Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love · Practice and Test

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The true miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that proceeds from love is a miracle.

Beginning of the Miracle 3 · UCDM

Perhaps you believed that being a student of A Course in Miracles was a matter of reviewing lessons, controlling your thinking, and praying enough so that, in the end, some miracle would occur. But the days go by (the crises, the anger, the emptiness) and peace does not end up penetrating deeply. You still feel anxiety when you are judged, you drown in self-criticism, you get tired of fighting with your mind.

What if I told you that the peace you seek begins just when you honestly acknowledge that you can't manufacture miracles? That the miracle does not depend on your size, or your effort, or even your faith. Which is something else. Something much simpler and – paradoxically – unattainable as long as you continue to identify with that voice in your head that analyzes everything looking for results.

We know: it's hard to let go of the idea that the miracle is something you have to bring about. But that is just what Principle 3 proposes. The real miracle begins when you finally stop fighting and make room for who you are: love, silence, space, willingness to allow. Are you going to dare to step down from the pedestal of the ego even if it's just for today?

An absolute U-turn: what is the miracle really?

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The true miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that proceeds from love is a miracle."

Thus opens the third principle of miracles according to A Course in Miracles. And from the first line, he breaks your schemes.

Nothing to do with extraordinary events, magical healings or divine favors granted at will. The miracle, says the Course, is not the form it takes. It is their source: Love. That Love that, seen in the trap of the ego, does not dwell in what you decide or control with your mind, but in what you open yourself to when you choose not to listen to the voice of separation.

• Stop here: when was the last time you noticed something like a sigh of deep relief internally—a given forgiveness, a spontaneous compassion—and knew, even if you didn't know how, that it was something bigger than you?

That's a miracle. It's that simple. An internal movement where judgment, fear and obsession with form give way for an instant, and only Love remains. Not manufactured, but allowed. Because, the miracle necessarily comes from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, who represent in your mind the possibility of choosing love over any other alternative.

The miracle is the healed perception. It is not you "doing something", it is you leaving room for the correction of the old error of separation to be carried out through you. It is you, ceasing to live as an ego, to live as a channel of love.

Miracles: when you stop making an effort

There is something that frees you deeply when you admit – even if it hurts – that you cannot work miracles from your own effort or from your mental formulas. The third of the principles calls them "expressions of love," not "accomplishments of the mind." That is the key. In practice this means:

• Don't put pressure on yourself to achieve something extraordinary.
  When you give in to the temptation to impress God (or yourself) with spectacular acts of "kindness so that the miracle happens to me," you fall into the trap of the ego.
• Recognize that love is the cause, not the result.
  Any attempt to force, calculate, or manipulate the miracle is fear disguised as spirituality.
• Begin to notice every time you choose forgiveness, the gentle look at your own or others' mistakes, the gesture of unity.
  That, although miniscule, is the miracle. Because your mind shifted, even if only a millimeter, from separation to unity.

The miracle is no feat. It happens only when you stop hindering it. It happens when you have, as the Course teaches, a "small dose of goodwill": that crack through which the light of love enters and reinterprets the meaning of what you once judged or feared.

Lies that sound like truths... Until you see them face to face

Why is it so difficult to let go of the fight and let the miracle go through you? Because the ego – that old acquaintance – has spent a lifetime selling you stories that sound plausible. Here are the most common ones. Review each one and ask yourself if you haven't held it as if it were the most absolute truth.

1. The miracle is a grandiose and mystical act.
   So you don't have to look for it within, or recognize it in your most humble gestures.
2. It depends on my effort, my meditation, or my righteousness.
   This way the ego maintains control and you don't have to rely on anything that escapes it.
3. Form is worth more than content (behaving well, saying the right words, having "spiritual" results).
   So you can continue judging, comparing yourself, feeling superior or inferior.
4. There are things and people more deserving of a miracle than others.
   Thus you perpetuate separation, the ego system, hierarchy, and the fear of the real miracle.

Drop them one by one. Not because you are naïve, or naïve, or like to suffer. But because you can no longer bear that weight. The miracle equalizes you, equalizes all scenarios, and dissolves the illusion that love can be expressed more in Sandra than in Juan, or in meditation than in the supermarket.

What would a true mind think?

Can you imagine who you would be if, at every step of the day, you practiced choosing to listen to the Holy Spirit or Jesus instead of the ego? Small, everyday things. It is not a matter of waiting to have a mystical vision; It would be enough to silence hatred, even for a moment, and ask:

• What purpose do I want this thing that is happening to me to serve?
• Am I contributing to judgment and separation, or open to love sprouting here?
• Can I surrender to humility and say, "I don't know anything, I just want peace. Do you, Spirit, what I do not know how to do"?

Do it. It doesn't matter if you don't come up with nice words. The intention matters—rest, allow, stop fighting to be right, to punish, to control.

You will begin to notice, if you repeat the exercise honestly, something profoundly revolutionary: peace comes when you least expect it, and from where you least expect it.

