Lesson 225: “What is Forgiveness?”  “God is my Father and His Son loves Him.”

This lesson says, “Father, I must return Your Love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me.  I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness.” 

I very much appreciate the Course’s message that we don’t have to sit around and stroke God’s ego, to ensure we avoid spells where we forget to constantly fill God up with how wonderful He is.   I definitely felt stressed about this early on in my life and it made me feel always on the look out and also became hyper-vigilant that  I cared for managing and putting out the constant attention God needed- with words of idolizing to keep God appeased.

This always felt like an eminent dead end because when we believe this about God, there is no way to sustain this in any relationship we have because it is a never ending task- even when it comes to God.

The Course specifically teaches that God has no ego and therefore He is never in need of being fed constant kudos.  

God doesn’t need constant attention because God is not needy.  That is the nature of the ego- not God.  Therefore, we don’t at all need to feel like we are assigned this task of caring for God’s neediness in giving God regular pats on the back.  We can let go of that tendency because there is no neediness in God and therefore God never expresses lack in hopes of coaxing us to give God constant attention.  This is ever so important to understand that this behavior comes strictly from neediness.

When we see that in ourselves or in others this is an ego factor and we can resolve this by giving love to whoever is in the position of needing more love.

God is never like this because it is purely contrary to God.

When God asks us to spend time with Him, or acknowledge Him, this is for our benefit.

When we sit and see God, we share in His energy because this is the nature of what happens when we join with God in our minds this way.  This is not to appease God’s neediness or tell God He is so great for His sake.  The Course teaches us that we do this for us.

When we sit and know we are joined with God, then we get to feel God’s Love because Love is another name for the essence of God.

This is all for our own sakes.

When we sit and shower Love on God, this is actually showering Love on ourselves.  When we feel this energy within us, then we experience it through and through. 

The Course teaches us that giving and receiving are the same because when we give, we feel the energy within us.

Love is abundant when God gives us Love- there is always plenty to feel within us.

Furthermore, we feel it completely because this is the way we give it again.  

The Course reminds us that when we give we must experience the energy fully within us before and during giving.

This actually allows us to fully integrate the essence of what we are giving.

This is why giving and receiving are an essential part of God’s plan to share love with the world.  We experience it and feel it completely.  

This is exactly why giving and receiving are equal blessings.  Both give us the perfect gift of Love that is the essence of God.