The Eighth Principle of A Course in Miracles

Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less (T-1.I.8:1).

A Course in Miracles is a wordy project, right? Helen Schucman’s Jesus is nothing if not talkative. But the first chapter of the Text is an exception to that style. There isn’t a lot of excess verbiage in the fifty miracle principles. So it can be especially helpful to give close to attention to the words and phrases used in that section.

In Principle Eight, I want to focus on “supply a lack,” “temporarily” and “those.”

What is the lack to which our first example applies? It applies to faith, which is a foundation of miracle-minded thinking. Miracle-minded thinking is always responsive to our living as bodies in the world. When we are open to miracles, we learn that there is no such thing as separate interests and that our brothers and sisters are our saviors. Miracle workers are faithful because they no longer question oneness. They accept God’s Will as their own. And they know there is no conflict or dysfunction in that unified Will.

Have faith only in this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you from it, or it from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you (T-13.XI.7:1-3).

The miracle worker has this faith, and therefore knows God’s Peace, which is the foundation of healing – theirs and the world’s, for there is no space between them. To be healed is to heal.

Peace be to you whom is healing offered. And you will learn that peace is given when you accept the healing for yourself (T-27.V.11:1-2).

It is not possible that we need more or less healing than our brothers and sisters. Reality has no degrees or intervals; one either accepts it as it is or does not (T-3.IV.1:5, 8). Yet in the interim before this choice is clear, it does seem that our one problem (belief the separation is real and has real effects) will appear to have many forms, each requiring its own special resolution (e.g., T-27.V.8:1).

The many forms will appear to involve differences that we judge as more or less valuable upon comparison, and we will respond to our evaluation as if it is true. Miracles heal this misperception by accepting it and responding to it, in a way that always leads to clarity that the real world does not include differences.

. . . healing is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all. This is because they are really the same, despite their different forms (T-27.V.8:6-7).

Thus, it can appear that you or I will temporarily – that is, in time – be calmer and more patient in terms of caring for our brothers or sisters. Or one of us might appear to have a better grasp of A Course in Miracles, or Christian-based nonduality. One of us doesn’t get jealous, another doesn’t get angry. These are illusory differences whose apparent meaning arises because of the faith we mistakenly place in them. Our belief makes it real for us.

Therefore, so long as separation appears real, we need miracles. Miracles accept our apparent differences in order that we might remember that those differences are illusory and point to a world that is not real. It is our belief in that world – our acceptance of it as real – that causes all conflict and suffering.

In other words, “those” is kind of a misnomer because it actually refers to all of us, not this or that segment of us, because we are all subject to the separation and its painful effects. We all believe in differences and in the utility of personal judgment and private discretion as the means to sort out those differences.

But the miracle is hardly so discriminatory. It cheerfully works with us when we’re in the right space space to channel healing for the collective, and it cheerfully bring us into contact with open channels when we’re shut tight with fear. The miracle always cleanses the mind of fear, leaving only a purified example of God’s Love and the freedom and peace that attend that Love.

The eighth miracle principle makes clear that miracles do not discriminate in healing separation-based thinking, because that thinking is in all of us. Miracles are equal opportunity healing agents, neatly bridging the various gaps that appear in our living, until we begin to figure out that the gaps are not real, and therefore can be gently aside without miraculous intervention.

The disappearance of gaps – i.e., boundaries, marks of division – is what peace is. What is one cannot be in conflict – there is no body and no thing with which to disagree. What is one has no other. This may not yet be our lived experience, but we can catch glimpses now and then, as miracles unite us with our brothers and sisters, in ways that transcend our limited understanding of the world.