I Can Only Earn My Own Gratitude.
1. This is the second step in releasing your mind from the belief in a force outside yourself that opposes your own.
²You try to be kind and forgiving.
³Yet you do not hesitate to attack unless others respond with gratitude and shower you with thanks.
⁴If they do not honor your gifts, you withdraw them.
⁵And so you believe that the Gifts of God are, at best, loans, and at worst, traps to lull you into lowering your guard so that when He strikes, He can destroy you.I
2. How easily do those confuse God with guilt who are unaware of what their own thoughts can do! II
²Deny your strength, and you will believe that weakness is your salvation.
³See yourself as captive, and you will live in a prison.
⁴And you will not escape or reclaim your strength as long as you confuse guilt with salvation, and fail to understand that salvation is truly joined with freedom, and brings strength with it.
⁵That is why freedom and strength are what you must seek, claim, find, and fully recognize.
3. The world will thank you for releasing it from your illusions.
²But you must also rejoice, for its release can only mirror your own.
³What you give requires only your gratitude to become the lasting offering of a grateful heart that has been freed from hell forever.III
⁴Is this what you would undo by withdrawing your gifts because they were not appreciated?
⁵You are the one who must honor them and give thanks for them as they deserve, for you are the one who receives what you give.
4. It does not matter if another believes your gifts have no value.
²There is a part of his mind that joins with yours to give you thanks.
³It does not matter if your gifts seem to be lost or to have served no purpose.
⁴Wherever they are given, they are surely received.
⁵Your gratitude guarantees they have been universally accepted, and the Heart of God Himself acknowledges them with thanks.
⁶Would you withdraw them, knowing that God has received them with gratitude?
5. God blesses every gift you give, and everything you give, you give to Him, for you can only give to yourself.
²And what belongs to you, who are of God, must also be His.
³But if you give and then withdraw what you have given, you will never understand that His Gifts are safe, eternal, changeless, and without limit; that they give endlessly, extend Love, and increase your everlasting joy.
6. If you withdraw what you have given, you will think that what has been given to you can also be taken away.
²But learn to let forgiveness remove the sins you think you see outside yourself, and you will never again believe that God lends you His Gifts only to take them back at death.
³Learn this, and death will cease to have meaning for you.
⁴And with the end of that belief, fear is gone forever.
⁵Give thanks to your Self for this, for He gives thanks only to God, and gives thanks to Himself on your behalf.
⁶Christ will come to all living things, for all live and breathe in Him.IV
⁷His Self dwells safely in His Father, for Their Will is One.
⁸The gratitude They feel for all They have created has no end, for gratitude remains a part of Love.
7. Thanks to you, holy Son of God, for in being created you contain all things within your Self.
²You remain as God created you.
³And you cannot dim the light of your perfection.
⁴Your heart also holds the Heart of God.
⁵He holds you in high esteem, for you are His very Self.
⁶You are worthy of all gratitude for what you are.
8. Give thanks as you receive it.
²Do not be ungrateful to your brother, who completes your Self.
³For no one is excluded from your Self.
⁴Give thanks for all the countless channels through which this Self extends.
⁵Everything you give is received by Him.
⁶Everything you think can only be His Thoughts, for you share with your Self the holy Thoughts of God.
⁷Now reclaim the gratitude you denied yourself when you forgot the function God gave you.
⁸And never think that He has ceased to give thanks to you.
I Here Jesus continues the direct and uncompromising line begun in the previous lesson. If before He told you that every attack is directed against yourself, today He reminds you that every true expression of gratitude can also come only from you. You are the sole author of your well-being, the sole agent of your peace, the sole one responsible for your gratitude. This is the other side of the coin: you are not only the one who crucifies yourself—you are also the one who sets yourself free.
And how do you free yourself? By being grateful to yourself—by giving thanks for the inner choices you make in favor of truth. When you choose to love, when you choose not to judge, when you choose to forgive, you regain peace of mind. That is the true reward. What you give to others, in essence, you give to yourself. Not because others do not matter, but because every genuine gift is born in your mind—and there it remains.
