ACIM Guidance: Rocking Your Inner GPS

August 4, 2022

ACIM Lesson 236: You Rule Your Mind | Practical Application of A Course in Miracles

September 14, 2022

ACIM Lesson 108: Giving and Receiving are the SAME

giving and receiving are the same- acim lesson 108

A Course in Miracles teaches us that,

“To give and to receive are one in truth.”
W-pI.108

But we don’t get it. We don’t believe it, we’re suspicious of it, we think it’s church-bullshit.

If you’re looking with the ego’s eyes, yep – the whole idea is crazypants. The ego believes in the religion of getting, because it’s origin story is fear and it lives in scarcity.

It makes more sense when you look at it from a place of love – which is what we are. Giving is a natural expression of love, which is constantly and infinitely sourced. It is eternal, and abundant, and life-giving.

When we live in trust, knowing that we are already whole, giving is the way we roll. We know that whatever we need is provided – we don’t have to hoard, scrooge, protect, be stingy, withhold.

This is certainly true of money, but it is also true of all forms of giving. Whatever we give, we receive back – multiplied. So on the plus side, if we give money, money comes back to us. If we give time, we are gifted with more time – or someone else’s time. If we give love, we receive love in return. This is not because there is some universal giving-Nazi in the sky monitoring us – it’s because the flow of everything can’t be obstructed or it will stop flowing.

On the minus side, fear causes contraction, and contraction interferes with flow and results in scarcity in all things. If we withhold money, love, gratitude, props, forgiveness – not only will we feel sh*tty, but we’ll experience those things being withheld from us because we’ve literally thrown a wrench of fear into the mechanism and f*cked up the gears.

As a coach and therapist, sometimes clients tell me that they deserve to be treated better by the people in their lives. When I ask how they plan to express love to those people to bring about that change, they’re like… say what now?

The ego world has taught us that we shouldn’t give unless we are certain of receiving – as an “if-then” equation, like the two are separate. People have to earn our trust, to prove their worth to us, we wait until we they make a move first – and then we give. The belief is that if we move, trust, express love, forgive first – then we’re somehow stupid, being played, or we lose.

But love doesn’t work like that.

A Course in Miracles straight-up tells us,

“Only that which you have not given can be lacking in any situation”
T-17.VII.4:1

and that

“A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct.”
T-1.VI.2:1

Word.

For many years I practiced tithing – which for me was giving 10% of my income to places where I received spiritual nourishment. It was something I loved doing, I felt like I was just giving to both Spirit and another part of myself, I was so in alignment in expressing my love and gratitude in this way – and I was in flow with it. Money, love, relationships, fun adventures, helpful circumstances, synchronicity and serendipity all came easily into my life.

But then, at some point I started to get resentful of whom and where I was tithing – it’s what the ego does if we’re not remaining conscious and aware of it. Instead of making the decision to ask for guidance, forgiving my judgments and finding another person or place with whom I was more aligned to gift, I ended up just stopping the practice. I didn’t realize it then but doing that actually adversely affected my financial abundance.

I am not suggesting that people should adopt the practice of tithing. It’s not about giving 10% of your income – but it is about seeing the relationship between giving and receiving.

The same exact thing happens when we stop giving to a relationship, which I have also experienced. We get it into our heads that someone isn’t treating us right anymore, and instead of thinking, “where am I not giving?” we see the fault in them and decide they don’t deserve our love and attention, much less our appreciation and gratitude. So we stop giving, and the relationship dries up just like the money did.

When we begin feeling we are lacking anything – money, love, appreciation, food, fun, affection, work, sex, creative stimulation, adventure, whatever – when we start giving it in whatever way we’re able or guided to, we’ll receive as we have given.

Since that time earlier in my life, when I have remembered to give whatever it is I believe I don’t have enough of, I see it pouring into my life from all directions. It’s amazing.

So, in every instance in which you’re seeing things as being other than you’d like them to be, start putting the give in forgive. Remind yourself that any thought of not enough or scarcity is originating from the ego’s fear. Let love replace this false perception. Instead of perceiving the lack in someone or something else, remind yourself that we are all interconnected as brothers and part of the same sonship. As such, there is no separation between us, and nothing that we have that another doesn’t have and vice versa.