Miracle Minded: Where are the miracles of Jesus?

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We will be supporting the union of mind and heart into wholeheartedness, and the union that we need to have with our deepest Self, the inner Christ spirit. Extreme measures are needed to jolt us out of the ego-mind. And Jesus provides what is needed. I would feel energetic today to do Your bidding in a miracle-minded way.

I would cast aside my fears about doing miracles by listening to Jesus and following in his way. I want to turn aside from the ego-mind with a final decision to perform whatever miracles are asked, miracles that become a way of life. Help me to do this. Be with me today as I seek to keep a clear-eyed view of this world.

May I find a new way of living by turning to the miraculous in everyday life. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Print Email Facebook Twitter. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email required Address never made public.

Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. This site uses cookies. She can recognize his "inestimable value" and then love him as herself. On the other hand, if she can't let "that thing" go, she will neither love him nor herself. After the initial guidance above, Jesus clarified that Wally might not be ready for this miracle.

Helen asks about Wally's chalice, saying "Does this mean he is on my list? She is a child you hurt. This is not as concrete as other examples we'll see. All we know is that Helen is supposed to get over her intense negativity toward Wally and then, if he is ready, hand him back his "chalice. Thus, she needs to recognize his innocence and holiness, and then hand that recognition back to him. We don't know the form that this handing back would take.

But we do know that it would have a powerful enough impact on Wally that she might need to refrain from doing it, as he might still be too afraid of his chalice. We also know that Wally is not the only one, that Helen has an actual "list" of people whose chalices she is supposed to return. Being on the list seems to be a matter of readiness to accept one's chalice back, given that Wally's lack of readiness is precisely why he is "not necessarily" on the list.

I find all of this so suggestive. Do I have a list of people whose chalices I am supposed to hand back to them, by giving them a miracle? Is this act of giving them back their chalice so potent that some may not be ready for it, making them only potentially on my list? And is this miracle I give also a way to undo my own past hurtfulness toward these people? I also find the image itself a very potent one. Think of someone in your life, perhaps someone you have hurt, and silently say, " I hand you back your chalice.

You might even ask if this person is on your list, so that you'll know if a more overt gift of the chalice is appropriate. Remember that there is no order in miracles because they are always maximal expressions of love. You did make a maximal effort for Chip, and the only reason you did it was because you loved Bill. You might tell him to think about that sometimes, because he does need signs of love. But he does not always recognize them because he does not have enough confidence. Jesus opens by referencing the first principle of miracles, saying "they are always maximal expressions of love.

She made a maximal effort for Chip as an expression of love for Bill. In other words, she did a miracle. Jesus then says that this can benefit Bill, "because he does need signs of love. Therefore, Helen is supposed to suggest to him that he think sometimes about what she did for his friend as a sign of love for him. This may sound like her tooting her own horn, but it's clearly for Bill's sake. Without her reminder, he may not recognize a sign of love that he really needs and has in fact received.

Again, we don't have a report of the actual miracle—we don't know what she did for Chip. But we know enough to recognize this as a familiar scenario: We may not see this every day, but it is certainly a recognizable situation. The next example is also about Chip. Actually, it may be the same example, but since we don't know that, I'll treat them as separate. Jesus had recently dictated a new miracle principle: Industry depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on miracles.

By the way, you are an example of the point on cooperation. And don't underestimate your cooperation either. You don't listen [to Jesus], and you would save yourself a lot of pain if you did. But you did get Chip over his misperceptions of Wally with very creditable integrity. Here Jesus is again saying that something Helen did was an example of a miracle principle, which implies, of course, that what she did was a miracle.

What did she do? She got "Chip over his misperceptions of Wally. A friend of yours is caught up in negative perceptions of another person, whom both of you know, and you help that friend get over those negative perceptions. In Helen's case, this act was more impressive than usual, since she had negative perceptions of that same person.

This is clearly why Jesus said she displayed "very creditable integrity. This miracle becomes even more interesting when we note that Chip seems to have been on Helen's chalice list. If you remember, Wally's readiness to get his chalice back was the determiner of whether he was actually on Helen's list. Jesus said, "Whether he is or not depends on a three-way readiness.

I am always ready. Your job is to take care of your readiness. His readiness is up to him. Chip is almost ready. How was Helen's miracle an example of the principle on cooperation? I'm not entirely sure, but I have a guess. The principle says that "cooperation depends on miracles. If Chip's misperceptions had caused cooperation between him and Wally to break down, then Helen's miracle may have restored that cooperation. In this interpretation, the above passage would mean something like this: And don't underestimate your own cooperation, either. You may not listen to me. But the miracle you did with Chip was an example of you cooperating with me.

