Sean Reagan

Miracles are shifts in perception away from fear and towards love. Miracles are specific. They are responsive to our perception of separation, uniting our will to heal (however faint) with God’s Knowledge that there is nothing to heal and never was.

Miracles emphasize the role mind plays in creating reality; when mind updates its false perceptions and beliefs, it produces experiences of love that naturally undo fear. They do this by aligning our thinking and will with universal principles of love and forgiveness which, together, are God’s Will.

Thus, miracles are experiences within the broader experience of separation which reveal the illusion of separation by making obvious our shared interest in Love. By making this shared interest increasingly obvious, miracles unite us with our brothers and sisters, further fostering the conditions by which healing occurs.

This is a step away – maybe a whole journey away – from the traditional Christian understanding of miracle. In traditional expressions of Christianity, miracles are extraordinary events that defy the laws of nature, thereby testifying to the power of God and His willingness to intervene in our lives.

On that view, miracles are often considered signs of God’s power and presence and even His favor. They validate the faith of believers and witness unto the authority of the one who enacts the miracle. The quintessential example is Jesus walking on water, healing lepers and raising Lazarus from the dead.

In A Course in Miracles, miracles heal the mind that believes it is separate from God and Creation. What happens after that in the world of form is beside the point. And miracles are for everybody who wants them – there is nothing special about them at all, beside the joy and peace they naturally bring forth.

An illusion is an error in perception that we hold both about ourselves and the world. Illusions arise from the ego’s separation-based belief system. When we accept this system as real, and do not seek alternatives, the world resembles and behaves exactly as if separation were real. We act as if we are separate beings in competition and conflict with one another, rather thas as unified thoughts in the mind of God, whose only function is Love. All suffering comes from this.

A basic example of how illusion works is to consider the earth. It’s not actually flat but it does appear that way – or approximately that way – when we walk around on it. The woman in the magic trick is not actually being sawed in half, it just looks that way. That’s why nobody’s rushing the stage to save her.

Illusions can take many forms, including personal beliefs about our own limitations, the perceived limitations of others, and our judgments about the world. We think that anger is inevitable, say, or that some people are lucky in love and others are not. We think the Republican Party is evil or that Democrats are naive. These beliefs cause us (and our brothers and sisters) non-trivial pain. They lead to relationships in which it is possible to remember God and to care for one another is practical and non-dramatic ways.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that illusions are not real and that their appearance of reality can be undone through a process of spiritual awakening and a shift in perception, which together are a practice of forgiveness.

Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place . . . Here time and illusions end together (C-1.3:2, 4).

This is the “One-mindedness of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is one with God’s” (C-1.6:3).

When we understand the underlying circumstances, then the illusion dissolves. The earth appears flat relative to our height. You have to be very high to perceive its curvature, and you have to be in outer space to see the entirety of the globe. Or else you need to do tests – like observing how ships appear to sink the farther away frome shore they get – and study the data. But once you do – once you understand – then the illusion dissolves.

Note that the perception itself may remain consistent. It does look like the woman is being sawed in half. It really does appear that the moon and the sun are circling the flat disc of the earth. To the body, the body and the world will always seem real.

But the psychological aspects of separation do not have to seem real. They can be undone and forgotten. We can live in a world that is predicated on the trust and cooperation that Love instills.

Separation is an illusion that is healed by understanding the way in which we are not – and cannot ever be – separate from either Creation or our Creator.

This understanding is brought forth when we actively choose Love over fear. A Course in Miracles suggests that Love is the only reality and that fear is simply an illusion. When we choose to see the world as the Holy Spirit does – through a lens of Love – we overcome ego-based illusions and experience a greater sense of peace and harmony.

The shift in perception from the ego’s limited perspective to a higher spiritual perspective is what miracles are – and they always create healing in the world. The form the healing takes is not what matters; what matters is the healing itself. Miracles are always guided by the Holy Spirit’s natural capacity to see as God sees and to not see as God does not see. Love holds everything.

A Course in Miracles teaches that only love is real, and that all perceptions to the contrary are illusions that arise from ego’s belief in separation. By letting go of those illusions and opening ourselves up to the experience of Love, our living is transformed and a more peaceful and fulfilling existence becomes possible for all our brothers and sisters.

That state is also an illusion but it is the last illusion – the final moment of our dream in which God takes the last step and restores us to Heaven.

Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual (T-1.I.12:1-3).

The twelfth miracle principle emphasizes that miracles are not external events that “get” us something, but rather shifts in perception that bring our will into alignment with God’s Will. On this view, miracles are corrections in our thinking that enable us to know our brothers and sisters as God knows them and thus – by extension – to know our own self as God knows us. Miracles induce a way of relating to life that is not predicated on illusions perpetuated by ego.

