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¹ God's peace and joy are yours. Today we will accept them, knowing they belong to us. And we will try to understand these gifts increase as we receive them. They are not like to the gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as he gives the gift; the taker is the richer by his loss. These are not gifts, but bargains made with guilt.

² The truly given gift entails no loss. It is impossible that one can gain because another loses. This implies a limit and an insufficiency. No gift is given thus. Such "gifts" are but a bid for a more valuable return—a loan with interest to be paid in full; a temporary lending, meant to be a pledge of debt to be repaid with more than was received by him who took the gift.

³ This strange distortion of what giving means pervades all levels of the world you see. It strips all meaning from the gifts you give and leaves you nothing in the ones you take. A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. For giving has become a source of fear, and so you would avoid the only means by which you can receive.

⁴ Accept God's peace and joy, and you will learn a different way of looking at a gift. God's gifts will never lessen when they are given away. They but increase thereby. As Heaven's peace and joy intensify when you accept them as God's gift to you, so does the joy of your Creator grow when you accept His joy and peace as yours.

⁵ True giving is creation. It extends the limitless to the unlimited, eternity to timelessness, and love unto itself. It adds to all that is complete already, not in simple terms of adding more, for that implies that it was less before. It adds by letting what cannot contain itself fulfill its aim of giving everything it has away, securing it forever for itself.

⁶ Today accept God's peace and joy as yours. Let Him complete Himself as He defines completion. You will understand that what completes Him must complete His Son as well. He cannot give through loss. No more can you. Receive His gift of joy and peace today, and He will thank you for your gift to Him.

⁷ Today our practice periods will start a little differently. Begin today by thinking of those brothers who have been denied by you the peace and joy that are their right under the equal laws of God. Here you denied them to yourself. And here you must return to claim them as your own. Think of your "enemies" a little while, and tell each one as he occurs to you:

⁸ My brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may have God's peace and joy as mine.

⁹ Thus you prepare yourself to recognize God's gifts to you and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today. Now are you ready to accept the gift of peace and joy which God has given you. Now are you ready to experience the joy and peace you have denied yourself. Now you can say, "God's peace and joy are mine," for you have given what you would receive.

¹⁰ You must succeed today if you prepare your mind as we suggest, for you have let all bars to peace and joy be lifted up, and what is yours can come to you at last. So tell yourself "God's peace and joy are mine," and close your eyes a while, and let His Voice assure you that the words you speak are true.

¹¹ Spend your five minutes thus with Him each time you can today, but do not think that less is worthless when you cannot give Him more. At least remember hourly to say the words which call on Him to give you what He wills to give and wills you to receive.

¹² Determine not to interfere today with what He wills. And if a brother seems to tempt you to deny God's gift to him, see it as but another chance to let yourself receive the gifts of God as yours. Then bless your brother thankfully, and say:

¹³ My brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may have God's peace and joy as mine.

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Chapter 9

V. The Awareness of the Holy Spirit

par 31-37

³¹ How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy, and others react to you with joy even though you are not experiencing joy yourself, there must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself.

³² It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in you only because you do not consistently arouse joy in others. Their reactions to you are your evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent, you will not always give rise to joy and so you will not always recognize His consistency. What you offer to your brother, you offer to Him because He cannot go beyond your offering in His giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply because you have limited your receiving. The will to receive is the will to accept.

³³ If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, and your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them, you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them, it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Every Soul God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is.

³⁴ God is more than you only because He created you, but not even this would He keep from you. Therefore you can create as He did, and your dissociation will not alter this. Neither God's light nor yours is dimmed because you do not see. Because the Sonship must create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to your wholeness because each part is whole. Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your wholeness until you see it everywhere. You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in Him you will know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as yours, but meanwhile you will judge it as you judge your brothers' and will accept it as you accept theirs.

³⁵ You are not yet awake, but you can learn how to awaken. Very simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken, you will learn what waking means, and because you have willed to wake them, their gratitude and their appreciation of what you have given them will teach you its value. They will become the witnesses to your reality, as you were created witnesses to God's. Yet when the Sonship comes together and accepts its oneness, it will be known by its creations, who witness to its reality as the Son does to the Father.

³⁶ Miracles have no place in eternity because they are reparative. Yet while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witnesses to your reality which you can recognize. You cannot perform a miracle for yourself because miracles are a way of giving acceptance and receiving it. In time, the giving comes first, though they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot be separated. When you have learned that they are the same, the need for time is over.

³⁷ Eternity is one time, its only dimension being "always." This cannot mean anything to you, however, until you remember God's open arms and finally know His open Mind. Like Him, you are "always"-in His mind and with a mind like His. In your open mind are your creations, in perfect communication born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you would not want anything the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless. God's meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your creations. Accept your brother in this world and accept nothing else, for in him you will find your creations, because he created them with you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with you.

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Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.”

One of his most popular books is: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.