This led to a very sweet and touching exchange between her and Jesus. Our fullest example of a miracle is the Shield report.

Jesus: “When You Perform a Miracle, I Will Arrange Both Time and Space to Adjust to it”

This again is a situation from Helen's life that Jesus mentions as an example of a miracle principle, which was this one:. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which when completed, is the atonement. This process works all the time and in all dimensions of time. Immediately following this, Jesus says, "A very good example of how this is accomplished is the time you rewrote the entire report for Esther for SOD [the Shield Institute for Retarded Children].

The situation was this: Esther had written a report for the Shield, which was apparently needed to secure a grant from the National Institutes of Health NIH , but Helen regarded the report "as very bad. Jesus says, "You atoned for her by writing one that was very good.

Later, he made the same point again, calling Esther's initial report "a sin which you cancelled out in advance by a miracle of devotion. So here he is openly calling Helen's act "a miracle," something he will do twice more before he is done. Later, he clarifies why: He clearly implies that her new report did secure the needed funding, which would in turn benefit the children served by the Shield. When I read this account in Absence from Felicity years ago, I assumed that Helen must have rewritten the report filled with love for the Shield and sincerely wanting to spare Esther the painful consequences of her poorly written report.

Unless it came from such a state of mind, how could it be a miracle? Yet in reading the complete story from Helen's notebooks, I see now that I was incorrect:. The reason why you found rewriting that so taxing was because you resented Esther's sin and thought she put you in a very unfair position.

But no one can really do this to anybody. If you had known that you were really part of a miracle for the Shield, for Esther, for yourself, and for Me, you would have done it with real joy. In other words, far from being filled with love, Helen found the whole process taxing, because she resented Esther for putting her in this unfair position, as she saw it. But amazingly, it was still a miracle! It was a miracle for the Shield, because it secured the needed funding; for Esther, because it wiped away her loveless error; for Helen, because it canceled out her past hurtfulness toward the children; and even for Jesus, because as the gospel of Matthew says, "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me" Matt If Helen had known about all these effects of her act, she would have done it with joy.

Yet still, not doing it with joy did not deprive it of being a miracle. Perhaps we now can understand why this was "a very good example" of the miracle principle Jesus had just dictated: It could have been a millstone around a lot of necks. Yet Helen's rewriting made it as if Esther's "sin" had never happened. It wiped the slate clean. You could thus see it as a very concrete act of forgiveness, like when a bank forgives a debt.

But it didn't just wipe the slate clean for Esther. It also did for Helen. Indeed, it blessed everyone involved. This single act really did forge "an interlocking chain of forgiveness. Several times and in two widely separated places, Jesus calls the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce "miracles. While what he did came from Me, he could not be induced to ask Me each time whether I wanted him to perform this particular miracle. If he had, he would not have performed any miracles that could not get through constructively, and would thus have saved himself unnecessary strain.

He burned himself out with indiscriminate miracles, and to this extent did not fulfill his own full purpose. There is no question what Jesus is referring to here. Towards the end of Cayce's life, he became quite famous and was deluged with requests for readings, many from people with life-threatening illnesses. As a result, he disregarded the instructions he had received from his own readings to do only two readings per day and did as many as seven or eight a day. The resulting strain on his system Jesus: His health failed "he burned himself out" and he died at the relatively premature age of 67 "did not fulfill his own full purpose".

This situation is clearly what Jesus is talking about, which means that what he refers to as Cayce's miracles were actually Cayce's readings. In these readings, Cayce would go into a self-induced trance and then give lengthy advice to the person who was seeking the reading. This advice was usually medical, but could also be spiritual, psychological, marital, financial—anything that person might need. At first I thought it odd that Jesus would call Cayce's readings miracles.

Yet as we'll see in several later examples, one of the chief forms that miracles take is that of a helpful message given to another person, especially a message inspired by a higher source. At one point, Jesus gives an interesting little reinterpretation of witchcraft. In this, he redefines cursing as simply projecting lovelessness onto others and thereby reinforcing errors they have already made. Their preexisting error, he says, "makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves.

The job of the miracle worker is to undo what the "witch" has done: The fact that he should have done so does not exempt you from your own omission. Apparently, then, both of them forgot to ask Jesus if they should transcribe the latest dictation. Helen could easily have blamed the whole thing on Bill, projecting her responsibility onto him, and thus reinforcing his error. It would have been the very act of cursing Jesus had just described.

