The Fifty Miracle Principles: The Foundation that Jesus Laid for His Course

You pick up this strange book called A Course in Miracles. How, you wonder, can a book teach you to perform miracles? Then you open the cover and find, to your relief, that the very first section contains fifty miracle principles. Surely these principles will clarify something about the miracles this book is going to teach you. These principles are obviously meant to lay a foundation that will set you up for whatever this “course” is.

But as you dive into reading the principles, you discover that they are frustratingly cryptic. Each one whizzes by without elaboration, to be followed by the next puzzling principle and the next. You thus reach the end of this section slightly disoriented and with little or no clarity about what these miracles are. Thus, you resign yourself to hoping that perhaps other, more experienced students can clue you in.

This is the situation that most of us have been in. We sense the fifty miracle principles are important, even foundational, but we end up distancing ourselves from the section. It just seems too impenetrable. And in this vacuum, we have relied on what everyone around us has said, that miracles are “shifts in perception.”

As many of us now know, however, the situation was different in the original dictation that Helen Schucman received. The miracle principles were not all squeezed into one 1300-word section. They were scattered over approximately 20,000 words of teaching. This extra material contained both elaborations on the principles and real-life examples of the principles. Thus, in their original context, they were the very foundation they were meant to be.

We need this foundation. It’s as if the author, at the beginning of his course, grabbed us by the shoulders and pointed us in the right direction. “There,” he said. “That’s where you’re heading.” In the absence of this clear direction, we have been wandering all over the place.

Recently, I did a study of the miracle principles as they appear in the Completed and Annotated Edition, which presents them within as much of their original context as possible. What did I find? I found that forty-eight of the fifty principles came together on a single clear idea: that miracles are “expressions of love,” a term Jesus used seven times to describe miracles. They, in other words, are interpersonal acts of love. The idea that they are about an internal shift in perception is present but in only two of the principles (37 and 50). And even there, the concept is slightly different from the usual idea. Rather than miracles being shifts in perception, they are internal catalysts from Jesus that bring about shifts in perceptions.

In honor of the foundational importance of the fifty miracle principles, I have tried to clarify and summarize all of them here. I first rewrote each principle in such a way as to, as best I could, make clear its real intent based on its original context. (Note that if I include a quote from the principle itself, I don’t provide a reference—since it is obvious where it’s from—but if I quote from outside of the principle, I do give the reference.)

Then I arranged the principles into fifteen categories and wrote a summary of each category. This means that the principles are presented not according to their numerical order, but according to which category they fit best in. I then introduced the entire collection with an overall definition of the miracle based on all the categories. Please note that this is a definition of the central meaning of miracles as “expressions of love.” If you want a definition of the more familiar kind of miracle, you can flip to the end and see my summary under “the internal miracle.”

The miracle principles I’ve summarized here are from the Complete and Annotated Edition. They differ slightly from the fifty principles in the Foundation for Inner Peace Edition. They also differ slightly from the forty-three principles in the Urtext and the fifty-three principles in the “Original Edition” published by the Course in Miracles Society. In selecting which statements to regard as miracle principles, we followed the convention one can see on Helen’s notebook pages, in which a miracle principle was a statement directly about miracles that was the beginning of a paragraph, usually with a blank line preceding it. Using this method, we arrived at an even fifty principles.

As you read the summaries that follow, I ask you to open your mind to the idea that the content expressed here (allowing for any shortcomings in my interpretation) is something like the foundation that Jesus was trying to give his students with his miracle principles. These principles were his attempt to explain his curious title—A Course in Miracles—and to properly set students up for the course that would follow. They were his attempt to say, “Here, this is what I am going to teach you.”

At the end, I encourage you to ask yourself the following question: “How does this affect my perception of A Course in Miracles?”

Overall definition

Miracles are expressions of love—one person expressing love to another. To give miracles, then, you must have love in you. You must have a perception of those on the receiving end as having inestimable worth and as being your equal. Your miracle honors the holiness and perfection that God created in them. This will heal them, restoring their sense of wholeness and even healing their body. Furthermore, you, as the giver, will gain in love and strength. Your miracles will heal individuals in distant places, allow groups you are part of to smoothly cooperate, and ultimately bring closer the day when everyone will reunite in Heaven. You should devote every day to giving miracles, for that is what time is for.

Miracles as expressions of love and forgiveness

Miracles are “expressions of love,” in which one person communicates love to another. It is the love and forgiveness within the miracle that is the real healing agent. This love and forgiveness, once accepted into yourself, naturally wants to extend outward and shine away the darkness in others.

3. Miracles are “expressions of love”—one person expressing love to another. “The real miracle is the love that inspires them.” This means that all expressions of love—even everyday ones—are miracles.

