Miracles... seem to me to rest not so much upon... healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there around us always.

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.

I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you.

Thus in a single phrase I can define the great illusion concerning 'love' in this world. It is the effort to join reality with the apparition.

A Course in Miracles defines “miracle” as a divine healing of human perception; a change of mind that shifts perception from fear and guilt to love and forgiveness. This higher level of perception heals the mind from pain and suffering and places it in the service of spirit.

Around us, life bursts with miracles — a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

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.

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

It is the most capricious prejudice to believe that a human being is denied the capacity to be outside himself, to be consciously beyond the senses. He is capable at any moment of being a suprasensual being. Without this he would not be a citizen of the world — he would be an animal. It is true that under these circumstances reflection, the discovery of oneself — is very difficult, since they are so ceaselessly, so necessarily connected with the change in our other circumstances. But the more conscious of these circumstances we can be, the more lively, powerful, and ample is the conviction which derives from them — the belief in true revelations of the spirit. It is not seeing — hearing — feeling — it is a combination of all three — more than all three — a sensation of immediate certainty — a view of my truest, most actual life — thoughts change into laws — wishes are fulfilled. For the weak person the fact of this moment is an article of faith.

The phenomenon becomes especially striking at the sight of many human forms and faces — particularly so on catching sight of many eyes, expressions, movements — on hearing certain words, reading certain passages — at certain views of life, world, and fate. Very many chance incidents, many natural events, particular times of the day and year bring us such experiences. Certain moods are especially favorable to such revelations. Most last only an instant — few linger — fewest of all remain. In this respect there are great differences between people. One is more capable of experiencing revelations than another. One has more sense of them, the other more understanding. The latter kind will always remain in their soft light; even if the former has only intermittent flashes of illumination, they are brighter and more varied. This capacity is also susceptible to illness, which signifies either excessive sense and deficient understanding — or excessive understanding and deficient sense.

We see people not as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Perhaps we are experiencing a reverse incarnation. A process where the spirit of the divine becomes lost in human physical nature. Perhaps the spark of divinity, which we experience as consciousness, is being reabsorbed into the boundless creativity of seething opportunistic life. A great wish courses through me. I am curious with desire. I want to see past my lifetime, past yours, into exactly what the paleontologist says will not exist: the narrative. I want to see the story. More than anything, I am frustrated by the fact that I’ll never know how things turn out.

It will be said that this enlarging is impossible. How can one ask the eyes of the body, or those of the mind, to see more than they see? Our attention can increase precision, clarify and intensify; it cannot bring forth in the field of perception what was not there in the first place. That’s the objection. — It is refuted in my opinion by experience. For hundreds of years, in fact, there have been men whose function has been precisely to see and to make us see what we do not naturally perceive. They are the artists.