However, she didn't do this. She took responsibility for her own error, and to that extent lifted the cloud of blame off of Bill. This ordinary, everyday act was the very thing Jesus had just spoken of, an act of "blessing him with a miracle instead of cursing him with projection. And this permitted Jesus to bless her. He not only thanked her, he dictated to her a beautiful "special revelation" that is virtually a song of praise to her true Identity. It begins with, "You are wholly lovely—a perfect shaft of pure light.

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This introduces a central theme that we will see repeatedly in future examples: Giving a miracle allows some kind of blessing to return to the miracle worker, often immediately. The issue of Bill getting a flu shot crops up three times in Helen's notebooks. The first time, Helen was told to discuss "the flu shot" " very frankly" with Bill. The second time, Jesus said, "Ask Bill's help for guidance about the flu shots, but be sure to tell him not to let fear enter into the consideration. She explains in the Urtext that she had a "meeting with Dr.

Damrosch," the latter being the chairman of the flu board. Damrosch then "permitted an opportunity for questioning in his capacity as chairman of the flu board for asking re Bill's flu shot. The answer returning to Helen's notes: This is how miracles should work. You did not jump into the question yourself, and even though you did rush to the phone on Red's advice, you exerted no pressure on Bill's reluctance.

This gave me a chance to let you leave it to the real expert, whom I sent to answer the question. We unfortunately do not know the exact scene here. But what comes through clearly is Helen's patience and lack of pushiness. Rather than hastily thrusting her question forward, she waited until Dr. Damrosch "permitted an opportunity for questioning. Finally, she "exerted no pressure on Bill's reluctance" to get on the phone with the doctors as well?

In short, she exerted no pressure on anyone. She was patient and gentle. She worked with everyone involved, rather than pushing against them. This was the miracle. It may seem like a very small miracle, but then almost all of our examples are like that. Her lack of pushiness here, in fact, is reminiscent of her lack of projecting blame in the previous example. And like the previous example, the miracle she gave allowed a blessing to come back to her: One of the most interesting examples concerns a woman named Mrs.

Albert, who Helen apparently encounters at the hospital bed of Dave Diamond who we'll also see in later examples. Jesus opens a long discourse involving Mrs. Albert by saying, "Bill and you need considerable clarification of the channel role. To provide this clarification of the role of channeling miracles, Jesus points to an example: She is working miracles every day because she knows who she is.

This is quite a statement. According to Jesus, Mrs. Albert is a real miracle worker, a living example of the course he is teaching. I don't know of anyone else who comes in for such high praise from him. Let us, then, follow his advice and "look carefully at Mrs. Jesus' discourse is long and complex.

It opens by describing Helen's way of being. He says that she has a "fear of involvement" that is really rooted in a sense that something is deeply wrong with her. She is afraid of the hate within her and what it might do to others, so she tries to insert distance between her and them, which she does in part by getting their names wrong. That way, she thinks, her hate can't reach them. Two other things, mentioned elsewhere, probably also contribute to this fear of involvement. One is that she is embarrassed by the love she feels.

The other is that she is ashamed of her connection with Jesus. Both of these surely add to the distance between her and others. Albert stands in stark contrast to all of this. Helen gets her name wrong calling her "Mrs. Andrews" out of her usual fear of involvement. Albert simply corrects her as a purely factual matter, "without embarrassment and without hostility," says Jesus. Indeed, he says, "the whole question of embarrassment did not occur to her.

Instead, her sense of identity stands on a firm foundation: She was also quite unembarrassed when she told you that everything has to be done to preserve life, because you never can tell when God may come and say "Get up, Dave," and then he will. She did not ask what you believed first, and afterwards merely added, "and it's true, too. Albert's statement, try to imagine the scene. It sounds like Helen ran into her in Dave's hospital room, where he is in a coma, on life support, and dying.

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Put yourself in Helen's shoes. You have just encountered this woman whose name you really should know, but you get it wrong instead, out of an unconscious attempt to put distance between you and her. She then closes that distance by openly correcting you, yet without any trace of hostility and without a hint of embarrassment.

You can feel her sense of security, which leaves her free of your fear of involvement; indeed, seemingly free of any fear at all. Then, without testing the waters by asking what you believe, she simply volunteers her view that Dave should be kept on life support, "because you never can tell when God may come and say, 'Get up Dave,' and then he will. And it's true, too. Just as Jesus told the paralytic "rise up and walk," so God may say, "Get up, Dave," and, like the paralytic, he would.

