THE GIFTS OF GOD

Contents

The Dream of Fear

The Two Gifts

The Ending of the Dream

Our Gift to God

The Father’s Love

The Dream of Fear

Fear is the one emotion of the world. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content. Never far, even in form, from what its purpose is, never with power to escape its cause, and never but a counterfeit of joy, it rests uncertainly upon a bed of lies. Here it was born and sheltered by its seeming comfort. Here it will remain where it was born, and where its end will come. For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned its seeming life has any meaning in the Mind of God.

If you were certain - wholly sure and with consistent grasp of what the world can give - fear would be laid aside as easily as joy and peace unite on love’s behalf. But first there must be certainty that there can be no love where fear exists, and that the world will never give a gift which is not made of fear, concealed perhaps, but which is surely present somewhere in the gift. Accept it not, and you will understand a gift far greater has been given you.

Let not the world deceive you. It was made to be deception. Yet its snares can be so easily escaped a little child can walk through safely, and without a care that would arrest its progress. Dreams are dreams, and every one is equally untrue. This is the only lesson to be learned. Yet will fear linger until every one is recognized as nothingness, and seen exactly as it is and nothing more. There is no person, thing or circumstance that you can value as your own without the “gift” of fear arising in your heart. For you have seen them all as they are not, and love for them has fled as if from you. And you will think that God has ceased to care for you who have betrayed the Son He loves, and chosen fear and guilt in place of Him.

Does God deceive or does the world? For it is sure that one must be. There is no point at which their thoughts agree, their gifts unite in kind or purpose. What you take from one the other will obscure. There is no hope of compromise in this. Nor can there be a shifting of the mind between the two without the fear that every dream must bring. How fearful it must be to see yourself a maker of reality and truth, the lord of destiny and time’s domain, and arbiter appointed for the world.

Dreams never change. Remember only this, but do not let it slip away at times and let yourself give way to fear again. Deny the dream but do not fail the truth, for only what is true will never fail. All else deceives. All else will terrify, and even when it seems to please the most it brings with it a heavy cost of pain. Be free of suffering now. There is no cost for any gift that comes to you from God. His way is certain, for His gifts remain forever as He gave them. Do not think that fear can enter where His gifts abide. But do not think gifts can be received where fear has entered, and has touched your sight with gross distortions that the world thinks real.

There are no scraps of dreams. Each one contains the whole of fear, the opposite of love, the hell that hides the memory of God, the crucifixion of His holy Son. Therefore, be vigilant against them all, for in their single purpose they are one, and hell is total. It can seem to take forever for this lesson to be learned, and yet it need not be. I come to speak in time of timelessness. Have you not learned the pain of dreaming yet? There is no need to hug it to your heart, and to forget the dreadful cost of salvaging despair and building up deceptions once again.

The tiniest of dreams, the smallest wish for values of the world is large enough to stand between you and the sweet release that God would offer you. He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you. Yet it is certain you will turn to Him and suddenly remember. But be sure of this and do not let it slip away: What God has joined is one. And one as well is everything that fear has made to be the great deceiver and the substitute for God’s creation. You can choose but one, and which you choose is total. Everything the world can offer promises some joy that it will never give. And everything that God has promised you will never fail in anything. No need will be unmet, no hurt unhealed, no sorrow kept unchanged, no darkness undispelled. The smallest pain will vanish suddenly before His gifts. An unremembered world will leave no trace behind its going, when God’s gifts have been accepted as the only things you want.

“Choose once again” is still your only hope. Darkness cannot conceal the gifts of God unless you want it so. In peace I come, and urge you now to make an end to time and step into eternity with me. There will not be a change that eyes can see, nor will you disappear from things of time. But you will hold my hand as you return because we come together. Now the hosts of Heaven come with us, to sweep away all vestiges of dreams and every thought that rests on nothingness. How dear are you to God, Who asks but that you walk with me and bring His light into a sickened world which fear has drained of love and life and hope.

Surely you will not fail to hear my call, for I have never failed to hear your cries of pain and grief, and I have come to save and to redeem the world at last from fear. It never was, nor is, nor yet will be what you imagine. Let me see for you, and judge for you what you would look upon. When you have seen with me but once, you would no longer value any fearful thing at cost of glory and the peace of God.

