Miracle Principles 18-22: Summary of a Class Presentation

We had a lively class yesterday, continuing our tour throughout the miracle principles as originally dictated.

We learned that a miracle is the most profound service you can render another person, because it comes out of a recognition of that person’s inestimable value. That recognition is what makes for the love that the miracle express. (FIP principle 18)

Recognizing your brother’s inestimable value will cause you to simultaneously recognize your own. However, if you devalue him instead, if you see his worth as a subtraction from the infinite, you will make the same subtraction from the infinite in how you see your own worth.

We learned that giving miracles is the key to members of the Sonship being able to cooperate with each other, which in turn is the key to them joining together to produce something constructive. This is why miracles are a “corporate necessity.” (FIP principle 19)

We learned that miracles stand directly on the line of eternity, rather than above it on the arch of time. As a result, miracles express eternity’s laws, not those of time. When you do a miracle, then, you are funneling into this world a force that does not obey the laws of this world. (FIP principle 19, last part)

We learned that when you do a miracle, you reawaken in the receiver her awareness that her identity does not lie in her body and its misdeeds, but in her changeless spirit. This is what enables the miracle to heal her. (FIP principle 20)

And we learned that a miracle is the natural result of your acceptance of God’s forgiveness. This fills you with light, and then the light in you naturally wants to extend God’s forgiveness to others. It can’t help doing that, because it “cannot tolerate” the darkness out in the world. It has to shine it away. It has to let others know that they are forgiven by God. (FIP principle 21)

They, however, may fear the miracle and try to hide their darkness from its light, not realizing that darkness cannot hide from the light. When they fully realize this, they can move beyond it to realizing that there’s nothing they want to hide, which will allow them to stop hiding themselves and enter into communion. (FIP principle 22)

We also saw that Helen had trouble taking these principles down. With three of them, Jesus had to revisit the principle repeatedly, so that the final form of it was quite different than what she had originally taken down.

We also saw an instructive and ultimately touching exchange between Helen and Jesus. It began with Jesus giving her a miracle principle almost in koan form, her complaining that it required her to go into a “mental coma to get it,” Jesus saying that she had been doing that all along, which is why he gave her the principle in a form that required her to pay attention. He then moved into complimenting her on a miracle she had done, and she then broke down and told him she loved him.

Finally, the miracle she did was helping Chip, a friend of Bill’s, get over his uncharitable perceptions of Wally, another friend of Bill’s who Helen really despised. Jesus therefore complimented her on her “very creditable integrity.” This shows just how down-to-earth miracles are.

This is great material and I’d like to keep discussing it if any of you have any thoughts. So if you do, please chime in.

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