giving to others

Effortless Stream of Giving

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EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING 

Giving to life

Giving often feels like effort.  In fact most of us feel like we are giving all day long and find ourselves completely drained by the days end.  Giving can come with activity, busyness and action, and there is no doubt that activity without periods of rest can deplete our systems.  Yet there is a giving to life that happens even before action or activity occurs.  A state of being of giving that is prior to anything that we physically or mentally do.  In fact I’d suffice to say that much of our tiredness and depletion comes not from the activities themselves, but rather from not being in a state of giving while we go about doing our activities.  Again it’s not to deny that we need both periods of activity and rest, however the place from which we come from makes all the difference.

So how do we find this effortless stream of giving?  The good news is that we don’t have to go anywhere to find it because it lives right inside of us.  We only need to tap into it so to speak.  You’ve probably tapped into it before, but you likely didn’t know exactly what you were touching.  You might have related the experience of tapping into the effortless stream of giving as feeling defeat.  In fact the feeling of defeat is an entry point into the effortless stream of giving.  Yet most people get lost in their story about what is happening and keep trying to make their experience match their desire rather than feel defeat.  They keep banging away at attempting to make the appearance different rather than admitting defeat to the appearance.  Hence why they get so damn tired.  Hence why we are all so damn tired.  

When you stop trying to make the operations and happenings of life be different, there is no other choice but to let them be.  When you let them be as they are and participate with them as such, you stop forcing anything.  When forcing stops, so does resistance, tiredness and efforting.  If you’re constantly fighting the stream you are going to be expending a lot more energy and it’s going to feel like a lot more work than if you just went with it.  However going with the stream will at times feel like defeat and you must be willing to feel this defeat.  The beautiful thing about this, if you really get this, is that when you accept defeat you naturally open into giving.  You can’t not give to your experience when you are no longer fighting it.  When you allow what is to be how and what it is, you become the stream of giving organically.  There is nothing extra that you need to do.  It’s simply how it is when you are with life rather than at odds with it.  You may still not like your experience, but you won’t be as tired and the need to check yourself out of life so that you can rest and recover will be less.  You will start to find and feel rest inside of your experience, and here is where you are actually present, maybe for the first time ever. 

STOP WISHING INTENSITY AWAY 

Opportunities for being present

Sometimes life has to kind of beat us up a little bit before we are willing to accept defeat, so that we ultimately learn to live presently in full participation with the unfolding of life.  When we are experiencing this “beating up” of sorts we often label it under the disguise of the word “intensity.”  You’ve probably heard someone or maybe even yourself say, “wow things are really intense right now.”  It’s a very popular spiritual thing to say.  I hear that phrase many times a week.  When people say this often they are wanting that experience of intensity to go away,.  They are internally waiting, though they might not know they are waiting, until appearances and circumstances change so that they can feel lighter, better or less intensity.  The energy of this inner dynamic feels like wanting whatever is happening to just be over with already, because once it’s over you think you feel better.  Once the intensity is gone then you think you will be able to relax.

This is a trap.  It’s a trap because life is full of intensity and if you are waiting or trying to force the situations of intensity to go away, you will find yourself doing this until the day your body dies, and maybe even beyond, who knows.  Besides for it being a trap, when you wish your intensities to go away you rob yourself of incredibly potent opportunities for learning, which I call catalyst.  This catalyst, or these moments of extra intensity, bring the gift of breaking us down.  Why do we need to be broken down you ask?  Bluntly stated because most of us are living in arrogant, self-centered ways and seeing through limited perspectives that have nothing to do with what is actually occurring.  Most of these perspectives harm us or others rather than being helpful, yet they can be very convincing that they are trying to help.  These sneaky arrogant, self-centered ways along with their limited perspectives need to be dismantled so that we can stop acting in opposition to the unfolding of life and rather move with it.

The little bit tricky thing about all of this is that we typically greatly identify with these parts and perspectives that need to be dismantled, so we tend to not let them go out without a fight.  Hence the way of effort, force, resistance, which eventually results in tiredness and depletion that we may then lead to sickness, illness or adrenal fatigue.  This then brings us to the dire need for intensity in our lives, because often intensity is our only hope in dismantling these ways of being and limited perspectives once and for all.  Stopping wishing your intensities away.  See them rather as an opportunity to open into the effortless stream of giving.  