The ego makes and promotes separation, by teaching us how to judge appearances from the perspective of a vulnerable body. The Holy Spirit gently observes that all is one, and therefore nothing real can be threatened. Bodies do what bodies do and it’s no big deal. The Holy Spirit sees beyond all that.

Ego’s lessons begets sorrow; the Holy Spirit’s, joy and peace, and thus the end of suffering.

The fundamental premise of A Course in Miracles it that when we shift our thoughts from fear to love – through the practice of forgiveness – we create a space in which miracles occur naturally and thus heal the mind in which they appear. This shift in our thoughts is what allows us to perceive the world and ourselves in a new light, and it is this shift that brings about the healing effect of the miracle.

This principle also speaks to the idea that thoughts can represent either the “lower or bodily level of experience or the higher or spiritual level of experience” (T-1.I.12:1:2). The lower level of experience refers to the physical world and the experiences that we have through and as bodies, such as pleasure, pain, and other sensory perceptions.

This “lower” level of experience is the ego’s playground because all our experience of it is rooted in – is contingent upon – interpretation. We do not know what any of it means, and we have to be taught. The Course suggests that the ego is a poor teacher because it emphasizes the fickle nature of perception, effectively arguing that we have to choose – and defend – an interpretation. Conflict becomes the only reliable outcome of our living, and survival the only meaningful goal.

This is not a recipe for happiness.

By way of contrast, the Holy Spirit teaches us that the outside world is the projected picture of an inside condition (T-21.in.1:5), and that this is not a crisis but rather an invitation to recognize both our need for healing, and the specific means by which that healing can be accomplished.

To heal in this way is to partake of the “higher or spiritual level of experience” (T-1.I.12:2), by realizing that it reflects our true identity in ways that bodily experience simply can’t.

This higher or spiritual level of experience cannot be contained by – and does not depend on – the physical realm. At the level of spirit, all experience is rooted in love or the cry for love – both of which elicit the same response – and thus naturally focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, regardless of how they appear. It is at this level that we recognize our oneness with God and with all of Creation.

This oneness can be reflected at the level of the body and it can be intellectually understood there, but the only meaningful experience of it is at the spiritual level.

The twelfth principle also suggests that one level of thought makes the physical world while the other creates the spiritual world. The distinction between “making” and “creating” is important in A Course in Miracles. To “make” is to attempt to do something productive without acknowledging our reliance on God. Anything “made” in this way is shallow and ineffectual because it does not reflect God’s Will.

Another way of saying this is that what we “make” is unreal and thus illusory.

On the other hand, to “create” is to recognize with all our heart and mind our dependence on God and to accept this dependence joyfully. At this level, we are not really involved in what is brought forth, other than in our willingness to allow it to be brought forth in us by God. We become channels, and our willingness is the whole of our contribution as co-creators with God.

On the lower level of experience, our thoughts are largely focused on the physical world and the material things that we desire – often understood as what we need to survive. This can lead to two effects of varying degrees – we might get more of what we are focused on and we might get less. But the value given to the more or less is the problem! It symbolizes our belief that what is external is what is real and that our happiness or lack thereof is contingent on what we get or don’t get.

This is a clear error.

On the higher level of experience, our thoughts are focused on God’s Will and the Teacher who speaks for that Will and thus teaches us that Love holds everything. When we give attention to this Love, this Love is brought forth in our living and extends to all Creation through us. This Love heals us as it heals our brothers and sisters, and it makes us happy in ways that are not conditional or contingent upon what appears to happen or not happen.

By shifting our focus away from the external – without denying or denigrating it – we gently bring our thinking into alignment with the Thoughts of God. This is the peace that surpasses understanding. This is the happiness that does not come and go.

All [ego] can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending . . . Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being (T-4.III.3:4, 6).

The twelfth miracle principle of A Course in Miracles emphasizes that miracles are not external events or actions, but rather shifts in our thinking that produce meaningful results in our living. We learn that our thoughts can represent either the physical level of experience or the spiritual level, and that peace and happiness are real only at the spiritual level. Anything else is an illusion.

Thus, this principle attests to the power of our thoughts to shape our experience of the world and emphasizes the importance of focusing our thoughts on love and forgiveness in order to create the conditions for miracles to occur. We do this through practicing the daily lesson, praying and communing with the Holy Spirit, and giving attention to our relationships with all our brothers and sisters.

Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed (T-1.I.11:1-3).

A Course in Miracles, located in the Christian tradition, offers students a non-dualistic approach to understanding and living in reality. It emphasizes a practice of forgiveness as the means to remembering that God is Love, and that we are not separate from God. Forgiveness sees past the inherent unreliability of perception and thus remembers only what is real.

