The Miracle in A Course in Miracles
We’ve all heard of miracles. The Oxford Dictionary defines “miracle” as: “A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.” There are accounts of all sorts of miraculous events, from someone with Stage 4 cancer that goes into remission or someone jumping from an enormous height, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, and surviving. There are also accounts from all over the world that defy the laws of gravity and physics, such as people moving objects at a distance or levitating their bodies off the ground. In the Bible, we read accounts of Jesus performing miracles, like raising Lazarus from the dead and giving two blind men back their sight. Miraculous events inspire wonder, and perhaps also doubt about the truth of the account or the interpretation of the event, depending on who is hearing or reading the account.
The meaning of the word “miracle” in A Course in Miracles is completely different from this well-known meaning of the word. A Course in Miracles is above all a mind-training program, and the miracle therefore has everything to do with the mind and nothing at all to do with the world of form directly. The miracle is a particular choice each of us can make in how we interpret anything that we experience, but especially how we view anyone else. In my earlier post, “On Needing a Lover Who Won’t Drive You Crazy,” I introduced this choice in relation to a lover or life partner. The miracle is actually much broader than this in scope, applying to how we view all the people in our lives, as well as people not in our lives, including groups and even our own or other nations.
The Course teaches that whenever our peace is gone, there are only ever two possible choices. One choice is ‘for the ego.’ If we choose this, we see the other who has apparently taken our peace as separate and different from ourselves, less worthy, wrong, and so forth. This choice favors the world of form as reality rather than as illusion, which then deepens our investment in the illusory world and all the experiences it inspires: anger, fear, guilt, despair, and of course, death. Not that death actually occurs, since only the body can die. Nonetheless, death inspires enormous fear, whether of annihilation, oblivion, or eternal suffering, depending on the person. The other choice is ‘for the Holy Spirit.’ If we choose this, we see the other as the same as ourselves, as completely worthy of love, and as completely innocent of any wrong-doing. This choice leads to peace. It also leads to a shift in perception of what we think we really see and who we think we really are. It undoes our investment in the world of form and in our limited, false conception of ourselves, teaching us that we are eternal. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the miracle.
You might think that a choice in your mind is pretty small potatoes as a means of changing your entire experience of reality. Certainly any one choice may seem to have relatively little effect as you make it, at least on your own experience. But the Course intends to teach “miracle-mindedness” as a habitual way of thinking. The best reason to engage in such a mind-training program is the repeated experience of peace in the wake of choosing the perspective of the Holy Spirit. In the meantime, here are some ideas from the 50 principles of miracles to consider.
The first principle of miracles is:
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. (T-1.I.1:1-4)
What this means is that the choice to overlook something most of us would consider fairly minor, like somebody cutting into line in front of us at the grocery store, is not a greater achievement than overlooking a major crime, like a person murdering another person in cold blood. How is that for a start? The reason for this is that the whole universe is an illusion and everything of true importance happens in the mind. At the level of the mind, then, a person cutting into the line in front of us is as illusory an experience as a person committing a horrible crime. To overlook either act—by viewing the event with the Holy Spirit and seeing the other as truly innocent—is equally an expression of love. (Because we live in a world that tends to hold a completely opposite view, I will add that the consequences of these actions of course differ. To forgive or overlook the guilt of the person doing the action along the lines of A Course in Miracles does not mean to negate the meaning of the action in the world. Murder is punishable by law all over the world, whereas in most if not all parts of the world, there is no punishment for cutting into line, only the risk of incurring the disapproval of others.)
Here is another principle of miracles (number 45):
A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people who you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware. (T-1.I.45:1-2)
This is the Course’s equivalent of the butterfly effect. Instead of the movement of a butterfly’s wings causing a typhoon down the line, a shift in your or my mind about another person can result in an improvement in the life not just of that person, but of the people in their lives too. Here is an example to illustrate how this might work. Imagine a scenario like the minor incident mentioned above: you are pushing your cart up to the register at the grocery store and just as you are about to reach the end of the line, a woman cuts in front of you. You feel some annoyance and you consider telling her to go to the end of the line. Instead, you choose the miracle, overlook her behavior, and you smile and nod her into place in front of you when she looks at you. You see some relief on her face. She only has a few items and she is finished with her purchases in a few minutes. You lose track of her from there. Even so, let’s follow her out of the store. The woman is a mother of 2 children and she is pressed for time to go and pick them up from school. Because you didn’t prevent her from cutting into the line, she is not going to be more than a few minutes late to her children’s school. This allows her to drive within the speed limit and be patient with lights, preventing any number of possible accidents. Let’s imagine something further. Had you not chosen the miracle, but instead made her go to the back of the line, she would have been delayed 12 minutes. She would have sped along the route to her children’s school and arrived at the intersection in front of the school at the exact moment that another parent, also late to pick up his children, sped through the intersection. We can imagine any number of scenarios from here, from a near miss that rattles both drivers and ruins their evening, to one or more children witnessing a nasty accident, to a terrible tragedy, like one or both of the parents being grievously injured or even dying in the accident. This is the sort of chain of events that a miracle could prevent, thereby touching the lives of any number of people you have never met.
Miracles also change and save time (principle 47):
The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.(T-1.I.47:1-3)
This is a mind-bending idea! For it to make any sense, we need to keep in mind that the universe is an illusion projected by guilt in the collective mind. That means that both time and space are also illusions. The every-day laws of time as linear and regular are not ‘really real,’ despite how iron-clad they may seem in the world. The Course actually suggests that time is not even linear. It can therefore be modified through the miracle. One important idea as regards time and Course-style forgiveness is found later in Chapter 1:
The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. (T-1.11.6)
What we are all learning in one or another way in our many lifetimes is that there is only one of us. All that time is needed for, then, is to support this learning. When we choose the miracle, we undo guilt in the mind, bringing the awareness of perfect Oneness and unity with our Creator closer in our awareness. The barriers to this awareness are lessened in my or your mind as the person practicing forgiveness, in the forgiven person’s mind at some level as well because the miracle is the choice based on the idea that we are exactly the same, and in the entire collective mind also, again at some level, because separation is an illusion. As guilt is forgiven through the miracle, certain intervals of time are therefore no longer needed because learning has taken place. (Not to worry, the universe is not about to disappear! Plenty more shifting of minds is needed before anything like that will happen.)
Although the miracle of A Course in Miracles is not miraculous in the usual turning-water-into-wine sense, there is a sense in which the Course’s type of miracle is miraculous. As principle 3 explains:
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. (T-1.I.3:1-3)
Principle 9 builds on this, saying:
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. (T-1.I.9:1-3)
In the introduction to this blog series (found on the Home and Resources pages), I suggested that we greatly underestimate the power of our own minds. Changing our minds by choosing to view another person from the perspective of love can have vast effects, even if they are not obvious to us. What is usually clear to us is an experience of shifting back to a state of peace, however small that may be in a given instance. In the introduction I also mentioned that the Course talks a great deal about both love and peace, since it directs us on a journey in which we ultimately experience that they are one and the same in reality. A Course in Miracles is not a course in love per se because love is our natural inheritance and “beyond what can be taught” (Text, Introduction, page 1). Instead it aims at removing the interference we experience on a daily basis to the awareness of love’s presence in our minds. It does this by teaching us to understand and practice the miracle in our day-to-day lives. In the end, and in our own time, only the experience of love and peace remains. And so, I will end this post as the Course begins:
Nothing that is real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. (T-in.2:2-4)
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.