This next section is to be read once a day for the next ten days, for those doing the actual lessons. ~ M. Street
13. What is a Miracle?
A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified.
Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.
The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there.
Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this section, from his book set called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street.
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13. What is a Miracle?
*This is one of the more important of the 14 summaries in Part II, as the focus of A Course in Miracles is on the miracle, which is why it is part of the Course's title. It will be clear as we go through this, as well as the lessons to come, that Jesus treats the roles of the miracle and forgiveness synonymously. It would be difficult to regard them as significantly different as they are really aspects of the same process of healing. However, more often than not Jesus gives the name <forgiveness> to the process of changing our minds, and the miracle to the realization that our minds are the <cause> of the dream, not its <effect>.*
(1:1-3) "A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false."
*The passage parallels the first summary, which says forgiveness "is still, and quietly does nothing ... It merely looks, and waits, and judges not" (W-pII.1.4:1,3). In other words, the miracle can be viewed as the process of (1) going above the battleground with Jesus and looking on the world's devastation -- what we believe has victimized us and others -- and understanding that this is the external dream that mirrors our internal dream of devastation -- the belief we attacked and destroyed God; and (2) looking at that belief with a gentle smile, as we realize that what we are looking on -- <form> and <content> -- is false. Thus, the miracle is not about external changes, but solely about a change of mind. It is as if we shifted lenses -- no longer looking at the world through the lens of the ego, but through the lens of the Holy Spirit. Remember that the miracle is not truth and thus cannot be found in Heaven. Its home is the illusion, where it simply undoes the false, correcting what the ego told us was true.*
(1:4-6) "It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings."
*The miracle, like forgiveness, is an illusion, as is the Holy Spirit's function that corrects what never happened. Before we attain that realization, however, we must first look at what the ego has made in the world, understanding that what appears to be external is the reflection of what we have made real in our minds. Only then can we realize that another choice is possible.
Jesus speaks of the miracle as a gentle remedy because it does not do or demand anything. Recall this wonderful passage describing the Holy Spirit's gentleness:
"The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make." (T-5.II.7:1-6).
Thus we need do nothing except look non-judgmentally at the ego, which is why Jesus repeatedly says his course is simple. He is not saying we have to change or give up anything, but only change our teacher, which undoes our original choice for the ego. Again, the miracle merely <undoes> the error, allowing truth to be itself:
"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away." (T-28.I.1.1-4)*
(2:1) "A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one."
*This is so because the mind of God's Son is one. The correction I offer you by releasing my faulty perceptions is what I offer myself. This gift is given in the holy instant, in which the sinful past and fearful future are overlooked in the miracle's present grace: "For a miracle is now. It stands already here, in present grace, within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there is to time." (T-26.VIII.5:8-9)*
(2:2-3) "And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."
*The dream's law that the mind determines everything reflects Heaven's law of truth -- the Mind of God is the Source of all that is. In our right mind we understand that the mind is the source of all we perceive, while the wrong-minded law of illusion teaches that the world determines us. To use the perceptual terminology of figure and ground, we perceive figures or objects in our environment against a background, and then judge their worth accordingly. For example, as I see people sitting in an auditorium in which I am lecturing, I do not pay much attention to the background of the physical room itself: color, carpet, lighting, wall decorations, etc., focusing instead on the people to whom I am speaking. While we normally perceive this way in the everyday world, what the ego has done with this figure-ground concept is abnormal indeed.
The ego causes the mind to recede so much into the background that we do not even know we have a mind, the foreground being only the body. The miracle reverses this relationship, inverting perception.The background -- the mind -- now assumes the foreground, and we realize this mind is the cause of everything. The world that before had been the dominant figures we perceive are simply shadowy reflections of the mind's thoughts. Thus the miracle does not totally undo perception, but simply reverses our perspective.
Again, the miracle allows us to reverse cause and effect, and the following passage from the text summarizes this process of reversal or inversion, using the metaphor of the dream:
"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. ... The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator.... Effect and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect.... The miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect.... This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream." (T-28.II.7:1-2;8:1,8;9:3;12:1-3).
We are thus the dreamers of the dream, not its figures. These figures -- our bodies and the bodies of others -- had been the ego's dominant perception, but seen through the Holy Spirit's vision they become the background, with the mind's purpose the foreground.*
(2:4-5) "Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified."
*When I am restored to my role as dreamer of the dream -- the decision maker -- I am available to choose the right minded truth.
The miracle's inversion of perception -- moving our attention from the world to the mind demonstrates the successful fulfillment of guilt's undoing: the process of forgiveness that cleanses the mind of its thought system of separation and opens us to the vision that leads to the infinite:
"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of your brother is necessary, because minds have chosen to see themselves as separate. ... But God's miracles are as total as His Thoughts because they are His Thoughts." (T-3:V.9:1-2 ,7)*
(3:1-3) "Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless."
*Forgiveness makes miracles possible, for it asks the Holy Spirit that we perceive the world differently. The ego's world, made to curse God and everyone in it, now becomes a blessing because it serves His purpose, as God's Son returns to His Father -- < for They have come >:
"An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God the Father and the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever be. Now is the Holy Spirit's purpose done. For They have come! For They have come at last!" (T-26.IX.8:5-9)*
(3:4-5) "Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy."
*We bring our misperceptions back to the love that is in the mind's universal light. By choosing the Holy Spirit instead of the ego, we choose the thought that reminds us that Creator and creation are one. Our pathway home, walked with all our brothers, is joyously strewn with lilies.*
(4:1) "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand."
*This reflects the process of healing as we begin to practice the Course's principles. Jesus knows we do not yet believe everything he says. However, we will come to accept his teachings when we realize they work, feeling more peaceful because we feel less victimized by what goes on around us. Our happiness, thus, does not rest upon a whim, as is often the case: someone has a good or bad day, does or does not smile; the weather is nice or nasty -- or whatever else we believe secures our happiness and peace. As we increasingly experience this release from the ego's nightmares of judgment and pain, we recognize the joy in learning we are not figures in this dream, but the dreamer. Simply stated, we will feel better as we happily learn we were wrong about everything -- the illusory dream has never left its source in the illusory mind -- and that faith in Jesus as our teacher bore us wonderful fruit.*
(4:2-3) "Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."
*We feel better not because something magical happened, but because we practice what A Course in Miracles teaches. Bringing the problem to its source in the mind changes how we feel. Through deciding for the miracle, we are redeemed. As we call to our brothers to share our faith in the miracle, ours becomes the ultimate redemption that is the real world, the vision of a single light that is the unity of God's holy Son.*
(5:1) "Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."
*In the process of forgiveness we first must realize this world is dry, dusty, and lifeless. Starved and thirsty for love, we come into this world but to die. It must be so because this world of death comes from a thought of death. Yet our perception of the body shifts as we choose a different Teacher -- what had been a sign of death now signifies life. Nothing external changes -- bodies are born, suffer, and die -- but the remembrance of Christ, Whose sinlessness we identify as our own, is reborn in our minds as make the choice for redeemed and eternal live.*
(5:2-4) "Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."
*What is born is the Son of God, created in the image of his Father, and his rebirth as Christ is independent of the body's birth, involving only the mind's choice for the healing power of the miracle. The ego tells us this Christ has been crucified, yet the truth remains that He has never died, since He never left the Source of eternal Life. The miracle of forgiveness begins the process of undoing the thought system of death, by having us bring the <idea> to the <source>, <form> to the <content>, the ego to the Holy Spirit.* |
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