This is my offering: A quiet world, with gentle ordering and kindly thought, alive with hope and radiant in joy, without the smallest bitterness of fear upon its loveliness. Accept this now, for I have waited long to give this gift to you. I offer it in place of fear and all the “gifts” that fear has given you. Can you choose otherwise, when all the world is standing breathless, waiting on your choice? Come now to me and we will go to God. There is no way that we can go alone. But when we come together there can be no way in which the Word of God can fail. For His the Word that makes us one in Him, and mine the Voice that speaks this Word to you.

The Two Gifts

How can you be delivered from all gifts the world has offered you? How can you change these little, cruel offerings for those that Heaven gives and God would have you keep? Open your hands, and give all things to me that you have held against your holiness and kept as slander on the Son of God. Practice with every one you recognize as what it is. Give me these worthless things the instant that you see them through my eyes and understand their cost. Then give away these bitter dreams as you perceive them now to be but that, and nothing more than that.

I take them from you gladly, laying them beside the gifts of God that He has placed upon the altar to His Son. And these I give to you to take the place of those you give to me in mercy on yourself. These are the gifts I ask, and only these. For as you lay them by, you reach to me, and I can come as savior then to you. The gifts of God are in my hands, to give to anyone who would exchange the world for Heaven. You need only call my name and ask me to accept the gift of pain from willing hands that would be laid in mine, with thorns laid down and nails long thrown away as one by one the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished.

In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth. I take them all from you and they are gone. And shining in the place where once they stood there is a gateway to another world through which we enter in the Name of God.

Father, we thank You for these gifts that we have found together. Here we are redeemed. For it is here we joined, and from thus place of holy joining we will come to You because we recognize the gifts You gave and would have nothing else. Each hand that finds its way to mine will take Your gifts from me, and as we look together on the place whereon I laid your worthless gifts for you, we will see nothing but the gifts of God reflected in the shining round our heads.

Holy are we who know our holiness, for it is You Who shine Your light on us, and we are thankful, in Your ancient Name, that You have not forgotten. What we thought we made of You has merely disappeared, and with its going are the images we made of Your creation gone as well. And it is finished. For we now commend into Your Hands the spirit of Your Son who seemed to lose his way a little while but never left the safety of Your Love. The gifts of fear, the dream of death, are done. And we give thanks. And we give thanks, Amen.

The Ending of the Dream

Illusions are made as substitutes for truth, for which no substitutes are possible. Creator separate from creation was the first illusion, where all gifts of fear were born. For now creation could not be like its Creator, Who could never leave what He Himself created part of Him. Now must there be a substitute for love, which cannot have an opposite in truth and, being all, can have no substitute.

So fear was made, and with it came the need for gifts to lend the substance to a dream in which there is no substance. Now the dream seems to have value, for its offerings appear as hope and strength and even love, if only for an instant. They content the frightened dreamer for a little while, and let him not remember the first dream which gifts of fear but offer him again. The seeming solace of illusions’ gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking. For before he could awaken, he would first be forced to call to mind the first dream once again.

It is not God Who asks a price of him, but having drawn a veil across the truth, he now must let the veil be drawn away so that its lack of substance can be seen. 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. Yet if he thinks that he must first go through a greater terror still, he must see hope in what will now appear the “better” dream.

And now he seeks within his dream to find what gifts it may contain. What can you get within its shadows? Who can save you now by giving you the love you threw away? What can you learn to do to make yourself a master over others? What is there that is your special gift within the dream? Find these and do not waken from the dream, for it can give you what you think you lack. But if you waken, all its gifts will go, your armor and your sword will disappear, and vultures, always circling overhead, will claim you as their lawful prey at last.

O children of the Father you forgot, you have not put your idols in His place, nor made Him give the gifts of fear you made. Let me be Savior from illusions. Truth may be concealed from you by evil dreams, but it is only from the dreams that you have need from saving. Truth is still untouched by your deceptions. Yet you cannot go past that first dream without a Savior’s hand in yours. Each gift of fear would hold you back unless you let me lift it from your mind by showing you that it is but a dream within a larger dream of hopelessness in which there is no hope. Take not its gifts, for they condemn you to a lasting hell which will endure when all the seeming joy the gifts appeared to give have passed away.

