The Fifty Miracle Principles of A Course in Miracles®
by Kenneth Wapnick

Principle 9

Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver.

The ego's understanding of giving is that when I give you something, I no longer have it. If I give you something, you have more of it and I have less of it. Giving, to the ego, is always quantitative. Now, this is so whether we are talking about material things, or we are talking about psychological things or thoughts. One of the key aspects of projection is that by my giving you my guilt I am free of it, and you have it. We always believe that when we give a thought away, then someone else has it and we do not have it.

The miracle corrects that and teaches us that what we give we also receive, since we are all one. Since I am really not giving anything that is out here, because there is nothing out here, it is all in my mind. Giving, then, is really a reinforcement. If I give you my guilt by projecting it onto you and attacking you, what I am really doing is reinforcing my own guilt. If I give you love, then what I am doing is reinforcing the fact that there is a Presence of Love Who is within me, and that Presence, the Holy Spirit, is the One Who is really giving the love. That is why what we give away we really receive. Giving and receiving are the same. That is one of the key principles found in the material. Several workbook lessons have that as their basic idea (e.g., lessons 108, 126), and certainly the text discusses it over and over again.

Miracles, then, become an exchange. I allow the Holy Spirit to extend His Love through me, which not only reinforces who you are, as a child of love, but it also reinforces who I am, healing both of us.

That idea is a reversal of how the world thinks or the ego thinks, and that is what the statement means. It reverses the physical laws because the world teaches, again, that what we give away we have less of, so that the more miracles we choose, and the more we can allow ourselves to be the instruments of the miracle, the more we receive the benefits of the miracle. The more that we love, heal, and forgive, the more loved, healed, and forgiven we become. The St. Francis Prayer is a lovely expression of that principle.