22. When you accept God’s forgiveness into yourself, its light in you looks out and cannot tolerate the idea that others remain in an unforgiven state. So the forgiveness in you naturally expresses itself in the form of giving forgiveness to them and thus shining away the darkness in them. Through this, you reaffirm your own initial acceptance of God’s forgiveness.

The inner content vs. the outer form

What matters is not the behavior that expresses the love, or even the spectacular outer result that will sometimes take place. Miracles are not about performing feats of empty magic or dazzling onlookers into suddenly believing. They are about the love that passes from one person to another.

2. The outer expression is ultimately unimportant. It is just the wrapping for the gift. What matters is the love that is being expressed, “and this is far beyond human evaluation” (T-1.3.2:4).

10. A miracle is not about producing a flashy spectacle to make skeptical people suddenly believe. It is really about the love that passes from one believer in the power of God’s love to another believer.

14. Miracles arise from a genuine conviction in the truth of love, which is why they inspire conviction in others. Without that conviction, the miracle worker is essentially performing a feat of magic, not because he really believes in anything; he merely believes in his own magical powers. This is a pointless use of the mind.

A gift from those who are currently more in touch with love

A miracle worker has opened up in himself a deep well of love, the very thing the miracle receiver currently lacks. The miracle is a gift, then, that lets the receiver share in the inner abundance of the giver. This, for example, is precisely what parenting should be. It should be miracle-working.

7. A miracle heals the receiver. It supplies him with the love he lacks, being given by one who is currently more in touch with that love.

40, Parenting should be miracle-working: an endless series of expressions of love. This is how parents can give of their greater abundance and help their child share that abundance. When they do not do that, their child’s perception becomes distorted, and this causes a tear in the fabric of the entire family of God.

Miracles as a natural expression of the love in you

The love that is the truth in you naturally wants to express through you. Your job is to let it do this so habitually and effortlessly that it becomes involuntary. To force the love to flow only to your favorite recipients goes against the very nature of love.

4. Expressing love needs to become an involuntary habit. There is a universal love in you that you must allow to express freely. If you decide where to direct that love, you will naturally funnel it toward your favorite recipients. This so goes against the very nature of love that it “may destroy” your miracle-working talent.

5.“Miracles are natural” because universal love is your nature. Expressing love, therefore, is the most natural thing in this unnatural world. Not doing it means you have lost touch with who you are.

The right-mindedness that leads to miracle giving

You have a right to perform miracles, but first, you must allow your thoughts to be purified. You must accept love from your Creator, so you can give it to others. You must become aware of the Christ within and open the spiritual eye in you, which sees the truth in others and sees that their errors are unreal.

6. You have a right to perform miracles. Everyone does. But first, you need to purify your thoughts, for miracles are the expression of purified thought (otherwise known as love).

11. Prayer is what makes miracles possible. In prayer, you enter into communion with your Creator and receive His love. And this supplies the love that you express through miracles.

38. “The spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles”—the agency that produces them. This is because the content of miracles is true seeing, which is exactly what the spiritual eye does. The spiritual eye is a faculty in you that sees the truth regardless of appearances.

39. The spiritual eye generates miracles because it correctly sees that the error in the receiver is false or unreal. This dispels that error in the same way that light dispels darkness.

45.The miracle is the outer expression of a deeply spiritual inner awareness—an “awareness of Christ and acceptance of His Atonement.” This places us in a state of grace, through which we then become effortlessly gracious so that we welcome in the stranger and consider him to be our dear brother.

The perceptual content of the miracle

At the heart of the miracle is a loving perception of the receiver. This perception overlooks the receiver’s body completely, seeing only his wholeness and his inestimable value, along with your own. It sees the universal mark of God in him, recognizing him as your long-lost brother. This perception is what heals him.

17. When you give a miracle, for a moment, you forget the other person’s body. Your perception shifts away from the body into the realm of the invisible. That is why a miracle heals, because it was the recipient’s identification with the body that made him sick.

18. A miracle “is the maximal service one person can render another.” The inner content of the miracle is your recognition of your neighbor’s inestimable value and your own. A miracle “is thus a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.”

41. At the heart of the miracle is a perception that the receiver bears the universal mark of God and is thus your long-lost brother in the family of God, as is everyone.

42. “The perceptual content” of any miracle you give is a vision of the wholeness of the receiver. The receiver may see himself as deeply lacking inside, but your perception of his inner abundance heals his “faulty perception of lack.”

Honoring the holiness and perfection in the receiver

Because of the loving perception at its heart, the miracle involves a deep honoring of the receiver. It honors the holiness and perfection that God created in him. It thus implicitly praises the Creator of that perfection and, at the same time, releases the receiver from his “nightmares about himself” (T-1.33.2:2).

30. By giving miracles, you are implicitly praising God. You are affirming the divine perfection He created in the miracle receiver. In other words, you are praising the Creator by acclaiming His handiwork.

