It has become a truism that to receive love we must give it. Giving engenders receiving, and receiving engenders giving. The reciprocal action keeps the flow of love alive. Without it, love would stagnate. For so many of us, however, learning to give is extremely difficult. It runs counter to some deep conditioning that we all carry around inside. We may fear that if we give, we will have less. We have all been taught to hold on to a good thing.
It is the ego that has a hard time letting go of something precious because at bottom, ego isn’t guided by love but by the struggle to survive. It wants predictable outcomes, security, the prerogative to be right, and continuity. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a possessive relationship knows ego’s smothering effect.
While the ego’s primitive nature wants to hold on and control, spirit has no such concerns. It wants being, love, freedom, and creative opportunities. Spirit isn’t afraid to give because it knows that its essential nature is pure love, unbounded in time and space. The question naturally arises, how then do we free ourselves to love and give freely?
The first step is to recognize your true spiritual nature. In truth, you are pure spirit, pure love, . . . created from the same spirit that in infinite form is known as God. Realize that the ego often acts like a scared bully trying to protect its tiny fiefdom, not knowing that it is part of an infinite field of pure potentiality and infinite possibilities.
The Intention Behind Giving
As the spiritual Law of Giving and Receiving states, everything in the universe is in constant, dynamic exchange. The more we give, the more we will receive, because giving keeps the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives. The most important thing is the intention behind your giving and receiving. If, through the act of giving, you feel you have lost something, then the gift is not truly given and will not cause increase.
On the other hand, when giving results in an experience of love, joy, peace, community, caring, and self-worth, the process of expansion has begun. In truly giving, you open a conduit for the kind of happiness that no one could ever steal from you. You move beyond limited thought-patterns and fears and you get a glimpse of ecstasy, the state of standing outside yourself in the infinite field of Being.
As we celebrate the holiday season, realize that you are already inherently affluent, no matter how much or how little money you have, because the source of all abundance is the field of pure potentiality – it is consciousness that knows how to fulfill every need, including joy, love, laughter, peace, harmony, and knowledge. If you seek these things first – not only for yourself, but for others – all else will come to you spontaneously.
