The Thirty-Fourth Principle of A Course in Miracles

Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit’s strength leaves no room for intrusions (T-1.I.34:1-3).

Miracles – which are shifts in perception away from fear and towards love – testify to what mind is and therefore also witness to the creative power of mind. What mind is is what mind does. The split mind heals itself by recalling its own wholeness; every miracle attests to this.

When the mind is full, it does not recognize lack. When nothing is missing, the mind is free to create as God – its Creator – creates. That is, it creates in love, for love and as love. It does not perpetuate the separation in any way. Rather, it sees beyond the error sustaining separation to what is true. In tha way, it undoes separation entirely.

Healing is not fixing – and atoning is not ownership of – the effects of so-called sin. Rather, healing and atoning are both synonyms for right-seeing – which itself is a synonym for forgiveness in A Course in Miracles. This means that healing and atoning do not recognize the illusion of separation nor any of that illusion’s apparent effects. They do not see and overlook the illusion or its effects. They simply do not recognize it at all. It does not exist.

A Course in Miracles brings us to another level of being and of thinking and of knowing oneself.

When our minds rest in God, without lack and thus with no need to project unfulfillment of any kind, we remember the Holy Spirit’s strength. It is the Holy Spirit who clears our mind of confusion and worry and brings us to peace. When we say that the Holy Spirit allows no intrusions in our mind, we are saying that the ego no longer has a means of raising its bad arguments and mean-spirited logic. The Holy Spirit does not abide ego’s diseased obsession with conflict. It restores the mind to peace.

Ego is the part of the mind that believes in duality, reinforces separation, and always experiences lack because it always projects – always casts out – what is internal. Ego promotes forms of behavior which in turn justify its belief system. With ego, something is always missing. It is the part of us that always feels isolated, alone and incomplete. Ego needs this sense of lack to keep us alert to its voice. Ego promises freedom from suffering and it promises abundance but it never delivers. Never deliving is what the ego is.

In contrast, the Holy Spirit knows that we both have and are everything. There is no cause for conflict anywhere; there is only the Cause for joy and peace. Therefore, miracles are effectively shifts in thinking away from the ego’s view and towards the Holy Spirit’s. To “atone” is to allow an error of separation to be corrected by the Holy Spirit. We don’t correct the error, the Holy Spirit corrects it. We just get out of the way. To atone is to give consent to the Teacher of miracle-minded thinking. We are not, in fact, separate, isolated or incomplete, but are instead interconnected aspects of a unified whole that does not admit division.

When we identify with the ego, we feel vulnerable and threatened. But when we shift our identification to the Holy Spirit, we realize that nothing can actually threaten what we are in truth. We are invulnerable to attack and thus have no need of defense. We are no longer susceptible to the fear and guilt caused by taking on the ego’s perspective of a weakened self in a dangerous world.

Miracles show us – and allow us to remember – that we rest in the peace of God, and extend to others the love that God extends to us. Our natural state of being can only reflect peace and wholeness, and acceptance and love. This is our identity.