Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong (T-1.I.6:1-2).
The suggestion that miracles are natural is important. It is an implicit argument against miracles being supernatural – were not talking about walking on water, or turning water to wine, or traveling through space and time on the wings of ascended masters, like a new age Ebeneezer Scrooge.
“Miracles are natural” means that they are predictable and understandable and therefore replicable. In the same way that baking a pie or flying a kite is natural, working miracles is natural.
This mentality is helpful to our practice of A Course in Miracles because it facilitates keeping one’s focus on their mind, rather than on projecting external solutions to our problems. We aren’t waiting for God to intervene in the world or for some lesser but still divine entity to up-end the laws by which our living proceeds. We aren’t waiting on magic.
We are simply remembering that we are not bodies and that there is no world, and this can be understood as surely as we understand that flying kites and baking pies are fun and communal and thus meaningful.
We may be confused about what constitutes nature. Indeed, the course asks us to consider some dramatic possibilities – the reversal of cause-and-effect and the illusory nature of the physical world, for example. But the absence of understanding or knowledge is not a gap in which the supernatural – including God – appear. It’s simply an opportunity to deepen our learning.
We want to be what we are, not what we would be if the ego could write the script of our living. Indeed, our addiction to fantasy and other forms of distorted thinking rests on the ego’s desire to always keep us focused on and believing in impossible futures. How else can it consistently hold our attention?
It is because miracles are natural that their absence reflects an error. However, the error is one of thought, and is not external to us. The error is looking for the miracle outside of us, instead of changing our mind about what miracles are. The miracle may or may not have apparent external effects, but it must reflect a mind that changes from fear to love.
A Course in Miracles is clear: neither Jesus nor the Holy Spirit will help us change the world, but they will help us change our minds about the world (T-2.VI.4:1-3). The miracle is each moment when we accept that help, turning away from the world as a source of either solace or suffering. There is nothing out there.
Remember: our default state is understanding and holiness. We are creations of Love and are only in our natural state when we are extending love in the same way that love created and extended us. Miracles are both evidence of this and an effect of this. Miracle-minded thinking begets more miracle-minded thinking.
Thus, if we find ourselves facing an absence of miracles – if we are are estranged from the peace and joy that miracles offer – we simply turn our gaze to the unhealed mind within and ask for help in changing it. Doing so aligns us with the natural flow of God’s Will.
