A Course In Miracles from My Perspective

July 3rd 2014  Lesson 108

To give and to receive are one in truth.

• Intention:  To verify the truth of today's idea in our own experience by offering peace to everyone, and seeing how quickly peace returns to us.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with today's thought in the following form:
   
  To give and to receive are one in truth.
  I will receive what I am giving now.
  
  Then close your eyes, ad for five minutes think of what you would hold out to everyone, to have it be yours.  You might for instance say:
  
  

  To everyone I offer quietness.
  To everyone I offer peace of mind.
  To everyone I offer gentleness.
   

  Say each one slowly, then pause a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave.  And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it.  You will find you have exact return, for that is what you asked.  It might be helpful, too, to think of the one to whom to give your gifts.  He represents the others, and through him you give to all.
    
  From today's lesson we will better understand effect and cause and will make much faster progress now.  Today's exercises are quick advances in your learning, made still faster and more sure each time you say:  "To give and to receive are one in truth."

---

Insights/comments:

• To give and to receive are one in truth.  This is easily verified by our experience for it means that whatever we receive is what we have given.  If we wish to know what we gave, we have only to look at what we are currently receiving.  This will sometimes not be a pleasant revelation, and one that we may wish to deny, for it places the ability and responsibility for our current experience squarely in our own lap.  To understand the truth of this principle is to understand the key to making our experience more to our liking.  To deny the truth of this statement is to believe in random chance, and victimization.
   
• We cannot be victims for we are the holy children of God who created us like Himself.  Nothing can victimize God the all-mighty, so none can victimize His children.  So if we believe that we are victims, it is only our own self-created stories about ourselves that we believe, which are simple errors that we can release the moment we realize them to be errors and decide to be free of them and their imagined effects.  Non can subjectate the holy children of God.  With the knowledge that giving and receiving are one in truth, we are now well equipped to guide our lives along a more harmonious path.   
  
• We know from our own experience that we receive joy when our gift to someone brings them joy, even a simple smile gives us joy when we see it light up the face of another, or at least lessen their pain in some small way, in the same way we feel when another offers us a smile or the gift of their presence.  To think kindly of someone is to offer them a gift of joy, and far more so when we offer forgiveness.  The gift of forgiveness is our function, it brings us happiness and offers happiness to the world. 
  

---

I and my Creator are One.