. This is because he now operates in space, where concepts such as "up" and "down" are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time belief. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his unbelief, which placed him in it originally. He can never control the effects of fear himself because he made fear and believes in what he made. In attitude, then, though not in content, he resembles his own Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them. Belief in a creation produces its existence. That is why a man can believe in what no one else thinks is true. It is true for him because it was made by him. Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside-down perception. The more truly creative devote their efforts to correcting perceptual distortions. The neurotic devotes his to compromise. The psychotic tries to escape by establishing the certain truth of his own errors. It is most difficult to free him by ordinary means because he is more consistent in his own denial of truth. The miracle, however, makes no such distinctions. It corrects errors because they are errors. Thus, the next point to remember about miracles is:
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. Christ-controlled miracles are selective only in the sense that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded. However, Christ-control takes no account at all of the magnitude of the miracle itself because the concept of size exists in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws which govern the error it aims to correct. Only man makes this kind of mistake. It is an example of the foolish consistency which his own false beliefs have engendered. The power and strength of man's creative will must be understood before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and relinquished. It is not mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is necessarily believed in by its maker, it does not exist at all at the level of true creation.
The miracle compares what man has made with the higher level creation, accepting what is in accord as true and rejecting the discord as false. All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the higher creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a man is willing to submit his beliefs to this test, to that extent are perceptions corrected. In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along the following lines...
But
Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is his gift. |