Principle 10 The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose. 11 Prayer is the medium of miracles. 12 Miracles are thoughts.
Principles of Miracles P 10,11,12
Miracles Principles: 10,11,12
10 The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose.
I used to believe that miracles were absolutely supposed to wow everyone and make them true believers. It never occurred to me that this was not their purpose until I read this. So, what is the purpose of miracles? As I see it now, my mind is healed of a false belief. No one even sees this, and I am the only one aware of the change.
Sometimes even I don’t notice a difference right away. I used to be depressed. It went on for so many years it seemed normal to me. I would wake up in the morning and lie in bed waiting to see if I was going to feel depressed. Waiting to see if this would be a good day or a bad day. At that time, I didn’t realize I had a choice. I studied and practiced the Course for a few years.
Then There Was a Miraculous Change
One morning I woke up and lay there waiting to see how I was going to feel. And that was the morning I realized that I wasn’t depressed and that it had been a long time since I was. In all this time, I have never suffered from depression since. I don’t know when the depression went away because it was a slow process as I learned to choose the Holy Spirit as my guide and interpreter.
I also think that they are supposed to show me that I am not this limited being that I thought I was. They are supposed to show me that I stand outside time, space, and all limitations. They seem extraordinary at first because I have lived in the dark for so long, but the more I experience them, the more I understand that miracles are supposed to be the way I live my life.
Principle 11
11 Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
Prayer is the way we communicate with God. It is love being given and received. The Song of Prayer begins by saying:
Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son in his creation. It was then what it is to become, the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son.
After I began the study of A Course in Miracles, I was confused about prayer. I didn’t know how I was supposed to pray. The supplement, Song of Prayer, helped me with that confusion. It begins with describing true prayer. It says that Prayer is a way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God. At its highest level, it is not meant that we ask to entreat but to accept what is already there. After all, God created us as an extension of Himself. What could we possibly need?
How to Ask
But it also says that we cannot be asked to accept answers beyond the level of need we can recognize. He says this:
You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. ²You have also been told that there is only one problem and one answer. ³In prayer this is not contradictory. ⁴There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:1-4)
So, how do I pray to God now? I stop my activity during the day to love Him and to be aware of His love for me. I might do this for only a moment or two, and I sit with Him longer when I can. When I think I have a need, I talk to God about it. I just tell Him what I think and how I feel. I ask for another way to see, or that my mind be healed, for my thinking to be corrected, or to purify my thoughts. And I don’t try to use language that fits the concepts of the Course. My words express my fears and doubts honestly.
My Prayers Are Answered
And when I am done, I know that my prayer has been answered, and I express my gratitude. Maybe right away, I am given helpful thoughts, or a feeling of peace and happiness wells up in me. Other times, I don’t notice a difference, but later I read just the right words somewhere, or I have the thought to talk to someone about it and find my answer there. Sometimes I become aware of ego thoughts that are blocking the awareness of love’s presence so that I can forgive them. But always, I am answered. Always, I experience the miracle.
Climbing the Ladder of Prayer
This paragraph describes the level of prayer that I am close to reaching now.
5. Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. ²It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness. ³Why should holiness entreat, being fully entitled to everything Love has to offer? ⁴And it is to Love you go in prayer. ⁵Prayer is an offering; a giving up of yourself to be at one with Love. ⁶There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want. ⁷That nothingness becomes the altar of God. ⁸It disappears in Him. (ACIM, S-1.I.5:1-8)
As Jesus says, this is not a level of trust that everyone has reached as yet. So it is perfectly OK to ask for help in any way that is needed. We should never feel guilty or uncertain about the way we approach our Father. He knows our hearts anyway, so I just let myself be where I am in any particular moment, knowing that I am growing in faith and trust. Turning to God in whatever way I do so is bringing me ever closer to true prayer.
Principle 12
12 Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.
If one is confused about what a miracle is, this principle clears that up. Miracles are thoughts. Everything begins with a thought, and when the mind is healed of ego thinking, and we move from fear to love, that is a miracle. The miracle may then show up in our lives as form. ¹³There are no idle thoughts. ¹⁴All thinking produces form at some level. (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:13-14) It might not show up in a way we expected or in a way that is not apparent to us. But thought takes form.
