Principle 9: Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver. (T-1.I.9)

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A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. Unless your mind and heart are open to give, you will also be closed to receiving. as it goes both ways. Accept only 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. (W-105.3:1,3-5)

God’s infinite peace and joy are yours. Today we will accept them, knowing they belong to us. And we will learn to understand these gifts increase as we receive them. They are not like the finite gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as he gives the gift and the taker is the richer by his loss. Such are not gifts, but bargains made with guilt. The truly given gift entails no loss. With God, it is impossible that one can gain because another loses. That would imply a limit and an insufficiency. (W-105.1.1-8)

Miracles, expressions of love, are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as (not more) blessed to give as to receive. Miracles simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver. The benefit is actually shared between giver and receiver and also among all God’s Sons in the universe through the ripple effect. The miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they otherwise have been. (T-1.II.6.3-4) Therefore, the miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of the perfect equality of the giver and the receiver on which the miracle rests.

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. True giving, then, is creation. (W-105.4:1-2) The Bringer of all miracles has need that you receive them first, and thus become the joyous giver of what you received. So today we are given to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. As you receive God’s gifts, it is impossible not to give or share them, as they are universal. Think of it like this: If you are standing in the light, as your brother nears you, he also is standing in the light. God’s gifts ARE light, so it is impossible not to share them.

Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. God offers you the continuity of a joyous eternity in exchange for guilt. When you choose this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, fear for love, and pain for peace. There is no sacrifice except the sacrifice of fear, and is that really a "sacrifice" for the Son of God? Fear may have rested upon you for a while, but it was never "yours"!

Anyone who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice, for you give but to yourself. Gifts are not made through bodies, nor are they given by bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out nor take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and give. (T-20.II.2:1-3) You not only give as you receive you also give what you would receive. We all share the same mind, and only minds give. Giving is universal, it is not individual. It cannot be otherwise, because God has only one Son, who is YOU.

Christ’s vision is the miracle in which all miracles are born. It is their source, remaining with each miracle you give, and yet remaining yours. For example, as you give light, you still retain the light as it is only shared by extension; it is not lost. It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth, as they are one in Heaven. (W-159) From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. And as you give to your brother, God gives you His blessing and His thanks, which add to the brightness of the gifts.

It is not the function of God’s teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them. Once they have done that, they have also given the outcome, for that is part of the gift. No one can give if he is concerned with the result of giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift in that situation. The giver must let go of concern when giving. Trust is an essential part of giving; in fact, it is the part that makes sharing possible, the part that guarantees the giver will not lose, but only gain. Who gives a gift and then remains with it to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate? That is not giving; it is imprisoning for the giver and the receiver. (M-6)

It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. And it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in his brother’s mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How, then, can it not be given completely when God is the giver and the gift? God’s treasure house can never be empty. Its fullness is guaranteed by God. If your treasure house can never be empty, and in fact is always full, and the more you give the fuller your treasure house becomes, then giving cannot be considered to be losing, can it?

So, give gladly. You can only gain thereby. Thought remains and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they cannot be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains and another who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in the form most helpful to him. What you may seem to lose is always something you will value less than what will surely be returned to you. (W-187.5:1-8) 

Remember that when you give what will help your brother, you will receive what is most helpful to you, in the form that it will best serve you and in the perfect time and way according to the perfect purpose of the Holy Spirit. As you give, all is given you, so give in the true spirit of release and trust as guided by spirit.

Son of God, the truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him. You do not want anything else. Return your part to Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for the return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete, and that is YOU who know GOD IS.