Breaking isn’t bad.  What’s breaking is energetic architecture that isn’t serving us living fully present.  Those structures need to break.  If they don’t we stay trapped and wonder why our experience of life doesn’t change for the better.  Even though many of us try to not feel the break of anything, breaking is natural.  The journey of growth is deconstruction and reconstruction.  If you aren’t regularly destructing then you probably aren’t growing much either.  Don’t try to always make things “good”, let things be “bad” or intense at times.  Even celebrate intensity if you can because within it is immense opportunity for something great to be born. 

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

THE GIFT OF YOURSELF

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THE GIFT OF YOURSELF 

You are the gift you give

For many people there is an innate drive to give to others.  To serve, help, and support others generally generates good feelings inside of us as long as our giving comes from a place of true desire rather than obligation or agenda.  We are taught early on that we must learn skills, trades or other tools and means in order to have something to give.  Those things become our contribution to others.  This is the whole idea of work, and of trading services and resources.  

While our skills, services and abilities can add value to people’s lives and create ease, flow or greater efficiency in the world, they are not the gift that we give.  Two different people can have similar skills, services or abilities and yet they give an entirely different gift.  Sure on the surface it may seem that two architects can write up similar plans for a building, and yet they produce very different feels or results with their plans.  You may wonder why this is so.  It is so, because it is the energy of you that brings the gift of what gets produced.  It is the heart, the core of who you are, that is the actual gift you give.

Now this may seem very obvious to you conceptually.  Of course you understand that it’s you and the not the thing, but also notice how much of your mental and physical energy you spend on searching for the next cool thing you are going to create, the next career you will have, the next relationship you will start, all the while thinking that it will be your new purpose, the new thing that will define you and give you some sense of contribution.  It is very easy to pin the thing, meaning it is very easy for us to say “oh there is this thing that I can do or give to others and that makes my existence worthwhile.”  To say to yourself “I created this product, shared this service with others or did this thing and it changed people’s life, it’s so amazing!”  It is innocent enough and perhaps even true that your skill or ability did change their life and yet it is still not the gift you give.  

See in order to recognize the gift, you must be able to recognize and see yourself.  We are quite blind and distorted in our perspectives of how we view our own self.  We are not very clear mirrors for our own reflection.  We tend to not view ourselves as very worthwhile in general and therefore it’s easier to project our goodness on things we do rather than on our own selves.  We project our worth onto things.  Then to top it off the world reinforces all of our do-gooding all the while also telling us that if we think too highly of ourselves we are selfish and arrogant. Oh the conundrum! 

BEING WORTH 

Self-gratitude

Unless you know your worth you can’t give, because your giving is giving you.  If you see nothing of value in and of yourself, naked and without skills, abilities and stuff, then nothing will radiate out of you.  Sure you will still do stuff, create stuff and function in the world, but you will grow tired because you are running on empty inside trying to generate worth through what you do.  Until you know how worthy you are you will always have agenda, because you will always be trying to get love rather than realizing you are it.

Your radiance is your gift.  How you shine is your gift. It is really, really simple.  You could never attain worth or get more worthy and valuable based on any skill or ability that you may have or acquire.  Again it doesn’t mean that your skills won’t help out the ease and flow of this human existence, but they are not your service.  You are your service independent of anything that is done.

Since it is impossible to increase our worth this begs the question of how do we elevate our sense of self-worth.  Our sense of self-worth and our actual self-worth are two very different things.  The journey is in how we bridge the seeming gap in between without it being based on things that we accomplish or do.  Since most of our confidence comes through feats of walking into the fire of our own fears and limitations it is based in accomplishment or doing.  

There is one fast and short easy way to elevate our sense of self-worth and that is gratitude.  Gratitude for ourselves just the way we are in any given moment.  Appreciating the quirks, oddities, subtleties, nuances, particularities, and the way that we are exactly as we are.  Ending the desire to change ourselves or make ourselves different in any way brings greater and greater self-acceptance.  

Anything other than total gratitude for self is self-absorption, self-denial, self-hatred and the true selfishness.  It’s the true selfishness because when we don’t feel amazing about ourselves then we focus on ourselves.  We focus on what’s wrong with us and how to be different or better.  When we are focused on ourselves our energy goes in rather than radiating out.  The result is that we feel depleted rather than energized.  Giving/being ourselves is energizing because it’s effortless.  It doesn’t need to be more or less.  It is complete in and off itself.  None of this means that we won’t grow or change, but instead simply that growth will come through acceptance of self rather than through non-acceptance.  

