Lesson 315: “What is the Last Judgment?”  “All gifts my brothers give belong to me.”

 The Course reminds us that giving and receiving are the same.  

We have the world’s idea of giving where someone in the equation always ends up in lack. 

The world believes in scarcity and bases all ideas on this.

This is why we always have to have a loser in the picture. 

The ego scrambles to just get us to make sure we are not the losers in the situation as a management tactic so that we end up with more in the end.  

Then when we do this, the world and people there end up in constant competition.

We make everything we do there feel like it is all a matter of life or death in the degree of seriousness- to which the ego wants always to win. 

This means everyone ends up feeling separate when we compete because we all don’t want to join sides in any way, because this may put us in the position of having to be the loser in the situation. 

Then we are not happy and we don’t feel good because we are not sharing love or sharing in God’s joining energy with others.  

The problem is when we make the world have the ego’s fundamental beliefs, we battle for first place, and so we are always at war.

The Course, on the other hand, gives us situations where no one loses.

When we share with another, then, we are both blessed because we both gain energetically and emotionally when we do so. 

We get to have the benefit of our joining with others in the situation because this is the nature of God’s Universe, where there is plenty for all and where we join since we are eager to do so.

Even when we give practical and physical gifts in the world, it may appear physically like we have fewer in number in the end, but the Course reminds us that this is still a perfect blessing in doing this because we feel so much love in the process of sharing. 

This love buoys us up and makes us feel incredible.

Then, even sometimes we may even gain more of that physical thing if we want that in our own desire to replace it. 

Often what happens is that the power of love we share in giving often is powerful enough to manifest it again in the same way.  

We can never be sure, but simply can appreciate that we gain so much energetically when we give, and then, we just allow ourselves to entertain the possibility that we will enjoy whatever else God has in store for us in our lives when we just remember to do so.  

When we appreciate the little and great things God gives us to make our lives amazing, then, our only task is to sit and love it.

This appreciation is so powerful because it is directly from God’s energy of love.