commentary "Our Gift to God" pp 123

Our Gift to God pp 123 

Our Gift to God explains how we answer the call to teachers of God that Jesus made on page 121 in the previous message, The Ending of the Dream. The Holy Spirit is mentioned twice. If you need clarity about the Holy Spirit's role, see the special thoughts just after Lesson 280. 

The first page of The Song of Prayer says 

“2 1 To you who are in time a little while, prayer takes the form that best will suit your need. 2 You have but one. 3 What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God. 4 Prayer now must be the means by which God's Son leaves separate goals and separate interests by, and turns in holy gladness to the truth of union in his Father and himself.” 

Our Gift to God is about how we recognize oneness and share ourselves. As this message is groked and often applied, we are rising on the ladder of prayer. 

The first paragraph defines gratitude as 

love expressed in joining 

Gratitude is also central to the prayer (on page 119 in The Gifts of God book) at the end of an earlier message, The Two Gifts, where Jesus prays with us. When we pray with another we can pray with a sense of gratitude. 

Page 7 in The Song of Prayer says 

“ 7 The key to rising further still in prayer lies in this simple thought; this change of mind: 8 We go together, you and I. 2 1 Now it is possible to help in prayer, and so reach up yourself. 2 “ 

Page 124 in Our Gift to God says 

“My brother, there are many calls to you from those who lost their way and need your help in finding it again.” 

On page 14 The Song of Prayer explains about relationships: 

“5 1 What should I do for him, Your holy Son?" should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness sought. 2 The form the seeking takes you need not judge. 3 And let it not be you who sets the form in which forgiveness comes to save God's Son. 4 The light of Christ in him is his release, and it is this that answers to his call. 5 Forgive him as the Christ decides you should, and be His eyes through which you look on him, and speak for Him as well. 6 He knows the need; the question and the answer. 7 He will say exactly what to do, in words that you can understand and you can also use. 8 Do not confuse His function with your own. 9 He is the Answer. 10 You the one who hears.” 

Our Gift to God teaches us how to pray freely with another, to allow Love to help those who know not how to give. On page 125 we are encouraged to echo the Holy Spirit's saying 

“ … let me give to God your gifts for you Because His altar waits  for them in love, And He is asking  that We place them there.” 

This is the mighty force gratitude. This mighty force can be a way healing intent is fulfilled  (i. e. some of the many calls to you, may present as a sickness) as described on pages 19 and 20 where The Song of Prayer says: 

 “4 1 Is there a role for healing, then, that one can use to offer help for someone else? 2 In arrogance the answer must be "no." 3 But in humility there is indeed a place for helpers. 4 It is like the role that helps in prayer, and lets forgiveness be what it is meant to be. 5 You do not make yourself the bearer of the special gift that brings the healing. 6 You but recognize your oneness with the one who calls for help. 7 For in this oneness is his separate sense dispelled, and it is this that made him sick. 8 There is no point in giving remedy apart from where the source of sickness is, for never thus can it be truly healed. 

5 1 Healers there are, for they are Sons of God who recognize their Source, and understand that all their Source creates is one with them. 2 This is the remedy that brings relief which cannot fail. 3 It will remain to bless for all eternity. 4 It heals no part, but wholly and forever. 5 Now the cause of every malady has been revealed exactly as it is. 6 And in that place is written now the holy Word of God. 7 Sickness and separation must be healed by love and union. 8 Nothing else can heal as God established healing. 9 Without Him there is no healing, for there is no love.” 

Here on page 125, Our Gift to God also echoes Lesson 195 of the Workbook Love is the Way I Walk in Gratitude, a great read which also contains a mighty force. 

Application (gratitude) 

We cannot say how our brother is presented, perhaps 

someone sick or weak or needy or afraid or mourning a seeming loss or  feeling pain or suffering cold or suffering hunger or
walking the way of hatred  or walking the way of death (e. g. a killer). 

This is an example of using the mighty force gratitude. This usage can only be done lovingly. Among your gifts to be placed, even if the only gift, is your feeling of love for your Creator ... which grows as memory of your Oneness strengthens.  

• Ask Jesus to help you, your brother, and He to be of one mind in the place of holy joining at God's altar to His Son, the Christ 
• Remember Oneness, recall that you and your brother and Jesus are part of God's one Son, the Christ 
• Place each of your brother's “gifts” (and yours) on the altar and surrender them to Jesus
• In stillness, with gratitude, and open empty hands, allow you and your brother to receive the gifts of God and Christ. 

Comments on "The Ending of the Dream" pp 119

The Ending of the Dream pp 119

The Song of Prayer says (page 2 paragraph 5):

“Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go; a quiet time of listening and loving.”

The Ending of the Dream is about listening and loving and supports ascent on the ladder of prayer. Even so, it may not be a rapid ascent, we may focus here for awhile.