If someone said this to you, with a conviction that was both utterly innocent and absolutely rock solid, wouldn't you feel your mind pulled in her direction? Wouldn't you feel new possibilities arise and new vistas open up before you? That's why it was a miracle. Yet this is not all. Jesus has a great deal to say in the wake of Mrs. He characterizes it as an example of following the authority of God within, rather than treating other people as your authority. As Helen clarifies in the Urtext: This is not 'the real authority.

Albert was witnessing to him, representing him, showing that he was her authority. This stands in clear contrast to Helen, who was ashamed of him and who famously treated the Course as her "guilty secret". Jesus then summarizes the situation with Mrs. Those who witness for Me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them. Albert, then, was coming from a place of inner abundance, a place of immovable security "she knows who she is" , and a place of serene safety "she knows she is protected".

Because of this place in her, she was free of embarrassment and fear. And at the heart of this place was her connection with God, of Whom she was completely unashamed. This place in her enabled her to give, to speak to Helen with unembarrassed directness about the power of God to work miracles even in an extreme case like Dave's.

In essence, what this statement did was share with Helen the treasure that was inside Mrs. Albert, that place in her that was filled with abundance because God and Jesus were there. To paraphrase the above quote, by witnessing for Jesus, Mrs. Albert was expressing, through her miracle, that she had abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance she had learned belonged to her.

I find it telling that the star miracle worker in this early material was not a Course student at all. After all, Bill and Helen are the only ones studying the Course, which is just beginning to come through.

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Rather than being a Course student, Mrs. Albert is almost certainly a Christian. She speaks of God's power to do miracles. Jesus calls her a "witness for Me. Let's face it, she's a Christian.

And yet, by affirming that God could raise the nearly dead, she directly echoes the first principle in the Course, that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. She actually makes the same point that Jesus had made to Helen the day after the Course started coming through, where he applied the first principle of miracles to Dave, implying that healing Dave's terminal illness was in principle no different than healing Louis' hernia.

So here is a Christian who almost certainly believes none of the Course's lofty metaphysical teachings, and yet, "She is working miracles every day because she knows who she is. Helen, however, was working miracles of her own, albeit in a different way. Jesus overtly compares Helen's scribing of the Course to Edgar Cayce's readings, which we have already seen labeled miracles see 5 above: This is an example of the "indiscriminate or uncontrolled" miracle-working we already spoke of.

It is well-meant but ill-advised. The "indiscriminate…miracle-working we already spoke of" was Cayce's "He burned himself out with indiscriminate miracles". Just as Cayce didn't let Jesus limit the number of his readings and thus ended up compromising his health, so Helen wasn't letting Jesus tell her when to stop taking dictation and thus ended up compromising her schedule. Both were doing essentially the same thing. The implication is inescapable.

Helen's scribing, like Cayce's readings, was miracle working. After all, indiscriminate miracle working is still miracle working. And, of course, Helen was doing something fairly similar to Cayce.

She was bringing forth information from a higher source that could be helpful to others. That this is why her scribing of the Course is miracle working is made clear in other places. In one place Jesus said,. Scribes have a particular role in the Plan of Atonement, because they have the ability to experience revelations themselves, and also to put into words enough of the experience to serve as a basis for miracles. Jesus then gives an example in which Helen experienced a revelation " very personally, but also wrote it.

Her scribal ability, he says, was "turned to secret rather than shared advantage, depriving it of its miraculous potential. Helen, in other words, had the ability to allow into her mind something from a higher realm, either a spiritual experience or a flow of dictation, and then bring that forth in a form that would be useful for others, that would bring "shared advantage" rather than mere private gain. And by doing so, she was working miracles. All actions which stem from reversed thinking are literally the behavioral expressions of those who know not what they do.

Actually, Jean Dixon was right in her emphasis on "Feet on the ground and fingertips in the Heaven," though she was a bit too literal for your kind of understanding. Many people knew exactly what she meant, so her statement was the right miracle for them. Jean Dixon, as many of us recall, was a renowned astrologer at the time of this dictation Jesus' point here is that when your thinking is upside down, you end up doing crazy things, not realizing what you are really doing. In the previous paragraph, he alludes to the Nazis and his own crucifiers as examples of this. The antidote is expressed in Jean Dixon's image: This image unites two kinds of sanity: To unite both of these is to possess a true sanity, a state of being in touch with the full spectrum of existence.

