Giving and Receiving

There is a very strange belief deep within our everyday consciousness that getting will make us happy and successful and giving will deprive us. It is broadcast from every commercial, spoon-fed to our children from the beginning. Craving, hoarding, clinging, wanting, and getting are emphasized in our culture, along with the struggle to keep what we have accumulated.

And yet, one of the core shifts of perception we can make is from getting to giving. If we really notice how life works, one of its core principles is generosity. Life shouts this from every tree that makes millions of seeds, from every flower that radiates its presence, and from the great generosity of the sun as it gives endlessly, day in and day out. We live in a generous Universe. Think of how much it gives of itself so you can live—wheat, water, fish, sunlight, apples, oxygen. Your very existence is dependent upon the generosity of life.

Life is a wondrously rhythmic cycle of giving and receiving. Think of plants giving off oxygen and receiving carbon dioxide from us in return, and leaves dying in order to make rich soil for the mother plant. We are a part of this giving and receiving river of life, and yet most of us live in the unbalanced state of getting more than we give. Because we have not given back, the Earth is struggling. Think of the salmon that are dying and the streams that are clogged and the species that are becoming extinct because of our mindless hunger for the products that are made from trees.

When we live in this continuous land of getting, not only does the Earth become just an object in our minds, but people do too. When we are in the presence of another person, rather than bearing witness to the wondrous expression of the Mystery of Life that is before us, we often narrow our perception to what they can give us—how they can fulfill our needs, wants, and desires. This can be very subtle and unrecognized by our normal everyday consciousness.

Endlessly trying to ‘get’ is so painful. When I was deeply compulsive around food, I was willing to lie, manipulate and deceive in order to get what I felt I desperately needed. This grasping also showed up around money. For most of the time my children were growing up, I was a single parent with an extremely limited income. Once I was able to save $200 out of our meager funds. I took the money and hid it in my sock drawer, and it was absolutely fascinating to watch the controlling mind protect this hoard, fear its discovery, plan, and lie so it wouldn’t be spent. Very rarely are we aware of the grief that comes from this mindset, the grief of being isolated from the continual feast of giving and receiving that is life.

One of the core keys to being able to extract oneself from the addiction of getting is the understanding that giving not only benefits the receiver but the giver, as well. Remember a time of doing something special for a loved one. There was the joy of planning the surprise, the exhilaration in watching him or her be surprised, and the warm glow that comes from remembering the experience. Generosity brings peace, joy, and contentment. The more generous we become, the more our whole view of ourselves shifts. It brings more respect, appreciation, and kindness.

I once heard a wonderful phrase—that giving is a selfish thing. It is an actual law of physics that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You can’t give without receiving. As an old saying goes, “You can’t help someone up the hill without getting closer to the top yourself.”

Generosity can also take an ordinary moment, one easily forgotten in the millions of moments of our lives and turn it into something precious. James Barez, a Vipassana meditation teacher, tells a story about a retreat he attended at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. The meals were very basic—rice, vegetables, tofu, etc. A piece of buttered toast was a treat. One day while he was washing dishes, a friend left him a foil-wrapped package. Upon opening it, he discovered a piece of cheesecake. What a gift! Instead of eating it himself, however, he cut it up into little pieces and put them in the dinner bowls of a number of his fellow meditators. When they came into the dining hall, he watched as they discovered the treasures in their bowls. One person even cut his piece up, giving part of it to another. If James had just eaten the cheesecake himself, this experience would eventually have been lost in the endless procession of life experiences.  Because of his generosity, it touched many people at the retreat and is now blessing people all over the world through this story.

So if this message touches you, which I sincerely hope it does, I invite you to live in the question, “How can I give today?” And look for both little and big ways you can give back to life.