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Chapter 9: The Plan of Atonement

3. The Economics of Judgment and Gratitude

To believe is to accept and to embrace or side with. To disbelieve is to reject or side against, which can be experienced as an attack. To believe does not mean to be credulous, but to appreciate. Even what is not embraced, such as an idea or an invitation, can be received and appreciated if judgment is withheld. What you reject or judge against you will not truly appreciate, and you cannot be grateful for what you do not value.

Assigning value, or evaluating, is a constant process in this world, and the value assigned to each thing by those who do not yet see determines their motivation in interaction with it. This includes the value placed on one’s sisters and brothers and even one’s own mind and the body that is its temporary dwelling place here. Things that are valued highly are judged for, and those that are valued slightly or negatively are judged against.

There is a price paid for judgment, because judgment is the setting of a price, or value, against which something or someone is judged. And as you set this price, you will pay it, and receive the value you believed it worth.

If paying is equated with exchanging in order to get, which is the ego’s way, you will set the price low in hopes of a high return. But in doing so you will have failed to recognize the essential point on which everything in the evaluation process hinges: that to price is to value, and that your return will be in proportion to your judgment of worth. Since you set the price low in order to get the best exchange possible in the ego’s eyes, you valued it lowly, and your return will follow. Your judgment of worth always determines the range of outcomes possible in the exchange. In the ego’s evaluation, even if the return is relatively high according to the range it set, the range itself is miserly so that proportionately even a high return will be low relative to a more generous range.

If paying is associated with giving, as in giving appreciation, which is Spirit’s Way, the exchange cannot be perceived as decrease or loss to anyone involved, and the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized. The price you set in the exchange will be high reflecting how highly you value the return. This evaluation determines that the range of outcomes possible in the exchange will also be large, or generous, truly maximizing the value of the return, that is, in appreciation and gratitude. In this exchange what is received will be proportionately maximal because of how the values involved were held.

To appraise in order to get is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it, and you will ultimately not want it. Always remember, then, that you determine the worth of what you receive by what you give for it, reflecting how much you value it. To believe that it is possible to get much for little is to believe that you can bargain with the Divine’s Law of Giving and Receiving, which it is not given you to do.

The Divine’s Laws are always fair to everyone involved – and everyone is always involved because the Divine Family is One – and perfectly consistent. By giving you receive. But to receive means to accept, not to get. It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to recognize that you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving, and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have. What you give is therefore the value you assign to what you already have, being the exact measure of its worth to you. And this, in turn, is the measure of how much you want it.

You can ask of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving to It. And you can give to It only where you see It. If you see It in everyone, consider how much you will be asking of It, and how much you will receive. Spirit will deny you nothing, because you have denied It nothing, and so you can share Everything. This is the way, and the only way, to have Spirit’s Answer to your requests, because Its Answer is all you can truly ask for and unequivocally want. Say, then, to everyone:

Because I will to know myself, I see you as the Divine’s Children, and my sisters and brothers.