As fear diminishes we are more able to grok the truth about dreams, the illusory nature of the shabby world the collective prodigal son made. On page 120 of The Ending of the Dream Jesus alludes to the made world with an an unattractive but honest view:

“No one would hesitate to leave a dream of shock and terror, merciless decay

and sickening contortions, with despair always in sight and death not far behind,

if he believed that it were but a dream.”

We may be tempted to seek gifts within in the illusion (as described in the third paragraph on page 120) only to later see hopes become nightmares. Jesus just spoke of this a few months earlier saying (page 6 in The Song of Prayer):

“6 1 It is not easy to realize that prayers for things, for status, for human love, for external "gifts" of any kind, are always made to set up jailers and to hide from guilt. 2 These things are used for goals that substitute for God, and therefore distort the purpose of prayer. 3 The desire for them is the prayer. One need not ask explicitly. 5 The goal of God is lost in the quest for lesser goals of any kind, and prayer becomes requests for enemies. 6 The power of prayer can be quite clearly recognized even in this. 7 No one who wants an enemy will fail to find one. 8 But just as surely will he lose the only true goal that is given him. 9 Think of the cost, and understand it well. 10 All other goals are at the cost of God.”

About halfway through The Ending of the Dream (page 121), Jesus says:

“Do not be tempted. Do not fall away into the shadows and a deeper sleep ….”.

This reference to temptation is about the self deception of seeing yourself as illusion, as an emotional or physical body. When temptation happens we can choose once again … this is what Jesus taught earlier, at the end of the Text (Section VIII).

When we notice that temptation has happened, we can review the 1st two messages, The Dream of Fear and The Two Gifts and work with them for awhile (these are actually one message, split --- work with them as a pair).

On page 121 of The Ending of the Dream Jesus asks us to rise on the ladder of prayer as teachers of God:

“Salvation needs your help as well as mine. You do not answer for yourself alone. My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines ….”

Jesus' call is answered in Love as further explained in the next, Our Gift to God, message.

The Ending of the Dream message includes the mighty force stillness. Jesus explains about our divine nature and encourages us to listen, to hearken to the call of Christ.

“Be still and hear Him, for His call to you could not be more insistent nor more

dear, for it is the call of Love itself, which will not cease to speak of God to you.”

Our listening helps draw us up the ladder of prayer. Around the middle of page 122 Jesus says

“Let the dream of time be given its appointed end,

and let God's Son have mercy on himself.”

Since the messages of love are in part about healing we can notice the contrast with sickness. Pages 16 and 17 in The Song of Prayer contain a thorough consideration of sickness' cause, and says in part:

“... The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. Forgiveness must be given by a mind which understands that it must overlook all shadows on the holy face of Christ, among which sickness should be seen as one. Nothing but that; the sign of judgment made by brother upon brother, and the Son of God upon himself. For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it. ...”

Clearly, God's Son can yet be more merciful on himself.

Application of Stillness

This focus on stillness is reminiscent of Lesson 273 The stillness of the peace of God is mine.

Stillness

• Ask Jesus to to help you and he be of one mind in the place of holy joining at God's altar to His Son, the Christ.
• Remember Oneness, recall that you and Jesus are part of God’s one Son.
• In stillness, listen to the call of the Christ …. the very call to you of Love itself.

We can remain vigilant regarding fear and possibly revisit earlier messages (also, if we experience temptation or resistance). Because the circumstances of fear temptation and resistance are not uncommon, our focus on the first few messages may extend for awhile.

finding the ladder of prayer

Sometimes we feel/seem lost as if in an abyss and need to find a way out. Jesus obliges. This commentary is about the first message of love, "The Gift of Fear". 
Living this message is the 1st crucial step in the journey from only fear to always all ways love. See

https://goo.gl/JH1HmK

Jesus' last message to Helen, unadulterated

Jesus' last message of love was scribed by Helen on 4/11/78.
In 1982 the publisher printed (in a book of her poems) an embedded special message (scribed on 1/14/78) 
in the middle of the message that was later scribed on 4/11/78 
thus obscuring the special message and distorting Jesus' last message. Hence, the printed poem named "The Fathers Love" is structured this way:

some of the 4/11/78 message, the 1/14/78 message, the rest of the 4/11/78 message

So, the middle of Jesus' last printed  message contains the earlier request for all five messages of love. 

• To benefit from Jesus' messages, it helps to read them in the sequence he gave them. 

If intermingling messages was a good idea, Jesus would have given them to Helen in an intermingled way, but he did not.
Here is Jesus' last scribed message, given to Helen (and us) on 4/11/78, it's about the love that lifts you up the ladder of prayer, and a call for communion with your creator:
“There is a secret place in everyone in which God's gifts are laid, and his to Him. It is not secret to the eyes of Christ Who sees it plainly and unceasingly. Yet it is hidden to the body's eyes, and to those still invested in the world and caring for the petty gifts it gives, esteeming them and thinking they are real. Illusions' gifts will hide the secret place where God is clear as day, and Christ with Him. O let this not be secret to the world so full of sorrow so wracked with pain. You could relieve its grief and pain, and let the peace of God envelop it as does a mother rock a tired child until it sighs and slips away to rest.