Gaining Clarity
Here is an example of a lower level of experience that represents a thought. This was long before I discovered A Course in Miracles. Just shortly after I found Unity and got an inkling that our thoughts mattered, I got a cold. At this time, it was not unusual for me to have colds, viruses, and such. It happened every year, sometimes more than once. But this time, it suddenly occurred to me that I had a serious argument with my husband and that the anger had lingered for days.
I started thinking about it, and I saw that in the past, when I held onto anger, I would get sick. Finally, I had put two and two together, and sure enough, the answer was predictable. This was the first time that I understood that thought seemed to make things happen. It also encouraged me to correct this kind of thought as quickly as I could. I didn’t realize the significance of this discovery at the time, but once I started studying the Course, I appreciated what I learned that day.
Decide for God for Me
Asking the Holy Spirit to correct our thoughts and heal our minds would be an example of a higher level of thought. Shifting our thoughts to a higher level shifts our lives to a happier, more peaceful experience. For instance, let’s return to that revelatory experience with anger followed by sickness. Because I followed up by choosing to ask the Holy Spirit to decide for God for me, and I continue to this day to do that, I probably haven’t had more than two colds in all those years.
Actually, the entire world, with all its bodies, is the effect of lower-level thoughts. Now is a good time to be reminded that we are not guilty of making the world. It could be considered a playground made for the purpose of experiencing something outside reality. It is an illusion because there is nothing outside God, but the experience feels real because we want it to.
No More “Shoulds”
Guilt entered into it as a result of the thought that we shouldn’t have and that we actually did abandon God. We did not. And there is nothing that we shouldn’t have done. We are unlimited beings, and there are no boundaries we should not cross. My experience is that I am happier as I learn to drop the “shoulds” from my mind.
While we still live in fear of what we have done, we limit our experience, and it is an unfortunate cycle of desire stunted by guilt. This guilt causes us to fear our Father and resist returning to Him. But we are to return, so it is important that we shift from lower level thinking to higher level thoughts.
Trying to Correct at the Lower Level
Our error now is that we are trying to make a better world from within the world, and it won’t work because the world is an expression of limitation, an effect of lower level thoughts. As we begin to awaken to this fact, we remember that we are not the self in the world but the maker of the world, and then we see that we operate from outside these artificial boundaries.
Here is how I see this. My friend is sick, and from inside time and from the point of view of being Myron, I want to help. I look on the internet for possible solutions. I pray to a God I don’t really know using words, hoping He will have pity and give us a miracle. Even if I learned that this is wrong-minded thinking, I might still do the same thing. I would just use more accurate language but changing how I say it is not an actual change.
The miracle I ask for is that the body is healed, even though it seems impossible. I believe I am Myron, and I believe my friend is that sick body. I believe that when the body dies, I lose my friend. This is an example of how I try to make a better world from within the world.
Correcting From the Higher Level
But there is a higher spiritual level of thought. As I see myself as being outside time and space, I remember that I am the maker of the dream rather than the avatar I use for this experience. I see my part in the miracle differently than before. I realize that while the story is not real and nothing is actually happening, it is the story I have chosen to experience.
Within that story is an opportunity to lose myself or find myself. I find myself through expressing love. As I join with my other self, my friend, I remember our oneness. I find myself through knowing that sickness is not real, knowing that she is not limited by the laws of the world, by knowing who she really is while she is temporarily confused about that.
Spiritual thoughts are not thoughts of the world as real, but through spiritual thoughts, the world is reconfigured to reflect truth more closely. This seems, in the world, to be a miracle of a healed body, but it is actually the miracle of a healed mind. It is a mind healed of a false belief, a mind that laughs at the idea of limitations and restrictions as absurd ideas that could not possibly be true. How could pain, suffering, and death actually exist? They would have to be in God, and that is just ridiculous. Miraculous thinking is not bound by the rules of the world, and miraculous thinking is reflected as a healed world, perhaps as, in this case, as a healed body.
If you would like to read an early article I wrote about choosing thoughts, click here.