Day 108: To give and to receive are one in truth.

Today's lesson in A Course in Miracles confirms what was discussed in Day 106:

To give and to receive are one in truth.
I will receive what I am giving now.

We begin today's hourly meditations with the statement above.  We are then told to close our eyes and take five minutes to offer gifts to the world.  For instance, we may say the following:

To everyone I offer Strength.
To everyone I offer Joy.
To everyone I offer Love.

The Course adds:

Say each one slowly and then pause a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave.  And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it.  You will find you have exact return, for that is what you asked.  It might be helpful, too, to think of one to whom to give your gifts.  He represents the others, and through him you give to all.

This exercise was particularly powerful for me.  It puts into practice the true concept of giving and receiving as a simultaneous action.  In Day 106 I mentioned that when we are in the unified place of giving and receiving, we are an Open Channel: "Anything given us by God is then immediately extended to everyone else.  As they receive it, so does God, and so it is given back to us."

I encourage you to give this a try.  Even if you don't believe you possess what it is you are giving, you will find that your intention to offer it to the world will open you up to receive it from God.

During the meditations today, I experienced what I can only describe as "warm chills."  It was like a shiver coming from within and radiating out through my skin, only it was warm and blissful and felt absolutely wonderful.  The greater I felt this, the more I was able to send what I was giving out into the world, which then returned back to me and magnified the feeling even more.  In these moments I was truly a conduit for the gifts of God.  If I was wishing Joy upon the world, I may have pictured college kids returning home to their mothers' tender embrace, or elderly people chuckling as they played a game of cards, or poor children in South Africa laughing as they danced barefoot on the soil.  These images would conjure the feeling of Joy within me, and I would then envision this feeling flowing outward like a great wave as it blanketed the entire world in it.  As I did this, my heart would seem to swell, and the warm chills I described would fill my insides and extend through my body and into the wave of Joy I saw in my mind.

You have nothing to lose in giving this a try, and absolutely everything to gain.

Let us return to this profound meditation if we ever feel that we are lacking any of God's great Gifts.  These are not to be confused with gifts of the material world, for these operate under a different principle entirely, and one with which we need not concern ourselves.  From God come the gifts of the Real world, which overcome any dramas we perceive here on earth.  Whether it be Love, Joy, Strength, Peace, Safety or Abundance, know that it is yours as soon as you offer it upon the world.  Such is God's Law of giving and receiving.  And such are You, the Blessed Conduit from which His Gifts flow.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman