What are 'miracles' in A Course in Miracles?
Feb 18, 2020
(By Eldad Ben-Moshe ✨ Reading Time: 9 minutes)
The surprising thing that so many people get all wrong about A Course in Miracles.
So here’s a surprising question:
Can it be that A Course in Miracles doesn’t speak of miracles at all?
Maybe I should ask it this way:
What are the miracles that A Course in Miracles is talking about?
What does A Course in Miracles teach?
What is A Course in Miracles all about?
In case you don’t know,
A Course in Miracles is a book of well over 1,000 pages,
and although it is a beautiful and extremely transformational course,
it is also very easy to lose sight of its message.
As the saying goes,
sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.
So here’s something super important that you want to always remember about A Course in Miracles:
“This is a course in cause and not effect.”
That simple line can be your lighthouse,
the sentence that guides your way through the endless sea of theory.
And to make this statement practical for you,
I’ll give you an example of how useful it is as we will use it ourselves in this post,
in which we talk all about what the miracle really is according to A Course in Miracles.
This is one of the most important questions to answer.
Both because it helps you understand what does A Course in Miracles teach,
what is A Course in Miracles all about,
And also because many students and even teachers of the A Course in Miracles
dare I say it -
get it wrong.
It always surprises me that so many students and teachers of A Course in Miracles
get this crucial thing all wrong.
Now, I'm certainly not the only one that got it right,
but there are many who teach what they want,
rather than what the A Course in Miracles is saying.
We can all make mistakes, and I sure make them as well.
But when it comes to understanding what the miracle is in A Course in Miracles,
well... that’s a big one.
I even heard teachers who claim to teach A Course in Miracles
say that they know what they’re teaching is not what A Course in Miracles teaches,
but they think it’s more beneficial to teach what they teach.
Sadly, that didn't stop them from claiming to teach A Course in Miracles -
even if what they actually teach is the opposite of what ACIM teaches
(ACIM is the acronym of A Course in Miracles).
So there's all sort of stuff out there,
but I’m here to help.
And as always,
I’ll bring many quotes from A Course in Miracles to help us on our journey.
Ready? here we go.
It is a spiritual-psychological course,
and it’s about the inside, not the outside.
It is about our perception, our beliefs,
the thought system that we choose.
It is about choosing.
It is about the way back home,
even though we never left home,
and it’s only our misperception that we did.
It's a course about correcting our misperceptions.
“Let us consider what the error is, so it can be corrected, not protected.”
The solution that ACIM offers, the way back home,
is internal as well, not external.
You do not need to go to a holy city or make a sacrifice in the great temple.
No fasting or austerities are required.
And ironically - no miracles either.
That is, no miracles in the ordinary sense of the word,
the way the world speaks about miracles.
A Course in Miracles has its own definition for many of its core concepts
such as Forgiveness, Atonement, Holy Spirit, etc.
And it also has its own definition for miracles.
And yes, that too is internal.
A miracle is about your mind - not about the world.
The solution ACIM offers is internal,
and it involves a correct understanding of who we are and where we are.
“The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever.”
It guides us there through the exercises in the workbook,
and through correct - even if metaphorical - understanding of what’s going on here,
and how we got to this situation in the first place.
To make a long story short,
in a way you can say that we created this illusion of a world
by choosing the ego’s stories, the ego’s teachings.
Obviously there's much more to it than that,
but that's a good starting point for the purpose of understanding what a miracle is in ACIM.
The way back home is simply an undoing of the way we took to get here.
“What you think you are is a belief to be undone.”
Given the big gap between "Where and what you think you are
and “where you are always, and what you are forever,”
there are indeed a lot of false beliefs to be undone...
To name a few examples, contrary to our experience,
A Course in Miracles teaches that you are not a body ('physical self'),
nor a personality ('psychological self').
Furthermore, ACIM teaches that you have never separated from God,
and this world is an illusion.
Undoing current beliefs and having new,
sometimes completely opposite beliefs instead,
involves a change of perception.
A Course in Miracles calls such change of belief and changes of perception-
from false ones to a correct one -
A Miracle.
“Miracles rearrange perception, and place the levels of perception in true perspective. This heals at all levels, because sickness comes from confusing the levels”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:23 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
ACIM tells us that confusing the levels is the cause of sickness
because confusing the levels means incorrect perception.
Incorrect perception means believing the ego’s stories and thought system,
and that indeed causes sickness.
So incorrect perception causes sickness,
and miracles, the correction of perception, brings healing.
Let’s see a few examples from the A Course in Miracles about what the miracle is and what it does:
“By perceiving the Spirit, they [miracles] adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:30 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
"Miracles are examples of right thinking.
Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra‐ and interpersonal boundaries.
As a result, the doerʹs perceptions are aligned with truth as God created it."- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:37 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by me [Jesus, as a symbol of Love that is no of this world].
It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception, and reorganizing it properly. This places man under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed. ”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:38 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“The miracle forgives; the ego damns.
Neither need be defined except by this.”- A Course in Miracles, Manual For Teachers,
Clarification of Terms: The Ego - The Miracle
The ego damns both others and yourself.
The miracle is a change of the false perception that led to the damnation.
Another way to look at it is that a miracle is the choice to bring a new, loving, correct thought to an old, misperceived situation.
A miracle is not something that happens in the world.
And yes, the miracle itself is an illusion too.
“What is a miracle? A dream”
- A Course in Miracles, Manual For Teachers,
Clarification of Terms: The Ego - The Miracle
Fun facts about miracles:
Here are some relevant fun facts about miracles.
They’re not just fun though -
they’ll also help solidify the understanding that miracles are a change of perception,
rather than some magic that is happening in the world.
I will not explain them.
I want to help you develop a mindset of thinking,
of investigation, of curiosity.
But don’t worry, I do not leave you stranded -
You can ask questions in the comments section below,
or on our Facebook page.
But for your own sake,
try to dive inside and answer yourself
any questions these next few quotes may arise:
“Miracles are natural.
When they do not occur something has gone wrong.”- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:6 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:3 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“Miracles are thoughts.
Thoughts can represent lower-order or higher‐order reality.
This is the basic distinction between intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in what we make or create.”- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:12 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“Miracles are both beginnings and endings... They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:13 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“Miracles re‐awaken the awareness that the Spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:20 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
“Miracles honor man because he is lovable. They dispel illusions about him, and perceive the Light in him. They thus atone for his errors by freeing him from his own nightmares. They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself, and by freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity. Manʹs mind can be possessed by illusions, but his Spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love it perceives an empty shell, and is unaware of the Spirit within it. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.”
- A Course in Miracles, Text-1:33 (HLC), Principles of Miracles
So these quotes help us see, again, that miracles are all about the inside -
a change of perception, a change of mind, a change of belief -
not anything that happens in the world.
This also gives you an insight into what does A Course in Miracles teach,
what A Course in Miracles is all about.
At the very least you can understand that just like the miracles it speaks of,
A Course in Miracles is all about the inside, a change of perception -
not anything that happens in the world.
...And 2 stories to demonstrate what a miracle is, and what it is not.
These 2 stories are from my workshop in Israel that can help demonstrate
what a miracle is, and what it is not?
1. Divinely orchestrated - but is it a miracle?
I announced the workshop and its topic about 2 months in advance.
On the day of the workshop itself, My daily lesson in the workbook was…
"My salvation comes from me" (Lesson 70),
just like the title of the workshop.
This is pretty amazing,
since there was no way for me to calculate that,
to do that intentionally.
Studying and practicing A Course in Miracles since 2005,
I still do the workbook every day,
but I study and practice each lesson for more than one day.
Sometimes a few days, sometimes a week, sometimes even more. It varies.