But the ego cheats. It tells you that if the other person does not thank you, if they do not acknowledge you, then your offering was worthless. And you, deceived, withdraw your gifts, close your heart, and return to the emotional battlefield seeking external recognition. The result? More guilt. More mistrust. More imprisonment.
This lesson comes to free your mind from that trap: true gifts require no response. Because the reward is not outside. The reward is within you, in the kind of story you are telling yourself about who you are. When you say to yourself “how happy I am,” and truly feel it, it is because your mind is accepting a positive definition of itself. It is not magic. It is reeducated perception. It is the mind speaking truth to itself.
Your hell or your heaven depends on that—on the inner narrative you choose to sustain. Every judgment you make against the world is, in reality, a judgment against yourself. Every genuine expression of gratitude is a testimony to your freedom. If you learn to see your mental choices as seeds that always sprout in your own field, you will begin to be more careful, more lucid, more coherent. For you will know that everything you think has effects—on you.
This lesson, stated in positive terms, is a profound reminder: you need no one’s gratitude. You do not need to be applauded, celebrated, or rewarded. You only need to look honestly at what you are choosing to think. And if what you choose is love, your gratitude will be immediate. For you will have come home. And that always calls for gratitude.
II The dream of the world—what you call “reality”—is nothing but your thoughts, the interpretation you give to the figures the fragmented mind sets before you. Never forget this, and remember also that you are free to interpret them in the most helpful way possible—and that is always the way the Holy Spirit proposes.
III Giving is joy. Giving is the greatest of joys. Giving is the pure expression of what you are. Giving is the manifestation and expression of your being. Giving is loving. Giving is being.
Giving, in this world, is the equivalent of what creating is in Heaven. Giving is the result of expressing your will to love by loving—by giving love. For all these reasons, giving deserves your total gratitude. How could you not be grateful for giving? How could it even cross your mind that you need someone to thank you when you give? It is you who are grateful; you need no one’s thanks when you give.
Even so, you always have God’s gratitude—but you do not even need that. Your joy is immediate and certain when you give. That is why you thank God that He created you to give, to love, to be.
To give, to love, and to be are the same thing, and gratitude is the simultaneous response that accompanies the act of giving. If this occurs here, in this world, when you give from the heart, imagine then the infinite joy of creating in Heaven, where such giving is unlimited, eternal, and total. That is something inconceivable here.
The beautiful first paragraph of The Song of Prayer, an extension of this Course, describes the mutual joy of Father and Son as They give of Themselves infinitely in the heavenly Creation:
“Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. It must become what it was then; the single Voice that the Creator and the creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns thanks to His Son for the song that gives Him thanks. Endless harmony and everlasting joyous concord of Love They give forever to Each Other. Thus is creation endlessly extended. God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father’s Name. The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time has ended. For such it was before time seemed to be.” (S-1.I.1)
And the result of your giving in Heaven, this Course calls the Creations of the Son of God.
Perhaps now you understand this lesson better, and are also dismayed, as Jesus is, at the idea that anyone could feel upset when he does not receive from others the gratitude he thinks he deserves for having given.
“I can only be grateful to myself.” Of course! Isn’t that obvious? If, when you give, it is only to yourself that you are giving, and what you give does not leave your mind but returns to you increased, how could you not always give your very best in order to have still more? Do you now understand the joy that giving brings? It is evident, then, that your gratitude must always accompany your giving.
This is not a Course about behavior, because behavior is the automatic result of the interaction between the idea you have of yourself and the world—where all three concepts, behavior, self-image, and world, are illusory.
This is a Course about truth. That is why it urges you to become fully aware of what it means to give. Then, the natural result of your giving will be joy and gratitude. And to understand this, you need do nothing; simply open your mind and awaken to the truth of what you are, and your gratitude will arise of itself.
IV Acts 17:28 “For in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are His offspring.’”