Miracles Principle # 16: “Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.” This is the same idea as Principle # 9. You will see that a lot of the principles are now going to repeat themselves. Like time, the miracle is a teaching device. It teaches that “to give and to receive are one in truth.” We are all the same—teacher and pupil; therapist and patient. The error the miracle has to correct is the error of thinking we are separate. The miracle, then, becomes an expression of our joining. Grasp this one, and your life instantly transforms!
Lesson 103—“God, being Love, is also happiness.” Happiness is an attribute of Love. They come or go together. The denial of happiness is the denial of God. The Text (T-10.V.12:3-4) says that depression is blasphemy. The point of this is not to make us feel guilty. It’s just saying I’m hurting because I’m turning my back on God, on Love, on happiness. It’s not something outside myself that’s doing this to me. I’m sad because I think what I’ve made is real. I’m sad because I believe Love has limits. I’m afraid of Love’s “conditions.” I’m afraid Love will be withdrawn if I misstep somehow. How can I be joyful, even when things are “good,” if the rug can be pulled out from under me at any moment? Know this: Right now, without a single thing changing, the Love of God radiates to you without limit, without reservation or question. To know this is happiness.
Lesson 104—“I seek but what belongs to me in truth.” Today, I set aside the complex and focus on two very simple things: the joy and peace of mind by right of who I am. Today, I will not concern myself with profound metaphysical truths. I set aside the urgency of self-made goals, the self-imposed importance of everything I think I must do. I ignore the man-made standards by which I so often judge myself or allow others to judge me. Today, I reflect on my many blessings. I open myself with gratitude to God Who gave me these gifts. I honor Him by enjoying them.
Lesson 105—“God’s peace and joy are mine.” Today’s lesson expands yesterday’s by adding the thought that I receive my gifts by giving them. This idea runs all through CIM, but this lesson specifically identifies it as “a major learning goal.” By accepting God’s peace and joy as mine, I allow God to “complete Himself as He defines completion.” I experience this myself, in some small way, in giving to another. When I give in love, and it is received in joy, our love is strengthened. Shared love is a great joy. This is how God’s giving works, and we are meant to be part of it. This kind of giving is how we create and how we complete ourselves. To truly experience that God’s peace and joy are mine, I must open my heart to share peace and joy with others. And it begins with that person to whom my heart has been most closed. If I will open my heart for love to flow out, it will also flow in. As I open my heart, allowing peace, joy and love to flow out, what I’m doing is “letting what cannot contain itself fulfill its aim of giving everything it has away, securing it forever for itself.”
Lesson 106—“Let me be still and listen to the truth.” At first, today’s lesson doesn’t seem to follow yesterday’s theme on giving and receiving, but then it switches midway back to that theme. The first part of the lesson talks about what I’m listening for—the Voice for God correcting the error thinking of God’s “dear Son, whose other name is YOU.” The thinking of the world tells me that to give is to lose. The Word of God tells me to give is to receive. To extend that same message to the world is the “ministry for which you came.” Again, as we’ve discussed, this does not mean banging on doors and evangelizing. This means living the principle day to day. This lesson also tells me that every time I pause for five minutes to be still and listen to the truth, one thousand minds are opened to the truth. Five minutes! Suppose I took that seriously and paused every hour as instructed. In the course of a day, fifteen thousand minds would open to the truth. What better investment of my time could I possibly make?
Lesson 107—“Truth will correct all errors in my mind.” This is the promise that gives me courage. An illusion that isn’t recognized as illusion causes me to react as if it were real. If I see an illusory “enemy,” that doesn’t make me bad or stupid. The reaction is appropriate, given what I believe to be the truth. But when I look at the illusion with Spirit, it disappears. The “holy instant” is that moment of unquestioned peace; a moment in which I realize the trials and fears I seem to go through are all part of the illusion. Jesus says it (salvation/happiness) will be mine; it already is mine. It is guaranteed. I am safe. I am steady. I am whole. Today I will bring to Spirit for correction any thought that tells me anything different.
Lesson 108—“To give and to receive are one in truth.” This lesson describes the state of One-mindedness where all opposites are resolved into “once concept that is wholly true.” When that occurs, the concept will disappear because “the Thought behind it will appear instead to take its place.” This is how Heaven manifests on earth. This is “a state of mind so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all.” It is the Christ mind, and from it comes my peace of mind. One of the most useful lessons we can learn while drawing on this state of mind is that giving and receiving are one and the same. Like all opposites, they aren’t truly opposite at all; they are a part of a unified spectrum of reality. Neither precedes the other. Both occur simultaneously. Quite literally, what we give, we receive. Immediately. There is no pause or delay. There is one act, and it contains both things. Cause and effect are one in Truth.
We think of cause and effect in a linear fashion. I think what I do today will impact me in the future. That is an incomplete picture. In fact, there is no time delay at all. My thought of attack impacts on me now, just as my thought offering peace immediately makes me peaceful. I am constantly giving birth to the universe of my experience. There is nothing outside my mind. The world I see is just my thoughts given form.
Lesson 109—“I rest in God.” This lesson epitomizes what so many CIM lessons are trying to get me to do: simply take a little time out of my day to rest in God. The lesson tells me of wondrous things that come from willingness to take these times of rest. These moments of quiet are not for me alone. They are my mission for the world. Through them I am brining peace to every mind, including those who came in the past or haven’t yet come (see 2:5 and 9:5). Every time we rest in God, we heal the world.
I envision myself as a cell in a cosmic body, a body that has been invaded by a deadly virus of disharmony, hatred, envy, sorrow and pain. As I take my time of rest, this cell produces antitoxins, the remedy for the virus: the peace of God. And the connecting current of our shared thoughts is the bloodstream that carries this antitoxin to other cells, who absorb it and begin, in turn, to produce more antitoxin. What greater purpose could I have?
Assignment: Miracles principle #17 (Text p.4); Workbook Lessons 110-116. Text read pp. 189-192—“The Denial of God.”
Practical Application: Here’s an experiment to test the truth of giving and receiving being one. Sit quietly, and mentally begin to send peace to everyone. Go through your list of family, of friends, and of “enemies,” sending peace to each and every one. Offer it to the world at large. “I offer you quietness. I offer you peace of mind. I offer you gentleness.“ (Based on Lesson 108). What we find as we do this is that, as we offer peace to others, we experience it ourselves.
What Jesus is telling us throughout CIM is that as long as we listen to the voice of ego, we will “see” and experience sin, attack, pain, sorrow and death. That is the ego’s method of convincing us there is no God—or that God has turned His back on us or is punishing us. Seeing is believing, right? I see “sin” on the 5:00 news and in the newspapers everyday. CIM tells us our physical eyes do not see at all. In fact, it tells us that believing is seeing. Take that quite literally and ponder it a while.
As we begin to turn over each unloving or troublesome thought to Spirit, what happens is that we literally begin to see a different world—a more loving and peaceful world. CIM calls this the Happy Dream. It is the state of mind preceding Heaven—the remembrance of Oneness.
Because each of us is a hologram—a “universe unto itself” within the All-ness—I can stand beside a man who is totally enmeshed in the hell of his ego and experience the Happy Dream. Where he sees murderers and pedophiles, I see wounded “children,” crying out, seeking the Love they believe they have lost forever. Like attracts like. If I believe the world is full of “low-lifes,” the universe will bring me witnesses to that belief, blessed and multiplied. I will see them everywhere I look. If, on the other hand, I believe in the inherent goodness of my fellow man, the Christ within each one, then that is what I will see and experience in my world. The more of us who focus on the latter, the more antitoxin we supply in the broken Body of the Son—the closer we bring it to healing.
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