Principle 35: Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects. (T-1.I.35)

COURSE REFERENCES

There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal. (T-1.1:1-4)

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

Miracles are an exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, they reverse the physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver. (T-1.9:1-3) When you “give” in the world, your store decreases. When you give love, your store increases.

Miracles arise from a mind that is ready for them. By being united this mind goes out to everyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. (T-1.III.7:1-2)

That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace. (T-1.III.8:1-2,5)

The Holy Spirit is in your right mind, as He was in the mind of Jesus. The Bible says, “May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus,” and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think like Jesus, joining with him in Christ thinking. (T-5.I.3:3-6)

Miracles are expressions of miracle-mindedness, and miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness. The right-minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle receiver. However, as a correction, the miracle need not await the right-mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him to his right mind. Yet it is essential that the miracle worker be in his right mind, however briefly, or he will be unable to re-establish right-mindedness in someone else. (T-2.V.3:1-5)

The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding. You are perfectly safe as long as you are completely unconcerned about your readiness but maintain a consistent trust in the availability and readiness of Jesus. If your miracle working inclinations are not functioning properly, it is always because fear (perhaps in the form of doubt) has intruded on your right-mindedness and has turned it upside down. All forms of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement (correction) for yourself. If you do accept it, you are in a position to recognize that those who need healing are simply those who have not realized that right-mindedness is healing. (T-2.V.4:1-5)

Healing is not creating, it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed (light) and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar, because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. (T-5.II.1:1-3) Miracles save time. Things which may have taken thousands of years, happen in an instant with a miracle.

The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep (stultified*) you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle is a reflection of this union of will between Father and Son. (T-5.II.1:4-7) When your will is free to soar, you are happy. When you restrict your will, inner rebellion may result and in many dysfunctional forms. Therefore, waken, follow God’s Will and BE HAPPY.

*stultified: cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of tedious routine

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating. (T-5.II.2:1-5) This occurs when the Atonement is complete.

The principle (love) of Atonement and the separation (fear) began at the same time. When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the call to joy. The call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. You must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One voice you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other Voice is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. (T-5.II.3:1-6) The ego often changes its voice to raucous shrieks and cacophonous sounds. God's Voice is gentle and quiet and easily heard without increasing the volume. Increase instead your interest and willingness in hearing It.

• The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice That calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that Jesus learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as sons. (T-5.II.3:7-11) Even "the deaf" can hear His Voice.

Yet God is NOT in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose to leave Him, He gave you a Voice to speak for Him because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice. (T-5.II.5:5-7)

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, A Better Way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks for peace. (T-5.II.7:1-7)

The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is in the part of your mind that always speaks for the right choice, because He speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy. The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's Will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. (T-5.II.8:1-4)

How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy and others react to you with joy, even though you are not experiencing joy yourself there must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself. (T-9.VI.1:1-3)

It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in you only because you do not consistently arouse joy in others. Their reactions to you are your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent you will not always give rise to joy, and so you will not always recognize His consistency. What you offer to your brother you offer to Him, because He cannot go beyond your offering in His giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply because you have limited your receiving. The decision to receive is the decision to accept. (T-9.VI.2:1-6)

Atonement teaches you how to escape from everything that you have taught yourself in the past, by showing you only what you are now. Learning has been accomplished, therefore, before its effects are manifest, so learning is in the past. Yet its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. (T-14.XI.3:1-3) Learn first, and then the chosen result of the learning will appear.

Your learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present or teach you how to undo the past. This is because your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or anyone in its "light" for the darkness in which you try to see can only obscure. You have to first access the light in you, in order to see light in your brother. Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for when you do you contradict the light, and thereby think you see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot be seen and you cannot see in darkness, for darkness is nothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. (T-14.XI.3:4-10)

Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from everything that you have taught yourself. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learned you do not want. Look at your life and ask yourself if "this" is what you want?! Instead, ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned, but learn anew. When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself:

I do not know what anything, including this, means.

And so I do not know how to respond to it.

And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.

By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant you abandon the idea of teaching yourself, and instead offer it to Him to teach you. (T-14.XI.6:1-11)

Those who remember always that they know nothing, and who have become willing to learn everything, will learn it. But whenever they trust themselves, they will not learn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they already know. You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God's lesson, and not your own. (T-14.XI.12:1-3,5:1-2)

Make way for peace, brothers, and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from it peace must come. The power of God, from which both understanding and peace arise, is yours as surely as it is His. You think you do not know Him, only because alone, it is impossible to know Him. Yet see the mighty works that He will do through you, and you must be convinced you did them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of effects so powerful they could not be of you. Leave room for Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power that nothing will prevail against your peace. And this will be the test by which you recognize that you have understood -- GOD IS. (T-14.XI.14:7-8,15:1-6)

Prayer:

Father, we will to exchange dark for light, ignorance for understanding, unforgiveness for love. The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within us is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. We ask the Holy Spirit to remove whatever interferes with our communication with each other and with You. We ask Him to open all doors and let the light come streaming through. We would have no blockages, Father, between You and Your Sons. Only love, only truth, only peace would we have in our holy minds. We will to have communion, coupled with the dominion of the Holy Spirit.  AMEN