The Fifty Miracle Principles
of A Course in Miracles
by Kenneth Wapnick
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.
Very often the Course will say things like, "bearing witness to the truth" or "reflecting truth," and what this is saying, again, is that truth is not present in this world, because there is no world. What we can do in this world is reflect the truth of Heaven. There is a section called "The Reflection of Holiness" (text, p. 270; T-14.IX). We are not holy in this world but in Heaven. Our holiness is as Christ. What we can become in this world is the reflection of His Holiness.
There is another section with a lovely title: "Heralds of Eternity" (text, p. 404; T-20.V). The herald of eternity is the holy relationship. That is a relationship that had been unholy or special, that had been filled with guilt and anger and resentment, and now becomes healed, which means it now reflects the peace of Heaven or of eternity. The holy relationship is the forerunner of eternity. It is not eternity, but in its joining through forgiveness it reflects the oneness of Christ in Heaven. Similarly, healing reflects the perfection of Christ, the truth of who we really are. This miracle principle is saying the same thing, that miracles bear witness to the truth. They are not the truth, but they reflect the truth.
Q: The Course says that in this world of separation there is one appointed to you to be your savior, and that when you are ready to look an the face of Christ you will find that one. Does that mean that it could be anyone? Any kind of a relationship, not necessarily a male-female marriage?
A: A Course in Miracles seems to suggest that there are certain very, very crucial relationships in our lives, and I think that almost always these would be people that we spend a large portion of our time with: parents, children, spouses, very close friends. It could be an intense situation at work but, typically, these relationships would be what the manual says are level three relationships: life-long relationships (manual, p. 7; M-3.6:1). They do not always have to be, but that is usually the case, and that is what the Course really is implying.
Returning to Principle 14, the miracles are convincing of this truth because they arise from the conviction that comes from within us, which really is "faith." It is the faith and the trust that by choosing the Holy Spirit's way we will be better off, which is easier said than done because we are all convinced that we know best -- that anger works, separate interests work, and that our ways of solving problems are the better ones. What makes miracles the convincing witnesses of the truth that they can become for us is to believe in them. This means to believe in the principle that by turning the problem over to the Holy Spirit, the situation will work out better.
"Without conviction, they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind." This means that when we do not rely on the Holy Spirit, then we rely on the ego to solve the problems, and that is magic. We can define magic as anything that we do to solve a problem that is not there, which means anything we do to solve a problem on the physical level. This is how the ego would always have us solve a problem. That is magic, which may work on the level on which it occurs. If you have a splitting headache and you take an aspirin, that could take away the pain of the headache, but it will not take away the pain of the guilt that led to the headache. That is why the Course says that you should use magic if you believe in it, but do not believe that it takes care of your problems.
The miracle will show you where the problem really is, Later on, the text says that the miracle restores to cause the function of causation (text, p. 562; T-28.II.9:3), which means that miracles teach us that the cause of all our problems is in our mind. The world teaches us that the cause of all our problems is in our body, or someone else's body. For example, the reason I am not happy is that there is something wrong with me, or there is something wrong with how you treated me, or with the way the government treats me, or with the way the weather treats me, or God treats me, or the stock market treats me, or whatever else the ego makes the cause. The ego cancels out the cause in our mind, and it makes the world into the cause.
The miracle restores to cause, which is the mind, the function of causation. Basically, all the miracle does is say the problem is not in someone else; it is in me. What magic says is that the problem is in the world or the body, and so that is where you have to solve the problem. We are all very ingenious at solving the world's problems, and medicine is getting better and better at solving the body's problems. But it does not truly solve any problem, because all the ego does is make up another one. In this generation, cancer is the thing. It used to be polio, I remember. And then, for the next generation it will be something else. We just keep changing the forms and never get to the real cause of the problem, which is our belief in separation.
When we use magic as a way to solve problems in the world, it can be "destructive." (By the way, the use of this word is another example of what frequently happened in the early weeks of the dictation of the Course, an example of its conversational nature. Helen's hearing of the word "destructive" was immediately corrected to "uncreative use of mind.") That is because the world's way of solving problems is through attack. Sometimes the attack is very subtle; other times it obviously is not subtle. But magic is never loving because it is always an attempt to solve a problem through being unloving, which excludes the Source of love in our mind.