How do you experience this when you come down to earth?

The theory is all well and good, but what happens when life hits hard and the mind jumps like a spring to judgment, fear, defense? Try putting these small practices into practice. They won't change your world all at once, but they open up the inner space where miracle can happen.

• You face controversies, authoritarianism, injustices:
  Pause and ask yourself:
  "Which side do I want to be on: the ego that separates or the Love that unites? Am I seeking to overcome or heal?"
• You recognize an uncomfortable emotion (shame, hatred, anxiety):
  Don't reject it, or disguise it. Say it silently:
  "Here is also the miracle if I let him in. It is not I who heals, it is Love who heals me through my honesty."
• You take a step back before answering:
  Think:
  "Let my next word not be a repetition of the ego. May it serve to bring us closer, and not to drive away."
  And if you can't, shut up. Sometimes, the miracle is to stop talking and let someone else breathe.

If you almost never get it, that's okay either. "A small dose of goodwill," remember. If you only ask to understand, the miracle sneaks in there.

The miracle is noticeable inside, not outside

Those who have truly touched the experience of the miracle know that they do not need external witnesses. There are internal evidences—subtle symptoms—that are the best sign that you are letting go of judgment and allowing the miracle:

• You begin to feel peace even without understanding why.
• Judgment tastes bitter to you. You realize it and you don't justify it so much anymore.
• Your automatic reaction to conflict begins to be to stop, breathe, listen.
• You don't need situations to be resolved "well" to feel the relief of having let go of control.
• You find yourself discovering that you can love those you previously thought impossible (sometimes, yourself).

In other words, you notice that the miracle has happened not when the form changes, but when the purpose is transformed and you recognize yourself, if only for seconds, as you are: loved, loved, innocent.

The usual obstacles and the crack through which Love enters

Perhaps you get tired of seeing the old resistances return: the condemnation of the other, the "justified" rage, that slowness of the mind that never seems to learn. Sometimes it burns to desperately want to live the miracle and feel that everything remains the same.

It is ok. The ego always sets traps:

• Wanting to control the process ("I'm doing it right, why isn't it happening?")
  Every time your mind wants to force, remember: the miracle is not made by you. Stop demanding and trust in the timing of Love.
• Judging yourself for not forgiving fast enough
  Allow yourself not to understand, allow the "I can't" to be just a place to go through, not an identity.
• Getting frustrated because you don't see immediate results
  The miracle is commonly invisible. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes you never see it. But it is happening every time you choose Love, even if you don't feel it.

Who could judge the speed of the miracle more than the ego? Hand it in. And return every day to the only thing that the spirit asks of you: a crack of goodwill. The rest is done by Love.

Spiritual awakening: it's much simpler, much more difficult

As you train yourself in this third principle, something profound begins to change. Not uniformly or definitively, but irreversibly in the background. You discover that your function is minimal and, at the same time, it is everything: to be a channel, to let it pass. Not because you are self-righteous, self-righteous, but because you can no longer bear to live outside of Love.

• You remember Love as your natural state.
  A Love without spectacle or fireworks, embedded in minimal gestures.
• You learn confident humility.
  You no longer preach, you live. You teach by your silent example, by ceasing to defend the old perception.
• You extend (unintentionally) what you are:
  Without realizing it, others calm down next to you, the atmosphere changes, the truth seems less distant.
• You prepare for the "holy instant":
  That fleeting moment in which the miracle corrects the madness and leaves you, even for a few seconds, in total peace.

The miracle is not yours: it is your surrender to Something much more real

You don't need blind faith or special strength. Just honesty: enough to admit what you've tried to manufacture on your own, on your own, and that never worked. Enough to leave a margin of doubt to the possibility that the miracle does not depend on you, but on Love that, even when you do not believe in it, is still waiting to be let pass.

The next time life gets uphill for you, remember the open secret that the Course whispers to you: it is not you who performs the miracle. It's you who stop getting in the way.

One day you will see that peace does not come because you have sweated an internal battle, but because, almost without realizing it, you will have stopped identifying with guilt and will have put yourself again, available, in the hands of Love.

If this message has stirred you even a little, if you feel the temptation to let go, even if only for moments, the illusion of effort and control... Then the miracle is already happening.

Pass it on: The next step is yours (and it's the miracle itself)

You can stay here, going over this text, intellectualizing the teaching, repeating mantras. Or, if you want, you can dare to go out there and practice the unspeakable: stop wanting to be right, stop wanting to be clear, impose your judgment in any circumstance.

Be that as it may, do it from the heart. Make it small, vulnerable, honest. Only in this way does the miracle make its way, only in this way does it become your experience.

The miracle is not an achievement. It is what remains when you surrender, when you allow Love to speak, feel, think, live through you.

Let it go. Don't delay any longer. Remember that the next beginning awaits you, and that every time you open up, even for a second, the whole universe breathes with you.

See you there, where the miracle is no longer a concept... but the air you breathe.

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