Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles (T-1.I.26.1-3).
The shift in perception that the miracle creates in our mind is always a shift away from fear and towards love. The actual move may be only incidental or appear insignificant. It doesn’t matter. As the first principle of miracles makes clear, “all expressions of love are maximal” (T-1.I.1:4).
But we want to be clear: fear and love are two equally viable points on a spectrum. One is an illusion, and the other is real. The miracle “undoes” our belief in the unreal, in order to demonstrate that love, not fear in its myriad forms, is our inheritance (T-in.1:7).
It is in this sense that the Atonement is fundamentally an “undoing.” It is the active process of correction, which undoes illusion in the present, in order to reveal what was always true, and cannot be otherwise. Without miracles, our understanding and practice of Atonement would devolve in rules for behavior, rather than rules for decision.
This means that in any given situation which feels to us unmanageable – be it a conflict with a family member, an addiction in the body, or an existential crisis in the mind – we are less concerned with updating our behavioral posture in the world, and more interested in undoing the conditions in our mind which led to the experience of error and its effects.
Often, our “practice” of A Course in Miracles involves sitting quietly and giving attention to what is, without judgment, without imposing any qualification or condition upon it, which are always attempts to being past and future into the present in order to minimize its healing effects. It is not a “doing” at all.
Miracles are consequences of miracle-minded thinking, which is always about getting out of our own way in order to allow the Holy Spirit to heal us by restoring to our awareness what we are in Truth, which is beyond the need for healing, because it cannot be other that perfectly whole.
