Word for the day: Enthusiasm!
“When we trust ourselves, giving to others fills us up with the gift our giving. It is the same feeling as love—love is always returned by love and free of the need of reciprocity or it is not love…”
Little Warrior
There have been plenty of people who have been there for me in my life. But only a few have been there whose generosity of time, love or Present & Presence has been without Conditions….
(and this, dear friends is the essence of my post… to give without conditions.)
* * * * * *
Would you agree that the general population has a difficult time giving to a cause or person that they do not understand, believe in—or trust?
When we offer some-thing as if it has “cost” us, then we have lost the very thing we are trying to give. We have missed out on the idea/understanding of what it means to-be-generous. The goal of giving is joy for the receiver as well as the giver. It is not what we are imparting to a person or situation that is necessarily significant, but rather how we feel in what we are doing –it is the act of support that matters. The act itself should be effortless and not something we have to contemplate, question or doubt.
When we are the Giver as well as the Gift
then there is no suffering in the giving,
then we are unencumbered and free.
When we do not understand the art of giving, parting with anything, whether it is a birthday gift, a charitable donation or a simple hug, we will feel resistance, thus our efforts in giving will not be sincere. Whenever we do something that is not honest or natural, our heart pulls us back and we don’t feel good about the gift or kind act we are bestowing on another. If our intentions do not come from the heart then the question we might ask ourselves is: What is the true nature of giving? Is there an agenda lurking somewhere? If we can identify our motive, perhaps we won’t have one?
Sometimes we do not understand the true nature of giving until we recognize what it feels like to be on the receiving end of toxic generosity.
Toxic Generosity is when there are a host of attachments from the Giver. Thus both the Giver and the Receiver are hostages in a tangled web and are blocked from giving as well as receiving—there is no flow, and as we all know: Flow is life. There are encumbered rules and regulations and obedience involved when generosity is tainted; there is power over someone and power taken away.
Toxic Generosity is what most people give.
How many of us can honestly say that we would want to help someone, some cause, feed the homeless, give them money to help support their children, invest in their cause, if we could not control them or the situation, if we could not feel powerful over them—if…
How many of us can honestly say that we have the capacity to give for the sake of giving without dangling the gifts over the recipient’s head, making them beg, do hoops of gra-ti-fi-ca-tion and cartwheels of appreciation for a treat?
(I don’t even make my dog do this.)
Do we have to like someone, some cause or some people in order to help them? Is that not passing judgment if we answer yes? How many of us feel that there is corruption in our generosity?
Where are our gifts going?
Who is really getting what we are giving? And so on… How do we know what we are giving is being used for what the intended has said? There is:
· Political corruption in giving.
· Religious corruption in giving.
· Personal or familia corruption in giving.
· Spousal corruption in giving.
(but if there is corruption in our support is it really support?)
There might be deception on the receiving end of giving but there should never be deception of the side of the Giver.
The best part of giving?
To forget that you gave.
The second greatest reward to giving if you remember that you gave?
(To be sure that you tell no one…shhhh.)
In the end, what will matter is how we have given not what we gave.
There were situations in my own life when I too hesitated with some of my Offerings—some of my generosity. There were times in my life when I thought I didn’t have anything to give, but actually the same things I give now I had then, but didn’t see it that way. It is fair to say that how we are raised to love and give is how we love and give, until we can view our world objectively and separate from our original teachings from our family and our environment.
Sometimes I will see someone sitting outside of the supermarket asking for donations, for a good cause. I always happily give, but sometimes there is that one face (you know what I am talking about) that one face that just looks suspicious and I catch myself smiling as I squish my little bills into the collection box, and quickly look away so he or she does not catch a glimpse of my questioning, judging—assessing face. Why is that? Why is it that sometimes we just can’t help ourselves to be suspicious or make an unwarranted assessment? Whatever the reason, whether it is intuition or just plain old suspicion, sometimes we might be right and sometimes we will be wrong, but whether we are right or wrong has nothing to do with—giving.
What is true liberation as a Giver? When you can see a woman walk up to you sporting a beautiful $6,000 Prada bag, and as she extends her French manicured hand to you, your eye catches her finger that bears a diamond ring the size of a small home and in a flash of awareness you stop yourself from judging. She looks sincerely into your eyes and tells you, (and you are not quite sure if you believe her story or not, but that is not important to you…) that she is hungry and needs to feed her children and you, suddenly-unencumbered-you, see past the surface eye, you see beyond the assessment, judgments, Prada bag and diamond ring and you say unequivocally and enthusiastically as you take her hand in yours, “sure, sweetie, whatever you need! Let’s go shopping! It’ll be my pleasure!” Then and only then will you understand the true nature of—giving.
So, when that Clock is about to strike 12 and that noon train is approaching around the bend; the tracks are laden with golden bricks pointing in a Direction and your life is asking you: Decide, Decide, Decide…who are you going to listen to? Your heart or your mind?
(only time will tell…)
No related posts.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
again you are the true wordsmith rosanne, your posts are profound, your writing is genius….giving comes in many forms…you are so correct……but you can’t go to the hardware store for oranges!!!! as i always say….the “givers” in your family are just that, oranges
….except for the select few who have been sincere…..how sad for them, how sad for you and your children. They can live in their big houses and wear their big diamonds and grand prada bags but they also have to live in their minds and in their hearts….a place no one else would choose to reside.
“freely transfer the posession of something” is what the dictionary defines as giving. key word? “FREELY”. Thank you for making that clear. Because the reason we give is to better humanity, because if there is a way we can help another, we should do so without asking what that individual will do with it. Thats control, and if giving is Free, control should be out of the picture.
for example? why not give a single mother food money instead of a food card? thats control you puppeteers(you know who you are), and through your control you are just showing us how your life lacks the most freedom.
Receiving for the sake of sharing is our ultimate destiny AND salvation, sages say. While I often withhold my help from beggars on the streets and empty 40 gallon plastic bottles set up to donate for the city’s homeless, I think when you give without feeling the loss of whatever it is your giving - money, energy, time - may not hold much value on the spiritual scale of things. After all, if you didn’t feel IT leave you, you didn’t create an empty space to be filled again by the Light…
Giving is a selfless act Aunt Ro and more importantly an act with out restrictions, anything lacking those two qualities is not a gift but a burden. I may be following my dream soon, and I want you to know I don’t stop thinking about many of the the things you’ve written and said over the years. I wish I got to see you guys more, but I understand people have their differences and they are not always that easy to overcome. Love you all and hope to see you again soon.