31. Miracles, even at their most remarkable, “should inspire gratitude, not awe.” The miracle worker is simply honoring the holiness that God placed in the miracle receiver. The receiver should be grateful to him, but God is the One to Whom this gratitude is ultimately due.

33. The miracle receiver has allowed his mind to be possessed by “evil thoughts” (T-1.33.3:3) and, as a result, he is plagued with “nightmares about himself” (T-1.33.2:2). The miracle worker sees past all this to something genuinely lovable in him. The miracle he gives is an act of truly honoring the receiver, and this frees him from his inner demons and restores him to his right mind.

The healing effect on the receiver

Because the miracle worker forgives the receiver, seeing only the spirit in him, it awakens this same awareness in the receiver. It raises him into the sphere of celestial order, in which he is already perfect. There, he comes face to face with his true holiness. He is released “from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack” (T-1.43.1:1). His body is healed. His past is wiped away. And he steps forward into a new future, in which he now becomes a miracle worker himself.

13. A miracle leads to rebirth. It wipes away the past and thus puts the receiver back in touch with his original birth—his creation by God. Being thus reborn, he steps forward into a new future, one that has been released from an endless repetition of the past.

21. A miracle reawakens in the receiver the awareness that his real identity lies in his spirit, not his body. This awareness is what heals him.

26. The miracle receiver has confused the levels. He has taken the reality, identity, and happiness that belong to the spiritual level and assigned those qualities to the physical level. That is why he is sick. By seeing him as spirit, not body, the miracle worker rearranges things in the receiver’s mind, placing “the levels in their true perspective.” And this healing of the receiver’s basic perspective on life heals all forms of sickness in him.

32. The miracle receiver is split off from his own holiness. That holiness wants to be known to him, needs to be known to him, but cannot of itself make that happen. Christ, therefore, must intercede on its behalf. He inspires the miracle worker to give this person a miracle, and this puts the receiver back in touch with his inherent holiness. It thereby raises “him into the sphere of celestial order,” in which he is already perfect.

34. The miracle forgives the receiver, restoring him to the fullness of spirit and filling him with strength. He now feels perfectly protected, for there are no gaps or cracks in his wholeness where threat could enter in. And having been released, he now joins the plan to release all others.

43. Miracles affirm that the receiver’s true condition is a state of Sonship, which implies that he is complete and whole, an indispensable member of the family of God. This affirmation carries so much power that it releases him “from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack.”

Miracles as a power not of this world, which can overturn the laws of this world

Miracles carry the power of love, and love is not of this world. Its power is always maximal. Therefore, it can heal any problem, any sickness, and any misperception with equal ease. It can reverse the taxing laws of this world and thus can heal the sick and even raise the dead. It can heal these things because our thought made them, and our thought can abolish them.

1.“There is no order of difficulty among” miracles, which means that they can heal all problems with equal ease. Why? Because love is the power within miracles, and love is always at full power. Every expression of it is maximal.

12. Miracles are the expression of thought (the thought of love), and thought is so powerful that it makes the physical realm and creates the spiritual realm.

20. Miracles do not rest on the laws of time. They are a case in which the laws of a different order—eternity—come in and overturn the depleting laws of this world.

23. It seems as if “time and tide wait for no man” and that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” (Jesus points out that “tax” also means “strain”). Yet miracles can overturn even the most seemingly immovable conditions in this world because we made those conditions ourselves and can, therefore, abolish them.

49. Since the miracle possesses a power not of this world, it is able to heal misperceptions in the receiver no matter what kind they are or how extreme they are. Miracles are selective, in a sense, in that you are guided to give them to those who will accept and use them. But in regard to the size of the problems they are directed toward, they are completely indiscriminate.

Gain for the giver as well

Do not think that when you give a miracle, you have lost or sacrificed. A miracle defies physical laws in the sense that you, the giver, gain as well. You and the receiver experience a shared recognition of equality and mutual worth. This shortens your journey (along with the receiver’s journey). It brings more love to you. It increases your reservoir of strength. And it allows you to perceive clearly, seeing “the truth as God created it” (T-1.36.2:2).

8. Miracles are an exchange, in the sense that the giver doesn’t just give something away, but receives something in return. This reverses physical laws, for according to them, when you give something away, you have lost it.

9, A miracle reverses the physical order because it is not just the recipient who gains; the giver gains as well. Both of them come away with more love.

16. Miracles supply the lack of strength in the receiver and, at the same time, increase the reserve of strength in the giver. They thus prove “that it is as blessed to give as to receive.” They are powerful devices for teaching this key truth.

36. Given that miracles contain right thinking, they also promote right thinking and clear sight in the giver. Expressing love enables you to accurately see the boundaries between yourself and others and the boundaries in your own mind. And it enables you to see past the boundaries, perceiving “the truth as God created it” (T-1.36.2:2). It puts everything in true perspective for you, showing you that bodies are inconsequential, and that spirit is all that really matters.