Do not be tempted. Do not fall away into the shadows and a deeper sleep in which the waking seems to be the dream. Help me give you salvation. Let us share the strength of Christ and look upon the dream in which illusions started, and which serve to keep their birthplace secret and apart from the illumination of the truth. Come unto me. There is no need to dream of an escape from dreaming. It will fail. For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible and there would be no hope except illusions. Do not yield to this. It is not so. For I am not a dream that comes in mockery. Salvation needs your help as well as mine. Do not forget 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, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever. Could a gift be holier than this? And could the need within a world of dreams be more acute or more compelling? Give me help in this, and not one gift the world may seek to give, nor one illusion held against the truth, can bind you longer. Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal and give the gifts that you accept of me.

How joyful and how holy is our way when death has no dominion, and the dream of separation, agony and loss has been dispelled forever. Do not think that anything the gifts of fear hold out is worth an instant’s hesitation, when the gate of Heaven stands before you and the Christ of God is waiting your return. Be still and hear Him, for His call to you could not be more insistent nor more dear, for it is but the call of Love itself, which will not cease to speak of God to you. You have forgot. But He is faithful still, because He is so like His Father He remembers Him forever in His Love. And He cannot forget creation is inseparable from Creator, so He understands that you are part of God and of the Son created like Himself.

How dear are you, a part of Christ in Whom is every gift of God forever laid, without which is He incomplete, Who is completion of His Father. Can a dream destroy a truth so holy and so pure that it encompasses all truth, and leaves nothing beyond itself? Can you betray a love so perfect that its gifts become itself in oneness, and this single gift is all there is to give and to receive? 0 come and let creation be again all that it always was and still will be forever and forever. Let the dream of time be given its appointed end, and let God’s Son have mercy on himself.

There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to own is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based. Beyond the dream, reaching to everything, embracing all, creation and Creator still remain in perfect harmony and perfect love. This is beyond the gate at which we stand. And shall we stay to wait upon a dream?

Your holiness is mine, and mine is God’s. Here is His gift, complete and undefiled. It is Himself He gives, and it is this that is the truth in you. How beautiful are you who stand beside me at the gate, and call with me that everyone may come and step aside from time. Put out your hand to touch eternity and disappear into its perfect rest. Here is the peace that God intended for the Son He loves. Enter with me and let its quietness cover the earth forever. It is done. Father, your Voice has called us home at last: Gone is the dream. Awake, My child, in love.

Our Gift to God

There is no gift of faith that God does not accept with gratitude. He loves His Son. And as He gives His gifts to him, so is He grateful for the gifts His Son gives Him. Gratitude is the song of Heaven’s gift, the single harmony that is sung by all creation at one with its Creator. For gratitude is love expressed in joining; the necessary precondition for extension and the prerequisite for peace. And who can be in conflict and love God?

We have discussed the gifts of God to you. Now we must also speak of those that you can give to Him. For these complete His giving, as it is His to you that make you whole. Giving is joy and holiness and healing. Here is your answer to the world, and God’s as well. For here it is you join with Him, His likeness being yours in this alone.

How can you give to Him Who has no lack, no emptiness, no need, no unlit place which needs a light that you can offer Him? He saves your gifts for you. He does not know of giving and receiving. What is love, or comes from love, or offers love a gift, is one to Him because it is of Him. To Him and from Him are not different to One Who has no opposite. For love is all there is and everything there is. A gift to love is given everyone, not lessening the giver, nor in truth adding to the receiver. More than love there cannot be. But this a gift becomes if it is truly given and received by both to both who know that they are one: A key to silence and the peace of God, a glad acknowledgment of love of Christ, a greeting to the Holy Spirit’s help, an invitation that He enter in and lift the Son of God unto Himself.

What more would God hold dearer, then, than this? These are His gifts as much as they are yours, for in them giver and receiver join. A gift is holy only when there is no sense at all of who will gain thereby, and not a shadow of a thought of loss. It is not easy in the world to know what giving means, and how to give a gift that God and all creation will accept as shining outward from a thankful heart and inward to the altar of its God.

God gives the grace to give as He must give, for He must give the only way He knows, and what He knows is everything He is. Christ gives as He does, being like Himself. And nothing stands outside the gifts They give, for every gift is all encompassing and lifts the universe into Their Arms.

Yet what of you who seem to be on earth, and do not understand what giving is because you have forgotten what love means? What gifts are there that you can give to God? My brother, there are many calls to you from those who lost their way and need your help in finding it again. It seems to you that you are helping them if you respond to what they ask and what you think they need. Yet it is always God Who calls to you, and he who asks your help is but yourself. Who is the giver and receiver then? Who asks the gift and who is given it?

