Teachings of Christ Mind

^12.1 Miracles are thoughts and I am the corrector of false thinking. You have been made ready for this correction and your belief in correction, or atonement, is the final belief that must be put into practice.

^12.2 Miracles are a service provided through love. Your readiness for miracles has been achieved through the learning you have accomplished. Miracles cannot be used, and so your learning needed to include an ability to distinguish between service and use. Service, or devotion, leads to harmony through right action. Until you were able to distinguish the false from the true, you were not able to receive the power of miracles.

^12.3 The power of miracles is but the culmination and the integration of the beliefs we have put forth here. The miracle I am offering you here is the service I offer you, the precursor of the service you will offer to others.

^12.4 Miracles are intercessions. As such they are agreements. They do not take away free will but free the will to respond to truth. They are the ultimate acceptance of giving and receiving being one in truth.

^12.5 While you continue to feel as if you do not understand miracles, you will be reluctant to believe in them or to see yourself as a miracle worker. Your belief in miracles and your belief in atonement or correction are the same thing. While you believe there is anything other than your own thinking that is in need of correction you think falsely. Right-thinking is the realm of miracles.

^12.6 As with the learning goal being set here of going beyond belief to simply knowing, the learning goal in relation to the miracle is the same—it is one of going beyond belief in the miracle to simply knowing. Knowing is knowing the truth. Knowing is right-thinking. Your return to knowing or right-thinking is both the miracle and the end for the need of miracles. For as you live in the world as who you are, you become a miracle and the constant expression of the miracle.

^12.7 The power of thought and the power of prayer, once aligned, call constantly upon the same power of intercession that is the miracle. This is why we also devoted a fair amount of this Treatise to a discussion of calling. Calling is not only something you receive but something you must learn to give. As you have come to see calling as a gift and a treasure as well as a learning device, so you must come to see your own ability to call forth intercession as a gift and treasure you are able to give in service to your brothers and sisters.

^12.8 If callings come to alert you to the treasure within, how can it be that you, as a miracle-minded being, are not called upon to also call forth the treasure that exists around you? When you call to those whom you meet in relationship, you call but to the already accomplished.

^12.9 There, between you and the “other” whom you have previously only perceived, is the relationship and the miracle waiting to happen. As we spoke within A Course of Love of relationship being not one thing or another but a third something, this is what we speak of here again. If Christ is relationship, and if the Christ in you is the real you, then this all-encompassing relationship, both within you and without you, both you and all you are in relationship with, is that third something that is the holy relationship.

^12.10 This holy relationship is what you are called to cultivate as a gardener cultivates her garden. The gardener knows that although the plant exists fully realized within its seed, it also needs the relationship of earth and water, light and air. The gardener knows that tending the garden will help it to flourish and show its abundance. The gardener knows she is part of the relationship that is the garden. A true gardener believes not in bad seeds. A true gardener believes not that she is in control. A true gardener accepts the grandeur that is the garden and finds it beautiful to behold.

^12.11 This metaphor is akin to acceptance of the holy relationship. It is acceptance of what occurs with the joining of many factors, one no more important than another. While the Christ in you has been compared to the seed of all you are, what you have had revealed to you here is that the Christ is also the relationship of all that would bring the seed to fruition. The ego could be here compared to a gardener who believes that the seed alone is all that is important. As intently as this gardener might struggle to cause the seed to grow, without the relationship of earth and water, light and air, the seed would but remain a source of struggle. The ego would hang on to what is already accomplished within you, never to let it express, through relationship, all that it is. As valuable as the ego would tell you that you are, it still would thwart you being who you are through its denial of the relationships essential to that which you truly are.

^12.12 This cultivation then, of the all-encompassing holy relationship that exists within you and without you, both in all you are and all you are in relationship with, is how you are called to live your life and the call you are asked to sound to all your brothers and sisters.

^12.13 Let the beliefs we have set forth become one with you so that they enable you to live and express and act as who you are in every moment and in every circumstance. Let these abilities serve you and your brothers and sisters. Let this way of living be the expression of who you are and all that you now remember. Let this remembrance grow and flourish as the garden that is you.

^12.14 Recognize now that unity is within you and without you, in all you are and all you are in relationship with. Feel the embrace and the love that is this unity and know that it is you and me and our Creator and all that was created.