Section V. The Function of the Miracle Worker 11-18
A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers
11. (1) The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns. Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.
12. (2) A clear distinction between what is created and what is made is essential. All forms of healing rest on this fundamental correction in level perception.
13. (3) Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion.
14. (4) The miracle is always a denial of error and an affirmation of the truth. Only right-mindedness can correct in a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what has no real effect has no real existence. In effect, then, it is emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to projection.
15. (5) The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the right perception for healing. Until this has occurred healing cannot be understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails correction. Without this it is essentially judgmental, rather than healing.
16. (6) Miracle-minded forgiveness is only correction. It has no element of judgment at all. The statement “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” in no way evaluates what they do. It is an appeal to God to heal their minds. There is no reference to the outcome of the error. That does not matter.
17. (7) The injunction “Be of one mind” is the statement for revelation-readiness. My request “Do this in remembrance of me” is the appeal for cooperation from miracle workers. The two statements are not in the same order of reality. Only the latter involves an awareness of time, since to remember is to recall the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but timelessness belongs to God. In time we exist for and with each other. In timelessness we coexist with God.
18. (8) You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of others if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:
I am here only to be truly helpful. I am here to represent Him Who sent me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me. I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me. I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.[1]
Dear Heavenly Father: As we come to our devotional practice this morning, with humble and willing hearts that seek to respond in good faith to the call within, teach us how to bless instead of curse, how to heal instead of sicken, how to stand with Christ instead of anti-Christ. Your blessed Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Each day we bring our humanity to You and accept our divinity in Christ. Each day we draw closer to our goal. We pray for truth, for guidance, for our daily needs as we return our hearts and minds to You. In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one. Amen.
In principle one, Jesus tells us that we have no concern for lower-order needs when we perform miracles. We are not in charge of the time and space required for the miracle to occur; we are only in charge of offering Atonement. We do not have to concern ourselves at all with the unhealthy habits and mistaken lifestyles that may have played a part in leading to the need for a miracle. We have no concern in our function as miracle-workers to instruct the receiver how to “keep” their miracle. When Jesus says, “the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply,” it simply means that He will take care of it from there. We are not to worry and fret about if the receiver is deserving or worthy, why we are called to give a miracle to one and perhaps not another, to collect facts and gather information to prove that a miracle happened, or to take any credit for it. While in ordinary considerations of time and space, we are compelled to be recompensed for our time and trouble in service to others, when we perform miracles, Jesus provides all we need for we receive to give and give to receive. The time, money, and effort we spend doing God’s work, will not take time, money, and effort away from us, but give us more of each attribute in which to continue doing His work. We will learn through experiencing this beautiful flow to trust Him in this regard for all of our lower-order needs. In other words, when Holy Spirit calls us to go to a particular person or host a particular event, He will provide all the temporal needs required to accomplish it – He only asks for our willingness and cooperation.
Principle two declares that we must know the difference between the spirit which is created and the physical which is an illusion. All the prayers in the world cannot change reality for reality is established as truth and cannot be moved or manipulated. The miracle rests upon reestablishing truth in our minds and hearts by offering and accepting Atonement first for ourselves and then for others. Atonement is the principle of love which forgives and corrects all lies, illusions, and misperceptions. When our minds are right, we are healed and are ready to offer healing to others. It makes all the difference when you see me from the spirit rather than the flesh. No matter what disease may be chewing up my flesh and causing me undue pain and discomfort, unless you see me as not my flesh, but as Spirit, you will be tempted to be afraid. You will offer me pity rather than the miracle. You will demand that I have pain-killers and other unnecessary and therefore unhelpful measures because I am only a body to you, and not an everlasting Spirit who needs to be reminded of my true identity in God. As nice as it is for me to have someone holding my hand and wiping my brow and standing up to the medical profession for my physical comforts, you will not be offering me a miracle, you will be offering me a very weak form of charity that does not enlighten me and set me free from the hold of the illusion. You will be very tempted to make sure other people know how good you are to me, how many hours you spend at my bedside, how you really told off the doctor and demanded that I have morphine or other pain-killers, you will give daily, perhaps even hourly reports to all the people who want to know about my suffering and collect those facts, not to heal me but as simply grist for the gossip mill. Oh did you hear about poor Eckie. There she is suffering away, just wasting away to about nothing. And that dear friend of hers, sitting by her bedside, blah blah blah blah blah.
When we begin to see how terribly useless this kind of behavior is, how it poses as one thing but is actually something else altogether, we grow very discontent with it. We reach past the weaker forms of charity, which posed in place of the true principle of Love. When the pain and suffering of others no longer holds any interest to us except as an incentive to heal and bring Atonement, we will have arrived at the place where we are miracle ready. And here is the beauty of miracles and miracle working. We do not have to be physically present. We do not have to share the same time zone or live in the same country. Being Spirit we can be anywhere and anytime, Jesus says. We can bring healing and correction and let all the glory go to God and not collect it for ourselves, which would easily lead to egoism and defeat, for at least the time-being, the purpose of God’s call, thus prolonging time instead of shortening it!
The world offers a very weak form of forgiveness, which is not real forgiveness at all. The ego’s form of forgiveness is to say, You are a bad girl, but since I am good I will forgive you. You better not do that again or I will take my forgiveness away from you and you will have to earn it back again. The ego’s form of forgiveness demands apologies, restoration, and punishment. It is an empty vessel, the forgiveness of the ego, and offers no real correction or healing.
Atonement recognizes that all physical forms are empty vessels, filled with nothingness. They therefore do not matter in the spiritual world of reality and everlasting life. Correction only comes from the Spirit and healing comes only after correction. The Atonement I offer you for hiding your unholiness behind stories you made up about me, does not conceal the damage wrought by your lies and ill will, but does deny the power of what you have done to truly hurt me on the level of Spirit, which is our only reality. In the flesh we are one thing; in the spirit we are perfect. Level adjustment heals because we understand that untruth has no power to hurt either one of us. We let it go because it is empty, meaningless, and we forgive each other for ever thinking otherwise.
We do not dwell on “what they do.” We dwell instead in a state of Atonement, we forgive everything. We do not have gab sessions about each case and disrespectfully discuss the particulars, digging up stuff that wastes time and has no other purpose than to titillate our egos and its thirst to collect unwarranted facts about others. Jesus stresses that it is particularly important for miracle workers to understand that in time we exist for and with each other. Here we practice charity, we practice Golden Rule behavior, we reach for Atonement and for healing. When we do this, we do not talk about others in ways that we ourselves do not wish to be discussed! We do not brag about our acts of charity or the miracles we have been called to do. We get beyond our egos which are always seeking self-glory and become more other oriented, not to gratify their egos with flattery and fatuousness, but to awaken and heal and share holy friendships devoted to God.
Miracle workers called of Christ to become one with His purpose – Let the last paragraph of our text today be our prayer, our devotion, our guide as we live for and with each other in the world of time and space.
Remind us dear Father that as our holy brother, Jesus, we are here only to be truly helpful. We are not here to in any way promote our selves, bur rather to represent Christ Who sent us. We do not have to waste our minds in vanity preparing what to say or what to do, because He Who sent us, will direct us. We are content to be wherever He wishes because we know that He goes with us. We will be healed as we let Him teach us how to heal. Your Will be done, Father, on earth as it is in Heaven. In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one. Amen.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 2: V. 11-18. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). pp. 27-28.
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