This is the only lesson that the world must teach in giving. It is not the one the world was made to teach. And yet it is the one the Holy Spirit sees in it, and so it is the only one it has. Forget the other devastating ways the gifts of earth are given and received. Forget the cost, the thoughts of loss and gain, the bargaining, the counting of the score, the world associates with every gift it gives in strict accordance with its laws. The money-changers of the marketplace have been your teachers. Now they need a gift they could not give. Be savior now to them because you have another Teacher now.

Count not the cost of giving. There is none. Your teachers have deceived. But do not think that their mistakes were not your own as well. To all who do not understand the gifts of God and Christ are one, be yours the voice that echoes what the Voice for God would say:

“Save Me, My brother, as you save yourself, And 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.”

There is no love but God’s; no gift but His. We but return His Own unto Himself. But as we do, He comes to call His Son from the far country where he threw away the memory of all his Father’s gifts, and ask him to return again to Him.

Child of Eternal Love, what gift is there your Father wants of you except yourself? And what is there that you would rather give, for what is there that you would rather have? You have forgotten Who you really are. What but that memory is dear to you? What trifling gifts made out of sickly fear and evil dreams of suffering and death can be the substitute you really want for the remembrance of Christ in you? In the far country you were lost indeed, but you were not forgotten. Hear the call of love to love, by love, in love to you, and rise with love beside you to return the gift of love that God has given you, and you have given Him in gratitude.

Do not forget the Source of what you are, and do not think He has forgotten you. Love does not waver, and does not forget the gift it gives that it would have you keep. Return them, then, for it is dark indeed in the far country, where God’s memory has seemed to disappear. Yet Christ has come wherever you have gone. For you are His, and being His you are His Father’s, too. He brings with Him the gifts His Father gave, and giving them to you He teaches you how to return them in the way He gives. Light knows no limit; love no lessening. Return, My child, to Me. For Christ is He Who is My Son and you are one with Him. You are My gift, for you are one with Me.

The Father’s Love

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. 0 let this not be secret to the world so full of sorrow and so racked with pain. You could relieve its grief and heal its 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 itself. 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 afterwards, 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?

The night is dark but it will have an end. Be comforted with this: No one I send to help you reach the goal will fail to stand beside you till your kingdom is secure. The promises of God are given you. What could be surer? There is help indeed for one so near to Heaven. There is change in everything but this; whom He has called and who has answered Him as you have done can rest in peace upon His loving Arm, and trust His gratitude and thankful Heart to beat for yours when yours appears to fail.

Do not imagine He will leave His child who heard His Voice and listened to His Word. Remember this: The thanks of God are yours and will not leave you comfortless for long. You still are needed in the world, to hear His Voice and share His messages of love with those who call in sorrow. Could it be that you will fail to find Him, when His need for you becomes as great as yours for Him? You need not fear that you will suffer loss, nor that He will abandon you who gave His comfort to His Son. Receive the gift you gave to God and He would give to you.

Trust Him Whose Voice you heard, and do not think He does not hear your frightened voice that calls in whispered agony. You will be raised from terror to the shining peace of God. The way seems thorny and beset with grief, yet it is certain as the Love of God which cannot fail. It holds you up, and so you cannot fail because it shines in you. Faith will be yours because His faith in you is limitless. Do not despair of Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love; Who knows your need and watches over you in everything with ceaseless vigilance.

Do not forget His thanks, and understand the gratitude of God goes far beyond all things the world can offer, for His Gifts will last forever in His Heart and ours. Be thankful for His Love and for His care, for in this world it has been given few to give a gift to God as you have done. Yet only few are needed. They suffice for all the rest, and they give thanks to you along with their Creator and with yours. He is not careless of the gifts He gives, nor are His promises in vain. Be sure a mother does not fail the son she loves, nor will a Father cast away His child.

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 open now at last. Forget all things except My changeless Love. Forget all things except that I am here.

The Gifts of God prose poem is a supplement to A Course in Miracles, scribed by Helen Schucman in the same manner as A Course in Miracles. Published as part of her book of poetry “The Gifts of God”. Copyright© by the Foundation for Inner Peace P.O. Box 598, Mill Valley, CA 94942-0598 USA.