Principle 5: Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided. (T-1.I.5)

In offering or extending miracles, your cooperation is necessary. Yet the motivation for miracles, choosing the specific recipients to whom you offer them, and the mechanism by which they happen, do not come from you. You offer miracles under the direction of Jesus; the Holy Spirit effects them.

“The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still.”

("The Answer is a Miracle" by Robert Perry and Allen Watson)

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. As an expression of what you truly are, the miracle places the mind in a state of grace. The mind then naturally welcomes the Host within and the stranger without. When you bring in the stranger, he becomes your brother.

That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. Miracles you have not been asked to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace (see Terms), but the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by Jesus because of his complete awareness of the whole plan of Atonement. Only he is in a position to know where miracles can be bestowed.

Yet if you are trusting in your own strength, your own conscious control to perform miracles, you will have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful. Think about this: “With your conscious mind, what can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on? What would give your conscious mind the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished? (W-47.1)

Of yourself you can do none of these things. The recognition of your own frailty is a necessary step to prevent you from performing a miracle where the intended recipient is not ready for it. Sometimes a situation has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to miracles. This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, panic may be precipitated.

This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening. Therefore, for the miracle to attain its full efficacy, it must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear. The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication, not to lower it by increasing fear. Both miracles and fear come from thoughts. If you are not free to choose one, you would also not be free to choose the other. By choosing the miracle you have rejected fear, if only temporarily. To help your brother choose the miracle instead of fear is the province of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Look to Them for guidance.

Thus, miracles are selective only in the sense that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded. However, this selectivity takes no account of the magnitude of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists on a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would not be useful if it were bound by laws that govern the error it aims to correct. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, and one is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. Therefore, the magnitude of the miracle is a non-issue.

Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is. (T-9.IV.6:3-4)

So how does this miracle principle work in coordination with healing? Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valueless-ness of sickness is recognized. One need but say, “There is no gain at all to me in this” and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts. First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it.” (M-5) “...the Spirit, not the body, is the author of truth.” (MP-20)

The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker. Terms like “instincts,” “reflexes” and the like represent attempts to endow the body with non–mental motivators. Actually, such terms merely state or describe the problem. They do not answer it.

So, if the patient must change his mind in order to be healed, what does the miracle worker do? Can he change the patient’s mind for him? Certainly not. For those already willing to change their minds he has no function except to rejoice with them. (M-6)

The miracle worker has, however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what healing is. These patients do not realize they have chosen sickness. On the contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they open-minded on this point. The body tells them what to do and they obey. They have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it, they would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them, the separation is quite real. To them, the miracle workers come, to represent another choice which they had forgotten. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn from sickness and death: “Behold, brother, what Life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?”

The form of the sickness does not matter. They all have the same purpose – separation from God and from truth – and therefore they are not really different. The miracle worker reminds the patient that he did not make himself, and must remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect. The truth in the miracle worker’s mind reaches out to the truth in the minds of their brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced. Illusions of sickness are thus brought to the truth, the truth is not brought to them. So the illusion of sickness is dispelled, not by the will of another, but by the union of the One Will with Itself. And this is the function of the miracle worker: to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as separate from God’s.

Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and still keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The miracle worker has accepted the truth for himself and simultaneously accepts it for the patient. (M-6)

Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, either consciously or subconsciously? When this is so, a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself. Having nothing now to live for, he may ask for death. Healing, then, must wait, for his protection. The Holy Spirit makes this call, not the miracle worker.

Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as a threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given to a brother, it will be received. No miracle worker should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain (1) it has been given to his brother, and (2) it has been received (by the Holy Spirit within his brother), and trust that (3) it will be accepted by his brother when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.

It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. It is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient’s mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? What concern then can a miracle worker have about what becomes of his gifts? Miracles are not under his conscious control; the Holy Spirit is the healer, and the Holy Spirit in the patient receives the healing. Thus, given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything? Even the miracle worker benefits. Miracles bring more love both to the giver and the receiver. (MP-9) And "Love" is what GOD IS.