Prayer is the means by which ACIM forgiveness – e.g., the simple but radical practice of not seeing sin or error at all because it is not real – becomes not merely theoretical but both possible and practical. The Course, as its scribe observed, is meant to lived, not merely discussed.

On this view of the Course, miracles are not supernatural events that violate the laws of nature – like, say, walking on water or feeding five thousand people with a few loaves of bread – but rather shifts in perception that allow us to see the world differently, and to know reality outside the illusion of duality imposed on us by the body’s senses, the physical world and the ego’s self-centered interpretation of that world.

Miracles shift our focus away from perception – which is fundamentally interpretative, which is why it is cherished by ego – and towards knowledge, which does not need to interpret anything. Knowledge is that which cannot be touched by doubt. You know that your hands are yours, for example. If you need to pick up a cup of coffee, you don’t have to file paperwork with somebody else to have them do it.

Descartes was gesturing at this when he famously observed that the thought of the self was the one thing that could not be denied.

In ACIM, prayer is a crucial component of this shift in perception – this transition from fear to love – because it opens up a channel of communication between ourselves and reality, which we symbolize as God or the Divine.

When A Course in Miracles says that prayer is “the medium of miracles,” it means that prayer is the means by which we gain access to the Divine and partake of the transformative power of Love which is the Divine. We realize the nature of reality and stop resisting it. We become curious and open. In our acceptance, we become co-creators of peace rather than solitary soldiers engaged in an hopeless war, the origins of which we’ve forgotten.

In other words, prayer is not a request for something we want or believe we need – like a cure for cancer, a winning lottery ticket or a new job or partner. Rather, it is an intentional practice of aligning our will with God’s Will. This is easy to talk about and hard – really hard – to actually do. Ego fights back, distorting and confusing us, forever alienating us from remember that God’s Will is Love, that that Love includes everyone and everything, and accepts no conflict whatsoever.

Given to egoic logic, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have accomplished some divine union, and have reached some state of insight or grace that sets us apart from others, especially when prayer makes us happy by producing results we deem positive. But this is not what ACIM is talking about when it talks about prayer.

True prayer in the understanding and practice of A Course in Miracles is a way to let go of ego – its stories, its arguments, its threats, its distractions – in order to discover what we are in truth, which ego can denigrate and deny but can never destroy. Creation lies beyond the reach of ego; that is why our safety rests in defenselessness (e.g., W-pI.153.h). Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).

Thus, when we pray as students of A Course in Miracles, we are essentially opening our minds to an understanding of Love that is eternally present and accessible but hidden or obscured – often quite effectively – by ego. How do we know when prayer is working then? When it makes us happy regardless of what appears to be happening outside of us in the body in the world.

Prayer liberates us from the tyranny of self-imposed judgment. It restores to our mind the knowledge that we cannot be separate from God, which undoes the need for “our” judgment altogether. In turn, this release allows us to be transformed from the inside-out: as we “receive” love, we understand our brothers and sisters, and the world we make together, differently. We are less likely to collect grievances and viciously compete with one another. We are less affected by notions of scarcity and loss. We are here to serve on behalf of God. We don’t want anything else.

Truly, in prayer, we begin to experience the present moment – the holy instant – as sufficient unto itself. Losing our attachment to time and space – by remembering that they are effects, not causes – means that we become present to the Love that is available to us in each moment as each moment. We recognize – we know – that this Love is our true nature.

Therefore, the eleventh miracle principle teaches us that miracles are expressions of this otherwise unspeakable and unknowable – because it cannot be symbolized, cannot be contained – love. Miracles are not something we do – like turning water into wine or finding the perfect partner – but rather what happens internally when we open radically and without condition to the transformative power of God’s Love as it is revealed in and to us via the holy instant.

Thus, miracles do not generally manifest as spectacular events. Having this expectation of them means we are confused (see, e.g., the tenth miracle principle). A miracle is a moment of freedom born of the peace and quiet that are the effects of resting in Creation with our Creator. We laugh at what used to make us sad; we embrace what we used to fight; we accept what we used to resist. It looks like what it looks like; it doesn’t matter what it looks like.

Miracles are not intended to prove anything. They are not weapons to be used to make our lives different or persuade others to adopt our spiritual path and pratice. Rather, they are expressions of unconditional love, gifts that ask for nothing in return. They are indifferent to form; the form will naturally reflect love in the most helpful way possible. That is what form is for.

Through prayer and the expression of miracles, we realize that God’s Will and our will are, in truth and fact, a single will. There is only one love and only one relationship. This realization ends our identification with ego. We no longer find its voice attractive or interesting. Miracles are a natural result of this communication process. We become – like Saint Francis and Thérèse of Lisieux, like Bill Thetford and Helen Schucman – instruments of peace and love, creating as God creates, with and for all our brothers and sisters.