Day 126

Today's Lesson:

All that I give is given to myself.

Today's idea is completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, but is crucial to the thought reversal that this course will bring about. But let's examine what we do believe, in place of this idea.

It seems to us that other people are apart from us, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on our thoughts, nor ours on theirs. Therefore, our attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to our own. We further think that they can sin without affecting our perception of ourselves, while we can judge their sin, and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

When we "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to us directly. We give charity to one unworthy, merely to point out that we are better, on a higher plane than he whom we forgive. Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved, a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. The sin that we forgive is not our own. Someone apart from us committed it. And if we then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, the gift is no more ours than was his sin.

If this is true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. It is an eccentricity, in which we sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. Yet it remains our right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin.

We really do not understand forgiveness. As we see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in our minds. It cannot give us peace as we perceive it. It is not a means for our release from what we see in someone other than ourselves. It has no power to restore our unity with him to our awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for us.

Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. We will need help to make this meaningful, because it is so alien to the thoughts to which we are accustomed. But the Help we need is there. Give Him your faith today, and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. And if we only catch a tiny glimpse of the release that lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.

As often as we can, we are to remind ourselves we have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to ourselves and all our brothers. We are to tell ourselves:

All that I give is given to myself. The Help I need to learn that this is true is with me now. And I will trust in Him.

Then spend a quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I have many, many books in my library, several of which I've had for a long time but haven't had the time to actually read. Recently I picked up one of them called Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness, and Making Miracles by Marianne Williamson, a teacher and student of A Course in Miracles. This morning I read the chapter called "Miracles Happen" and it is such a great summary of everything we're studying here, and even today's lesson.

Here is a segment of that chapter:

"It's neither arrogant nor overreaching to ask for a miracle. Miracles aren't possible because of anything we do; they are possible because of the nature of God. We do not personally work them; rather, they are worked through us as we open our hearts more deeply to love....We have a power in us, but not of us, that can miraculously heal the entire world.

"Perhaps the miracle arrives in the form of an insight that unlocks a riddle in your life, a reconciliation with someone, or the opening of a door that had long remained closed. Try as you might, you efforts to break through using your talents, your power of rational analysis, or sheer force of will had remained fruitless. It was only when you put God first - when your heart softened, you stopped blaming, you stopped talking so much and started to truly listen - that some wall of resistance began to crumble. You had not done anything so much as you had released the energies of self-will. You had asked, in a way, that God's will be done. A miracle occurred not because you caused it but because you allowed it."

This is what I intended when I started this blog back on January 1 - that we all could notice the miracles in our lives that seem to just "happen," but that happen because we are awake and are allowing God to work in our lives.

It was Einstein who said "There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."

I choose the second. How about you?