The Third Principle of A Course in Miracles

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle (T-1.3:1-3).

Here in the world – in these bodies in the world – love appears as a special emotion, one that we offer to some people, places and things and not to others. And, love is sometimes returned to us and sometimes it is not. It’s just the way it is. Who amongst us would say otherwise?

In these bodies and in this world, love depends on differences and judgment. It always reflects value judgments and preferences. Yet in the formulation of A Course in Miracles, which always invites us to perceive and live according to another law, love does not see differences at all. Love is blind to difference; love “sees” only sameness.

There is no love but God’s and all of love is His. There is no other principle that rules where love is not. Love is a law without opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one . . . (W-pI.127.3:5-8).

This is why there is no order of difficulty in miracles, and this is why their Source – which is Love Itself, which is our Source too – is “beyond evaluation” (T-1.I.2:2). Love is our inheritance, but of it we cannot speak for we cannot – in the context of world and body – truly understand, let alone experience, the truth of one without another.

This is not a crisis! Indeed, the function of the Course is to introduce us to a Teacher who uses the context of separation, and all of its seeming contents, to teach us that separation is an illusion and unity with God the whole of our reality.

A Course in Miracles is all about remembering that Love is our fundament, but it’s important to understand that what we call love in the world – even at its finest, most effective and most lovely – is a form of hate because it sees differences, judges them as valuable or not, and then chooses between them accordingly. If one suffers for another’s gain, then we are not talking about love.

Until we can see this – and until we are willing to be accountable for it – we will continue to dwell in a world of fear, seemingly forever beholden to its grim and murderous effects.

What we call “love” is contingent on separation. This is the opposite of how A Course in Miracles views – and invites us to learn how to view – love. Reframing our understanding is a first step in learning how to live from a new belief system, one that is predicated not on differences but on sameness.

It is another way of relating altogether.

In this light, a miracle is a response to separation because it emphasizes this sameness, and thus undoes – temporarily, in a limited way – our reliance on distinctions. Miracles remind us that we are not separate from that which we judge, and that judgment is therefore being rendered against our own self. This insight softens our minds, loosening ego’s stranglehold, and allows us to move forward in relationship with our brothers and sisters with greater sensitivity and kindness.

In nontrivial ways, by healing the mind that believes it is separate, miracles make the world a temporarily better place. They enable a happy – and a getting happier – dream.

This, in turn, inspires us to become even more attentive to what the Course calls “miracle-mindedness.”

. . . miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness. The right-minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle receiver (T-2.3:1-2).

Another way of saying this, is to say that “miracle-mindedness” recognizes the fundamental sameness of the minds of the both the miracle giver and miracle receiver, neatly manifesting the Course’s insistence that to give and receive are the same (T-26.I.3:6).

Miracle workers are not deceived by the appearances of difference, for they have learned that love recognizes only what is one and so cannot be judged. Thus, they do not act in ways that rely on or otherwise reinforce any apparent grounds for judgment or valuation. This radical equality – radical because it is the root of being, which is shared – becomes the standard by which we live and create. Peace and joy are its natural effects.