The Fiftieth Principle of A Course in Miracles

The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false (T-1.I.50:1).

This penultimate principle of miracles identifies us as creators, participants in God’s Kingdom, created to create as God creates. We do this when we think as God thinks which also means not thinking as God does not think. We are called to collaboration, not observation at a distance. God is not the steward of future graces nor the judge of when and where grace will be bestowed. Grace is here now, and is given to all.

The Holy Spirit is our help in this work. We turn our thinking over to the Holy Spirit and each thought is then compared to God and Creation. Thoughts which are “in accord” with Creation are accepted as true, and thus helpful, while those which are “out of accord” are rejected as false. We keep our true thoughts by extending them, and forget about false thoughts. Why waste time on what was never real?

We are not the arbiters of what is true and false. The Holy Spirit is. Our work is remember to ask Him, and not make any substitutes for the answers he gives us. We surrender our judgment; we bring our thinking to the altar of God and leave it there. Our thinking brought us to the grief and terror of separation; it made a world out of fear, substituted illusions for truth, and caused all our apparent suffering, ours and everyone else’s.

Given that, what grounds do we have for holding on to any personal prerogative? What possible benefit could it yield? Is now not the time to consider another way altogether?

This is the Thetfordian move that all ACIM students have to make at some juncture in their practice. We have to say – with and to another – there must be another way. And then work with them to learn what it is and bring it forth in our living.

All living is relationship. Krishnamurti, whose ideas and practice were so fundamental to Tara Singh, said this. Tara Singh did as well. We are not separate from the soil in which flowers and tomato plants grow; we rely on the same sun to energize us. If you look closely at Creation – with eyes willing to see, and ears willing to hear – you will see past the appearance of differences to what is seamless and whole.

In time, you will see that what you are in truth is what is seamless and whole. Ideas leave not their source (T-26.VII.13:2), and God leaves not His creations. The time for joy and peace is now.

Miracles undo incorrect ideas about Creation, including what we are and what our role in it is, and restore to our awareness the truth about Creation, which is that it is founded on and extends love. There is no conflict in Creation – only in our mistaken ideas about Creation. We take those ideas literally, effectively perceiving an image of Creation, rather than actual Creation. The miracle dissolves the image and leaves us with what is real. It is a process, not a one-and-done event.

This is another way of saying that to be be miracle-minded is to choose to perceive only through a lens of love – which is the Vision of Christ. Christ refuses ego by not seeing any cause for fear anywhere in the system. Seeing this way – which is intimately connected with deciding to see this way – opens our hearts and minds to God and Creation but eliding the distortions and confusion that we introduce.

The miracle is always the other way to which Bill Thetford alluded, inaugurating A Course in Miracles. In the present there is only the love that arises through our interconnectedness. Everything else is a bad dream we can release whenever we choose.