The Third Principle of A Course in Miracles

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

Here in the world – here 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. Who amongst us would say otherwise?

In these bodies and in this world, love depends on differences and judgment. Yet in the formulation of A Course in Miracles, which always invites us to perceive and live by another way, 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, which is our source too – is “beyond evaluation” (T-1.I.2:X). 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.

A Course in Miracles is all about love, 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 valuable, and then chooses betwen them accordingly.

What we call “love” is contingent on separation. This is ithe opposite of how ACIM views – and invites us to learn how to view – love.

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

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 giver and the 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 sameness, thus undoing any grounds for judgment or valuation. Sameness becomes the standard by which we live and create, and peace and joy are its effects.

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