Rest could be yours because of what God is. He loves you as a mother loves her child; her only one, the only love she has, her all-in-all, extension of herself, as much a part of her as breath herself. He loves you as a brother loves his own; born of one father, still as one in him, and bonded with a seal that cannot break. He loves you as a lover loves his own; his chosen one, his joy, his very life, the one he seeks when she has gone away, and brings him peace again on her return. He loves you as a father loves his son, without whom would his self be incomplete, whose immortality completes his own, for in him is the chain of love complete- a golden circle that will never end, a song that will be sung throughout all time and after-wards, and always will remain the deathless sound of loving and of love.

O be at peace, beloved of the Lord! What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love? What is your purpose here but to recall into His loving Arms the Son He loves, who has forgotten Who his Father is? What is your only goal, your only hope, your only need, the only thing you want, but to allow the secret place of peace to burst upon the world in all its joy, and let the Voice within it speak of Him whose love shines out and in and in-between, through all the darkened places, to embrace all living things within its golden peace?

You are my Son, and I do not forget the secret place in which I still abide, knowing you will remember. Come, My Son, open your heart and let me shine on you, and on the world through you. You are My light and dwelling place. You speak for me to those who have forgotten. Call them now to Me My Son, remember now for all the world. I call in love, as you will answer me, for this the only language that we know. Remember love, so near you cannot fail to touch its heart because it beats in you.

Do not forget. Do not forget, My child. Open the door before the hidden place, and let me blaze upon a world made glad in sudden ecstasy. I come, I come. Behold Me. I am here for I am You; in Christ, for Christ, My Own beloved Son, the glory of the infinite, the joy of Heaven and the holy peace of earth, returned to Christ and from His hand to Me. Say now Amen, My Son, for it is done. The secret place is now open at last.

Forget all things except My changeless love.

Forget all things except that I am here.”

Where can the messages of love be found?

Beginning on 2/8/78, a few months after scribing The Song of Prayer, Helen Schucman, Ph.D. scribed five messages of love.

 

These messages of love apply what had been given earlier because

God's Son can yet be more merciful on himself.

I remain grateful for the Love that inspires those messages and the collaboration that brings them to our attention.

The Gifts of God Poem

How five messages of love were published as a poem entitled The Gifts of God is described in the Absence from Felicity biography of Helen, especially Chapters 14 and 15.

• The messages of love are published as
  “a long blank verse poem in five sections printed in prose form”. (say what?)
• Section five of the long blank verse poem is not as scribed (this will be explained in a different post).

The messages of love are at the end of Helen's book of poems, on pages 115-128. The book of poems is also entitled The Gifts of God. How confusing. The message scribing dates, poem sections, and pages in the poetry book are

2/8/78 The Dream of Fear pp 115

2/9/78 The Two Gifts pp 118

2/11/78 The Ending of the Dream pp 119

early 3/78 Our Gift to God pp 123

4/11/78 The Father's Love pp 127

These messages of love are an application of The Song of Prayer addressed to (Helen 1st) everyday people. It is helpful (but not necessary) to be familiar with The Song of Prayer booklet before trying to grok the messages of love. The messages of love lie along the ladder of prayer in this way

upper rungs Our Gift to God and The Father's Love

rising on the ladder of prayer The Ending of the Dream

lower rungs The Dream of Fear and The Two Gifts

The messages of love differ in form from ACIM, for example the word ego and the word miracle do not appear in the messages, nor do they appear in The Song of Prayer as scribed. These messages help us live the song of prayer, they strengthen our faith and holds us up as we “ascend the shining stairway to the lawns of Heaven and the gate of peace”.

Almost every reader is dying, it's the often slow process on earth called life. These messages of love are a specific help for

the dying, the sick, the sad, the lonely, the grieving, those racked with pain,
each frightened voice that calls to God in whispered agony.

The same set of messages is germane to both circumstances (dying and sick) because, as explained in the section The Picture of Crucifixion (Text Chapter 27):

Sickness is but a “little” death; a form of vengeance not yet total.

Since sickness is a defense against the truth, we see in these messages, how Jesus presents truth in a simple gradual effective and persistent manner, to benefit all, especially those who call in sorrow.

a helping hand extends

On 1//14/78 Jesus overtly began hospice care for Helen in what was described as a special message. There, Jesus says “messages of love” are needed, and they begin arriving on 2/8/78. The training provided here is for the everyday person (no mention of terms that enriched her prior scribings, ... miracles, ego, psychology) and Helen.

• These messages of love help you be kind to yourself and are addressed to all those who call to God in sorrow - specifically, any of:  the dying, the sick, the sad, the lonely, the grieving, those racked with pain, each frightened voice that calls to God in whispered agony.

Here is what Helen scribed on 1/14. A few related posts (explanatory) may follow.