It is the opposite of having your mind flipped upside down and running around not knowing what you are doing. Jesus calls Dixon's statement a miracle, presumably because the sanity expressed in the image could bring a breath of sanity into the minds of those who read it. It wasn't the right miracle for Helen because it was too literal. However, for those who "knew exactly what she meant," "her statement was the right miracle for them.

When I first read this, I thought, "Surely he can't mean that some mere statement, some little line Jean Dixon put in one of her books, was a miracle. He must just be getting loose in his terminology here. Verbal messages that bring light into the minds of others—like Cayce's readings, Helen's scribing, or Mrs. Albert's statement—are one of the primary forms that miracles take. Helen did a great deal of praying for Dave in the time leading up to his death.

In the two days after she began her notebooks and before the Course started coming through, she prayed for him at length on paper, which took the form of pleading with him to accept a miracle by identifying with his spirit rather than his brain it sounds like his illness was of the brain. Now she hears that he has died, and she writes about her prayers for him in the days preceding his death:.

I prayed that he would be able to love everybody in return, this too was under instruction , having been told, I think on Great Authority that his only real danger came from lacks in this connection. I did not visit him on Friday, but I am sure this was right because I was very careful to ask. I was going over, too, after the lecture, and was told not to…. Then she reports that she has heard that Terry, presumably Dave's wife, "was talking about giving away the baby. I think I'd better just stop now. She treated the impulse to take on the care of a baby as a miracle impulse.

But she also knew that these impulses should be guided by Jesus, and she suspected this one hadn't. As a result, she steps back and tries to be more open about what miracles she might offer, as she continues her prayers:. I prayed for Dave, and said that whatever miracles I could do for him even now, or any of his family, I would will to do. I also asked Jesus to help Dave with the course.

Then I was told to go in and visit with Jonathan [Louis] and pray for him [Dave], particularly if he was asleep, which he was. It was the only time so far I prayed intensely for him. When that happens, I am strongly aware that I am not praying alone. The conclusion to this story comes a few pages later, which is where Jesus calls her praying for Dave a miracle:.

You did surprisingly well today, after a rather bad start. Actually, Dave helped you, but this will not be explained. Helen responds, "I got very frightened about this. He then responds to her fear:. In other words, the miracle she gave Dave with her prayers may seem to have been lost, in that Dave wasn't healed. Yet it wasn't lost. It came back and blessed her in the form of Dave, now out of the body, helping her with her day. After a bad start, she found herself doing "surprisingly well" in going through the day in the way Jesus wanted. Little did she know that this was Dave returning to her the miracle she gave him with her prayers.

One evening at this same time, Helen had planned some lovely self-time, but Jesus had other plans:. I was going to wash my hair after fixing his dinner, but I was told to visit his [her husband's] mother. Am not too enthusiastic about this, but am going now. It occurred to me while waiting for the elevator that I was glad I was going, because it was a way of atoning to Jonathan for my being so nasty to him. He is always happy to have me visit his mother and in a way of atoning for Dave too.

By speaking of a guided visit to her mother-in-law, that would atone for her own lovelessness and for Dave's too, Helen was really saying that she was doing a miracle. Jesus apparently agreed, because immediately after she finished the above sentence and without her even starting a new paragraph in her notebooks , he broke in with these comments:.

By being one, it unites all creations with their Creator. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. This state of mind goes out to anyone , even without the awareness of the miracle-worker himself. Given that this came right after her comment about her mother-in-law visit "atoning for Dave, too," it seems intended to answer the question as to how her miracle could reach someone like Dave, who was not only not involved, but had passed from this earth.

The answer lies in "the impersonal nature of miracles," which is alluded to several times in the early dictation. Even though a miracle is directed at an individual very personally, that is not because the individual's special attributes make her especially deserving. The miracle disregards all differences between people, seeing everyone as equally deserving. That is what is meant by its "impersonal nature. That is why it can go out "to anyone , even without the awareness of the miracle-worker himself.

The next example is of an opportunity for a miracle that was passed up. Bill and Helen were waiting for a cab after work, and Bill was apparently upset with a woman named Dora, who had committed an "error" which Bill regarded as "stupidity. Bill, having already weakened himself, was very un-miracle-minded first by not asking Dora if she wanted a lift in the cab, which was going her way. Even if she didn't want it, she would have been able to use the thought well.

