[acimlessons_list] LESSON 108 - April 18

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 108 - April 18

"To give and to receive are one in truth."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

Purpose: to offer peace to everyone and feel peace return to you. To thereby
learn the unity of cause and effect-that giving (cause) and receiving
(effect) are the same.

Longer: every hour on the hour, for 5 minutes (if you cannot do this, at
least do the alternate)

*  Say, "To give and to receive are one in truth. I will receive what I am
giving now."
*  Close your eyes and offer everyone those inner states and qualities that
you would like to receive. Say, for example: "To everyone I offer peace of
mind. To everyone I offer gentleness." "Say each one slowly, and then pause
a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave" (9:1). Trust it to come
back in the amount that you gave. You may want to single out one person as
the one you give your gifts to, understanding that through giving to him you
give to everyone.

Frequent reminders: often
Repeat the idea, realizing that each repetition makes your learning "faster
and more sure" (10:3).

Encouragement to practice: Try to think of today's exercises as "quick
advances in your learning" (10:3), revealing to you the nature of cause and
effect, and heightening the speed of your progress.

COMMENTARY

The early part of the lesson describes the state of one-mindedness, where
all opposites have been resolved into "one concept which is wholly true"
(1:3). When that occurs, the concept will disappear because "the Thought
behind it will appear instead to take its place. And now you are at peace
forever, for the dream is over then" (1:4-5). This is Heaven; attaining this
state is beyond the scope of the Course. But it is our eventual goal, a
place where perception and concepts have vanished, and only knowledge
remains.

That "state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be
perceived at all" (2:2) is within me. It is the Christ mind, and from it
comes my peace of mind; from it comes single perception. It is this I call
upon or tap into, drawing it into myself until it takes me over. It is where
I am always and what I am forever, but which I have forgotten.

One of the best and 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 are not truly opposite at all; they are part of a unified
spectrum of reality. Neither precedes the other; both occur together.
Through actual experience with this particular example of the resolution of
opposites we can begin to learn how all opposites are reconciled.

We can produce an experience of this resolution at will. It is an experiment
that always works.

Sit quietly, and mentally begin to send peace to everyone. Think of specific
persons, and say to them in your mind, "I offer you quietness. I offer you
peace of mind. I offer you gentleness" (8:6-8). Go through your list of
friends and relations mentally, sending peace to each and every one of them.
Offer it to the world at large.

What we find as we do this is that, as we offer peace to others, we
experience it ourselves. Quite literally, what we give, we receive.
Immediately. There is no pause, no delay for feedback. Our act of giving is
quite literally also an act of receiving. There is one act and it contains
both things, because there are not two things, only one.

The generalization of this lesson is that "Cause and effect are one in
truth" (my interpretation of 10:2-3). It leads us to realize that my thought
of attack on another is literally an attack on myself, at that very moment.
We think of cause and effect in a linear fashion, as if what I do today will
impact on me tomorrow and 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 thoughts offering peace immediately make me peaceful. Thought and
action are likewise the same. I am constantly sourcing the universe of my
experience. In reality, there is nothing outside my mind, nothing but these
thoughts. The world we see is just our thought given form. It has never left
our mind in truth.