47. A miracle “lessens the need for time.” It sparks a moment in which the doer and receiver share in the recognition of their mutual equality, holiness, and worth. It thus “introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been” (T-1.47.2:3).

The larger effects of miracles

Miracles have effects far beyond the immediate interaction of giver and receiver. They make cooperation possible, and with it, collective accomplishment. Each one releases multiple people, establishing “an interlocking chain of forgiveness” (T-1.24.1:1). They heal people at a distance, both when the miracle seemed wasted on the receiver and when the miracle was never expressed in the first place. They collapse time and thus bring closer the day when all minds will unite in Christ, and time will be over.

19. Miracles—expressions of love—are what make real cooperation possible. And cooperation is what, in turn, makes collective accomplishment possible. Miracle-based collaboration will ultimately culminate in the uniting of all minds in Christ.

24. Each miracle releases multiple people, who will, in turn, release yet more. And this release ripples into the past and future as well. In this way, miracles will eventually form “an interlocking chain of forgiveness” that will cover literally everyone. That chain, when fully completed, is the Atonement.

44. “Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind.” This state is so miraculous that it can do miracles on its own, in the absence of any behavioral expression. It can go out to literally anyone, no matter how far away, “even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself.”

46. Do not think that a miracle you do that seems to have no effect is lost. Quite the contrary, “It touches many people you may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed-of changes in forces of which you are not even aware.”

48. “The miracle is the only device which you have at your immediate disposal” for collapsing time. The miracle worker, therefore, uses this device gladly, knowing “that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are one” (T-1.48.4:3).

The miracle worker as a link in a greater plan

Your role may seem ineffectual, and your expressions of love may appear insignificant. But by doing them, you serve the spirit. You become an essential link in a chain whose purpose is the liberation of all God’s creations.

27. The miracle you give ultimately came to you from God through Jesus, on its way to passing through you. You, then, form an essential link in a chain that is ultimately aimed at releasing everyone. Acting as this link is a privilege and also a need, for your soul “cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.”

35. Simply through giving expressions of love, you serve the spirit and unite with Christ for the liberation of all God’s creations.

Making your day about miracle giving

You should devote each day to giving miracles. This is how you can learn the lessons that time was made to help you learn. To do this, though, you need to let Jesus guide you through the minutiae of your day so that you can be there at the moment people need you.

15. Each day should be devoted to giving miracles. The whole reason time was made was so that you could do something truly productive with it. This is how you remember your real creativity, which lies in Heaven. All time is, therefore “lesson time”—it is there so you can learn. It will cease when you no longer require it for learning.

25. It is essential to not waste time by getting through the minutiae of the day in your way. Let Jesus’ guidance speed you through it, so that you are available when he calls on you. “Miracles depend on timing,” because, as we all know, people need you when they need you.

Revelation and miracles

Revelation is the direct experience of God. A miracle is an interpersonal act of love. Right now, the impulses for both—revelation and miracles—try to enter your mind, but become blocked or distorted. Giving miracles heals this condition, allowing your mind to become a harmoniously functioning whole again. Miracles free your mind from fear and thus open you to the state that transcends all fear: revelation.

28. Right now, your mind is a field of conflict. Impulses from the superconscious want to enter the conscious mind and pull you into revelation (experiences of oneness with God), while impulses from the deeper subconscious mind want to enter consciousness and inspire you to give miracles to others. But these impulses typically become blocked as well as distorted. The way to restore psychic unity is to give miracles. They are a way of “organizing different levels of awareness”—a way of forming the different levels into a harmoniously functioning organic whole.

29. Through doing miracles, you earn release from fear, and this prepares your mind to enter into revelation, a state that is utterly free of fear. “Miracles are thus a means, and revelations are an end” (T-1.29.2:2).

The internal miracle

Miracles are not just something you give to others. They are also something that Jesus gives to your own mind. They act as catalysts that break up erroneous perception and heal it. They heal your level-confusion, putting body and spirit into their proper perspective for you. To avail yourself of them, you must be willing to compare your misperceptions to the one reality of perfect love.

37. A miracle is a catalyst that Jesus introduces into the mind to correct “erroneous perception.” It breaks that perception up and then snaps it properly into place. This heals perception and opens up awareness of the divine order.

50. The miracle heals our misperceptions when we are willing to compare them with “the higher level of creation.” For example, if we compare our fear with true creation’s perfect love, we will come to two conclusions: first, that our fear has cast perfect love out of our minds; second, that our fear is unreal, since “Only perfect love really exists” (T-1.50.2:6)
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Spanish translation Los cincuenta principios de los milagros: Los cimientos que Jesús sentó para Su curso
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