The result can be highly inflammable. His original slight to Dora, because of his own needs [Urtext: He would have gotten home much quicker if he had taken time to use time properly. Obviously, if it was "un-miracle-minded" to not ask Dora if she wanted a lift in the cab, then it would have been miracle-minded to ask her. Indeed, we can safely say it would have been a miracle. After all, "the miracle is an expression of miracle-Mindedness" Urtext , and offering the cab would have been an expression rather than a state of mind, an outer expression of a miracle-minded inner state. And indeed, Jesus later gives it the label "miracle": This miracle may seem particularly mundane and commonplace, but it's clearly similar to our other examples.

Further, it was about more than just helping Dora get home more easily. Its real context seems to be Dora's original error, about which Bill was apparently harboring resentment. If Bill had given the miracle, he would have met her error with kindness. It would have been an act of forgiveness and of reconciliation between them. This helps explain why, even if she didn't want the lift in the cab, "she would have been able to use the thought well.

This story is an interesting flip side of other examples in which the miracle returned to the giver. According to Jesus, that would have happened here if Bill had given the miracle, in which case a taxi would have arrived quickly. But since he didn't, the reverse happened: This suggests that the miracle returning to bless the doer can take very concrete forms, as concrete as a taxi showing up sooner. It makes you wonder how different our lives would be if we were giving miracles throughout each day. Our final example in a way is less concrete, in that Jesus is urging Bill toward a general kind of miracle working.

However, Jesus himself performs a concrete example of this kind of miracle, so I felt this story definitely belonged on our list. In the early dictation, Jesus would occasionally use puns as gestures of love toward Bill, who had a penchant for them. For example, after one of Jesus' puns, he said, "That's a special pun for Bill. He is still under the impression that he needs special signs of love" At another time, Jesus was talking about remembering the knowledge of Heaven.

Then he said, "This is not a literal remembering as much as a real re-membering. Remembering knowledge is not like remembering something from the past. Rather, it is more like reattaching a detached member, such as an arm. The member is not a thing in the past; it is here in the present. The Course will later say, "This is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state"— T Further, it belongs to you, and even belongs attached to you.

After all, a thing is only a member by virtue of its belonging to a larger body. So is knowledge like that—something that is part of me, like an arm, and that is right here in the present, but that I have simply detached from my awareness? Is my job not so much to remember it as to "re-member" it? These are the insights opened up by Jesus' pun. Having made this pun, Jesus again says, "That is largely for Bill," and then goes on to talk about Bill's own puns:.

I wish he would decide to use that talent of his constructively. He has no idea of how powerful it could be. Actually, it does come from the unconscious, and is really a distorted form of miraculous perception which he has reduced to word twisting. Although this can be quite funny, it is still a real waste.

The Miracle According to These Examples

Maybe he'd care to let me control it, and still use it humorously himself. He doesn't have to decide it is one or the other. In its real form, Bill's talent for puns comes from what Jesus calls the miracle-level of the unconscious and carries "miraculous perception. But Bill could let Jesus control it, even if only part of the time, allowing it in these times to revert to its original nature.

This would mean using it "constructively"—a code word in this early dictation for miracle working—in which case it would have a surprisingly "powerful" effect on others. Rather than just provoking laughter, his puns would now open people's minds to a new way of looking at things. They would do for others what Jesus' pun just did for us. They would implant in the minds of others the "miraculous perception" that the puns themselves contained.

They would work miracles. How fascinating that making a pun could actually be giving a miracle! With many of the above examples, when I first read the event recounted and realized that Jesus was calling it a miracle, I quickly discounted his use of the term, assuming that he was using it loosely or carelessly.

Miracles of Jesus

The event just didn't fit my concept of a miracle, often because it didn't rise to the high level of what I understood to be a miracle. With other examples, I didn't even notice Jesus was calling them miracles, in part because his language was subtle, but in part because, again, they just didn't fit my concept. But something happens when you put all of these examples side by side.

Their similarity jumps out at you. They look like members of a single family. They express a very definite, unified concept of the miracle. Let's use these examples, then, to draw out this concept. Perhaps the first thing that strikes one is that in every single one of these cases, the miracle is a gift to someone else. It is not an internal shift in perception, as Course students typically believe. It is an act of yours that benefits someone else. These examples even raise the interesting possibility that we, like Helen, have a list of people to whom we are supposed to give a miracle.

We might even surmise that we have a daily list in addition to a more long-term list. While Helen's chalice list seemed more long-term, the following message seems to speak of that daily list:.

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