A Course in Miracles: 53 Miracle Principles - Reorganized Structure
This reorganization maintains the integrity of each principle while making the overall teaching more accessible and comprehensible. The structure helps readers understand both the individual concepts and how they interconnect within the larger framework of miracle-mindedness.
Thomas Fox, J.D.
Lake Cumberland, Kentucky
https://miraclescourse.blogspot.com/
A Course in Miracles: 53 Miracle Principles - Reorganized Structure
I. FOUNDATIONAL NATURE OF MIRACLES (Principles 1-7)
II. MIRACLES AS EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE AND HEALING (Principles 8-11, 16, 18, 21)
III. MIRACLES AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Principles 12-15, 28-29)
IV. TRANSCENDENCE AND SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION (Principles 17, 20, 22-23, 39-40)
V. UNITY AND RELATIONSHIPS (Principles 19, 41-45)
VI. CHRIST AND ATONEMENT (Principles 25-27, 32-38)
VII. PRACTICAL APPLICATION AND READINESS (Principles 10, 46-53)
B. Readiness and Effectiveness
I. FOUNDATIONAL NATURE OF MIRACLES (Principles 1-7)
A. Essential Characteristics
Principle 1: There is no order of difficulty among miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.
Principle 3: Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.
Principle 6: Miracles are natural. When they do NOT occur something has gone wrong.
Principle 7: Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.
B. Source and Control
Principle 2: Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, Which is far beyond human evaluation.
Principle 4: All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.
Principle 5: Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.
II. MIRACLES AS EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE AND HEALING (Principles 8-11, 16, 18, 21)
A. Healing and Service
Principle 8: Miracles are healing because they supply a lack in that they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.
Principle 16: Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.
Principle 18: A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service one individual can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable worth simultaneously.
B. Love and Exchange
Principle 9: Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring MORE love both to the giver AND the receiver.
Principle 21: Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others.
C. Communication and Prayer
Principle 11: Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
III. MIRACLES AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Principles 12-15, 28-29)
A. Thought and Reality
Principle 12: 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.
Principle 14: Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless, and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.
B. Time and Learning
Principle 13: Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back, but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.
Principle 15: Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable man to learn to use it constructively. Time is thus a teaching device, and a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.
C. Levels of Consciousness
Principle 28: Miracles are a means of organizing different levels of consciousness. [Extended explanation about subconscious, conscious, and superconscious levels]
Principle 29: Miracles are a way of EARNING release from fear. [Distinction between miracles and revelation]
IV. TRANSCENDENCE AND SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION (Principles 17, 20, 22-23, 39-40)
A. Beyond the Physical
Principle 17: Miracles are the transcendence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from a sense of lower-order reality. That is why they heal.
Principle 20: Miracles reawaken 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.
B. Perception and Fear
Principle 22: Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacious belief that darkness can HIDE. [Extended explanation about overcoming fear and darkness]
Principle 23: Miracles rearrange perception, and place the levels of perception in true perspective. This heals at ALL levels, because sickness comes from confusing the levels.
C. Spiritual Vision
Principle 39: The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles because what It perceives IS true. It perceives both the Creations of God and the creations of man.
Principle 40: The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false, or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.
V. UNITY AND RELATIONSHIPS (Principles 19, 41-45)
A. Universal Brotherhood
Principle 19: Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation, because the Sonship is the sum of all the Souls God created. Miracles therefore rest on the laws of eternity, not of time.
Principle 41: The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God in them.
Principle 44: Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being one, this state of mind goes out to ANYONE, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself.
B. Grace and Acceptance
Principle 42: Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It thus corrects, or atones for, the faulty perception of lack anywhere. [Extended explanation about Golden Rule behavior]
Principle 43: A MAJOR contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing man from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.
Principle 45: The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ, and the acceptance of His Atonement. The mind is then in a state of grace, and naturally becomes gracious.
VI. CHRIST AND ATONEMENT (Principles 25-27, 32-38)
A. The Atonement Process
Principle 25: Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. This process works all the time, and in all the dimensions of time.
Principle 26: Miracles represent FREEDOM from fear. "Atoning" really means "undoing." The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.
Principle 27: A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to ALL my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.
B. Christ's Role
Principle 32: Christ inspires all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for man's holiness, and make his perceptions holy.
Principle 35: Miracles are expressions of love, but it does NOT follow that they will always have observable effects. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I AM the Atonement.
Principle 36: Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christ-guidance is personal. [Extended explanation about guidance vs. control]
C. Correction and Truth
Principle 33: Miracles honor man BECAUSE he is lovable. They dispel illusions about him, and perceive the Light in him.
Principle 34: Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack, they establish perfect protection.
Principle 37: Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate.
Principle 38: A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception, and reorganizing it properly.
VII. PRACTICAL APPLICATION AND READINESS (Principles 10, 46-53)
A. Proper Use and Attitude
Principle 10: The use of miracles as spectacles to INDUCE belief is wrong; or, better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used FOR and BY believers.
Principle 31: Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is.
Principle 48: Awe is an inappropriate response to miracles. [Extended explanation about proper relationship with miracles]
B. Readiness and Effectiveness
Principle 46: A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you do not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware.
Principle 47: Miracle-mindedness means miracle-readiness. Readiness means that you should always keep your perceptions straight, so that you will ALWAYS be ready, willing and able.
C. Time and Learning Devices
Principle 24: Miracles enable man to heal the sick and raise the dead because he made sickness and death himself, and can abolish both.
Principle 30: Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring His Creations, affirming their perfection.
Principle 49: The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication because they are TEMPORARY communication devices.
Principle 50: The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. [Extended explanation about time compression]
Principle 51: The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation TRANSCENDS time.
D. Perception Correction
Principle 52: The miracle makes NO distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception-correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error.
Principle 53: The miracle compares what man has made with the higher level creation, accepting what is IN ACCORD as true and rejecting the DISCORD as false.
ORGANIZATIONAL RATIONALE
This restructuring organizes the 53 principles into seven main categories that follow a logical progression:
Foundational Nature - Establishes what miracles are fundamentally
Love and Healing - Shows miracles as expressions of divine love in action
Consciousness - Explores how miracles work through different levels of mind
Transcendence - Reveals miracles as means of spiritual perception beyond physical reality
Unity - Demonstrates miracles as bridges to universal connection
Christ and Atonement - Places miracles within the larger framework of spiritual redemption
Practical Application - Provides guidance for implementing miracle-mindedness
Each section builds upon the previous ones, moving from abstract principles to practical application, while maintaining the course's emphasis on the fundamental unity underlying all miraculous expression.
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