Lesson 105: “God’s peace and joy are mine.”

This lesson says, “And we will try to understand these gifts increase as we receive them.”  The world has a ludicrous perspective about the nature of giving.  The world thinks that when we give we lose because the world deals in quantities and these quantities appear to increase and decrease by what we do in our lives.  If we give gifts then there will be less there for us now and in the future.

The world believes that gifts are finite and if we are generous enough to want to give then we just have to suffer the consequences of ending up with less.

It’s no wonder the participants of the world are so averse to giving.

Our egos believe that scarcity rules and therefore our gifts follow suit. 

We end up with little or nothing when we give from our cherished stock.  The egos know nothing but this sham.  The ego thinks we are doomed to a life of not enough when we do something so daring as to give.  This is why egos try so hard not to get into a position where they are expected to give.  It seems so loaded when we are going to end up with some really dreadful amount of lack if we venture to share what we have.

The Course says that giving is actually absolutely different than the world’s view of giving.

In God’s Universe there is enough and we give with a light heart because we are not trying to stay substantially clear from the activity of giving because we have no fear of it. 

In God’s world, givers end up with nothing less than the receivers because God’s energy is limitless.  Therefore, when we give God’s Love, it just makes the feeling stronger within us because it is not based in lack.  Here, we get the amazing experience of giving in the situation where we are not averse to giving because there is enough in God’s world.  We are available to receive all of God’s Love which is infinite.  Thus, we don’t have to worry about not getting enough or not having enough at the end.

We can trust that these are God’s portions; and they are perfectly maintained in God’s Universe. 

We can hold in our minds that there is plenty as the way things are now.  We just have to remember that it is all plentiful in the moment we find ourselves.  Then we don’t bring in any doubt to the situation.  Then we can simply share what we feel called to share and allow it to be the perfect amount.

Then we don’ have any guilt in the equation.  When we are averse to sharing when we are thinking with the ego and believing lack is present in the world, then we end up feeling guilty.  Guilt is very commonly one of our prime responses to the giving and receiving circumstances.  What happens in our minds is we feel like we did something wrong either in how much we give or in what way or we get anxious it wasn’t exactly the process we wanted it to be.  We feel like we made an error.  This guilt then propagates in our minds.  The guilt goes on without ebbs in the flow.

The guilt proliferates internally because we have believed that our error is real.  

The guilt over giving and receiving is particularly common because these feel like they are ripe for the potential of our judging ourselves over them especially. 

We tend to have a clear vision of what the ego thinks we should do, so we keep the attack battling in our minds with guilt running rampant.  And giving and receiving are such common experiences in our lives.  We do them all the time.  This is why we have endless judgements about them and thus this fuels the guilt running amuck.

The Course says that we just need to see the guilt in our minds and then offer it to God’s altar.  Give it to God and allow God to teach us how to forgive the guilt.

We can do it but just need practice at living without it. 

We don’t realize it is simply a mistaken belief and it can be undone in the blink of an eye. 

We just must see that giving and receiving are lessons where we get to learn how to trust they are perfect as they are.  Then we don’t have judgements about them.

We want to be clear we are giving and receiving with God’s energy.  We do them because they are a privilege and we are blessed with having the habit of Giving from God’s Love.  We give everything with only God’s Love as the foundation.

Then whatever worldly inclusion- the things- we may bring are perfect as they are because God is at the base of what these are.

Then we can trust there is always enough and no need to judge.