The Eighteenth Principle of A Course in Miracles

A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor’s worth simultaneously (T-1.I.18:1-3).

Service is a form of love. It is a way of saying to our brothers and sisters that we love them, that we consider their happiness as important as our own, because it reflects our underlying shared equality, and so we are committed to bringing forth a world in which our shared happiness is paramount.

A Course in Miracles suggests that miracles – the interior transformation of fear to love which transforms our relationships with one another and the world we construct together – are a “maximal form of service” (T-1.I.18:2). This is another way of saying that there is nothing greater we can do for one another than to recognize each other as Creations of the God of Love and to respond to each other from that space.

Indeed, in that recognition and response we recognize our own self in God’s Creation.

This is not service in the sense of volunteering at a soup kitchen or tutoring aspiring GED students. Those actions are positive and if you can do them or something kin to them, by all means do. But the Course is inviting us to another kind of service, which is to become responsible for projection and to accept that the “secret to salvation” is that we are doing all of this to our self (T-27.VIII.10:1). But when we agree to try and stop, and instead do something different, we do it not only for ourselves but for all our brothers and sisters. Salvation is a collaborative, not an individual, healing process.

In A Course in Miracles, our own worth cannot be separate from that of our brothers and sisters. It is not merely that we are equal but that we are, literally, one. Accepting this oneness is the acceptance of Creation, and this acceptance brings forth a sense of unity and interconnectedness. It undoes our confused sense of self as private and personal, and restores to our mind the truth of what we are.

Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear (T-3.V.10:7-9).

When we practice forgiveness and extend love to the world, we create a shared shift in perception that creates healing that transcends the limitations of bodies and the world they bring forth.

In essence, a miracle is an expression of love and service to others that helps individuals recognize their own worth and the worth of others. To serve the other is to be committed to remembering the other as a Child of God, worthy of the same love and acceptance that we long to receive ourselves. When we serve, we teach the other their own worth, which we naturally recognize as an extension of our own.

What we give to the other, we give to our own self: this is the cornerstone of healing as A Course in Miracles frames it. Thus, our remembrance of the other as holy in Creation is also the remembrance of our own holiness. It’s not a problem that we don’t see this at first. We just have to be willing to see it eventually.

We are healed together as we remember that we are the same in Creation. The miracle is always the means by this remembrance takes form; it is the means within separation that the illusion of separate interests is undone.