Chapter 5: Miracles

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind."

1. FORGIVENESS
“Before the glorious radiance of the kingdom, guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will nevermore be what it was."

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love." They reflect a shift in how we think, releasing the power of the mind to the processes of healing and correction.

This healing takes many forms. Sometimes a miracle is a change in material conditions, such as physical healing. At other times, it is a psychological or emotional change. It is a shift not so much in an objective situation—although that often occurs—as it is a shift in how we perceive a situation. What changes, primarily, is how we hold an experience in our minds—how we experience the experience.

The world of the human storyline, of all our concentration on behavior and all the things that occur outside us, is a world of illusion. It's a veil in front of a more real world, a collective dream. A miracle is not a rearrangement of the figures in our dream. A miracle is our awakening from it.

In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We're not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We're looking for a softer orientation to life.

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes. The science of religion is actually the science of consciousness, because ultimately all creation is expressed through the mind. Thus, as A Course in Miracles says, our greatest tool for changing the world is our capacity to 'change our mind about the world.'

Because thought is the creative level of things, changing our minds is the ultimate personal empowerment. Although it is a human decision to choose love instead of fear, the radical shift that this produces in every dimension of our lives is a gift from God. Miracles are an 'intercession on behalf of our holiness,' from a thought system beyond our own. In the presence of love, the laws that govern the normal state of affairs are transcended. Thought that is no longer limited, brings experience that is no longer limited.