So this is amazing that at the morning of the workshop,
my daily exercise was ‘my salvation comes from me,’
but it’s not a miracle.
To make the distinction even clearer -
It’s a story of specialness that my ego loves very much.
Getting hooked on it,
going with my ego as my teacher,
thinking this is a miracle,
buying into the specialness story and enjoying it,
will only deepen my wrong perception of being Eldad,
this body, this personality.
It will help to solidify my belief in the wrong perception -
that separation happened.
Every choice feeds one thought system,
one belief - and weakens the other.
So not only this is not a miracle,
it can become a means for deepening my ego’s stronghold on my mind,
on my perception -
and that's is the very opposite of a miracle.
2. My amazing baby - is he a miracle?
I went to Israel for the workshop with my baby boy when he was 5 weeks old.
I posted this photo of us from the airport,
saying that I'm coming to facilitate A Course in Miracles workshop.
People lovingly commented on my photo with my boy that he is a miracle.
I was into responding to love with love,
so I liked the comments and was very grateful.
But from ACIM’s point of view,
no body - sweet, amazing, and magical as it might be - is a miracle.
Neither is any soul.
No form of separateness is a miracle.
No form at all is a miracle.
Nothing in this world is a miracle.
A miracle is a change of perception.
My ego would love for my boy to be a miracle.
Trust me on that.
It will strengthen its story of specialness and separation -
there is a world, we are bodies, and my baby is a miracle.
This falls right into the ego’s story of specialness and separation,
And that is true even if we change it to ‘all babies are a miracle.’
So in common terms of the word miracle, it’s true.
But the way A Course in Miracles uses this word, it’s not.
Not everything that feels good and magical is a miracle.
“Nothing real can be threatened.”
A body, even that of an amazing, magical baby,
can certainly be threatened.
So can anything else in this world.
Everything of physical existence -
bodies, mountains, all of it - can be threatened, can die:
literally, like humans, or metaphorically -
like a mountain that gets eroded.
So what's the bottom line? What is a miracle in A Course in Miracles?
A miracle is a change of belief/perception/choice -
from the ego’s story to the Holy Spirit's story,
From fear to love,
separation & specialness to oneness,
guilt to guiltlessness,
illusions to truth,
wrong-mindedness to right-mindedness...
From identification with your body and personality
to identification with that which has no name,
but to talk about it, one might call it ‘the one spirit,’
‘the son of God’, ‘a thought of love in God’s mind,’ etc.
I started this post by stating that “This is a course in cause and not effect.”
And now we can see more clearly what that means
in the context of our question (‘what are miracles in A Course in Miracles’):
Wrong perception is the cause of our pain and suffering.
The world is one of the effects of our wrong perception.
Miracles are not in the world -
Miracles are a change in perception.
A Course in Miracles deals with the cause of our problems
(our wrong perception,
created by our belief in the ego’s teachings and thought system),
Not with the effect
(things in the world).
Why is that important for you?
If you are interested in studying and practicing ACIM,
or if you're already doing that,
knowing what the course is really saying is a must if you want to get the results,
and to save time (which is the result of all spiritual paths, according to ACIM).
And if you have no interest in A Course in Miracles,
but you are interested in living a happier, better life,
the only way to get that is to heal the cause of your pain-
just like you’ll have to deal with the cause of your illness to cure it.
Dealing only with the effects, the results,
will never create a long-lasting change.
And Isn’t that what you really want?
A long-lasting change that creates a happier, better life
for yourself and your loved ones?
To your better life,
with tons of 💖
Eldad Ben-Moshe
Founder, Teacher, and Coach
Better Life Awareness Center
P.S.
Life is a journey of learning together, learning from each other.
You don’t have to do it alone.
Share your thoughts and questions with me by leaving your comments on this page or by sending me a message via our chat icon or our contact us form.
I love hearing what you think and answering your questions.
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