The Fifteenth Principle of Miracles

Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning (T-1.I.15:1-4).

In A Course in Miracles, the statement “each day should be devoted to miracles” should not be understood as necessarily advocating for disregarding clocks or calendars. Rather, it addresses our psychological relationship with time and how that relationship can be used constructively to facilitate the undoing of separation.

We might restate by saying that time exists in order to facilitate the acceptance of the Atonement for our selves. We want to use time, not be used by time.

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 (T-1.V.2:1-2).

A Course in Miracles suggests that time is a teaching device and a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with using time to schedule a vacation or to ensure that we can meet for coffee tomorrow. But the ultimate function of time – the Course-based use of it – is to facilitate spiritual learning that will transform us by showing us how to accept Love and thus undo fear and its effects in our lives

Miracles are the means by which this shift in perception – from fear to love, from interpretation and perception to knowledge – occurs. When we devote each day to miracles, we are consciously choosing to use time for the the Holy Spirit’s purpose of ending the separation and restoring our minds to Love, which manifests as the joyful extension of forgiveness as our spiritual practice.

In practice, this means giving attention to the condition of our mind on a daily – on an hourly and sometimes even on a minute-by-minute – basis. We want to align our thoughts with God’s Will – we want to think the way God thinks and we want to not think as God would not think. It’s easy to say and it’s hard to do; that’s why this is a practice, not an accomplishment.

When our minds become aligned with God in this way, then they produce effects in the world that are compassionate and gentle and naturally guide all our brothers and sisters to ever-deepening experience of peace and happiness. This happens in the context of separation in order to undo – in time – separation (which includes time).

This work is thus a “constructive” use of time, because it emphasizes letting go of ego-based perceptions in favor of a more loving and coherent view of the world and our place in it, one which the Holy Spirit naturally teaches us.

As our learning advances in this domain, then our relationship with time naturally alters. Indeed, in time, the need for time as a teaching tool will be undone and disappear. In other words, when we full embrace our identity as Creations of God, creating like unto our Creator, then we will at last have transcended ego-based interpretations of time (all of which essentially boil down to the body’s journey from birth to death with a lot of suffering in-between) in favor of the timelessness of Love.

Again, this is not about taking Saturday off to watch football or go on a picnic. It is not about refusing to meet for dinner at 7 p.m. rather than 6 because time isn’t real. It’s not about pretending December 25th isn’t Christmas. All that is just the form time takes in the world. It’s only a crisis if we insist on taking it literally.

Instead, our focus is on how we are using time. What is time for? If we are using it to strengthen and nurture miracle-minded thinking, and if working miracles is our sole function in the context of time – then the form time takes will shift and we will become happier and less-stressed. We will better help and be helped by our brothers and sisters. If we choose to waste time, and be wasted by it, then we will remain in a fear-based illusion of separation.

There is – there is always – another way. Time is a limit that needs not bind us. Miracles demonstrate how this is so and thus facilitate the use of time for healing from the idea of limitations.