Develop a daily practice of self-gratitude, not for what you do, but for who you are.  Nothing added, nothing subtracted.  Just you as you are.  This will be your portal into a sense of stable, infinite self-worth where you will naturally radiate the gift that you are.   

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

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GIVE, GIVE, GIVE 

Stop withholding love

The most sustainably reliable way of being that produces fulfillment and happiness is giving.  Giving to others, giving to life, giving, giving, giving without any agenda or expectation of return.  Yet most of our energy and attention goes to what we will get from life.  We have been brainwashed into believing that getting is what brings us fulfillment, joy and happiness and that giving depletes our already scarce resources of time and energy.  Getting the relationship, the job, the family, the business, the vacation, the house, the attention, the perfect body, the healthy body, and on and on provides only the delusion of happiness in attainment   We even often only give in order to get, meaning we give ourselves to people or things in order get a result or something in return.

What does pure, without agenda or expectation giving, even look like?  To make it really simple it means that you would have to not want or need anything from anything or anyone.  This includes things like wanting love, attention, desire, recognition, acknowledgment, and praise, as well as survival needs such as financial or living support.  I get that that can seem like a really tall order and many people aren’t ready for that level selflessness. However until you arrive at that level of purity you will suffer and attempt to get things from life and others that seem to have the promise of joy and happiness inside of them, but which instead postpone true fulfillment.

Any time you suffer it’s because you don’t get, see or experience what you want or because what you give isn’t received by others in the way that you want it to be, which again is not experiencing what you want and hence your agenda in giving.  When we don’t freely give we withhold and distort love and it feels really, really bad.  What this typically manifests as is us feeling bad, being in a bad mood, feeling frustration or stuck-ness, not having clarity, being confused, and feeling powerless or not seeing choice in the matter at hand.  These feelings and experiences are life telling you that you are withholding love, which is also withholding yourself because love is what you are. When you try to hold onto something, get something, or keep something you think you want you will distort the love that you are.  The result is impure motives, drives and lack of any true lasting fulfillment. 

LOVING IS GIVING 

Opening the heart

Loving is giving and giving is loving. They are the same.  It is not hard to give.  In fact giving is more natural than anything because it is your nature.  You don’t have to have some special skill set or come up with some fancy thing to give to others or life.  Your being is giving, and when you have purity and agenda-less-ness, giving is the natural result.  For a moment think about the times when you thought about saying something nice to someone or doing a kind act that you felt naturally inclined to do, but then you didn’t do it.  Maybe you weren’t sure how they would take it, or you didn’t want to seem like too much, or you doubted yourself and made your giving silly or stupid.  In this example what happened is that you become more concerned with yourself than you did about giving.  You made it about you, as you cared more how it was received and how you would be seen.  This withholding seems innocent enough and yet its laden with self-centeredness.  

Keep in mind is that giving is organic. Sometimes people will over-give in order to feel right, worthy, or validated.  This too is a distortion of love as they seek for ok-ness, approval, value and worth.  There will be energy expenditure and energy transfer that may create feelings of tiredness to your physical, emotional or mental bodies, but there should not be depletion of your being.  If you are feeling depleted it is an indication that you are out of balance and need to reassess what really serves.  Are you doing too much because you are focused or attached to an outcome and are therefore over-extending yourself?  Are you doing too little, withholding, not giving to others and therefore not bringing energy into your system through giving and thus feeling depleted?  You having a fuel tank of gas and taking care of your self-care is absolutely essential if you are going to be of service in giving to others.  The intention remains though that taking care of you is to give to others, not an end in of itself.  

In order to naturally give, to be giving in and of yourself, your heart must be open and available.  Giving is a lot of work, draining and effortful if your heart is not online.  Opening your heart is both the first and last step.  When tension or resistance is suspended or resolved you radiate, emanate and overflow.  The easiest and quickest path to resolution is forgiveness.  For-give-ness.  For in forgiveness you give again, you choose to open your heart, you choose to let go of what you think you want or need, how you were done wrong or did wrong, and all agenda for getting or being received in any particular way.  Energy can now freely exchange in and out of your system.  You hold onto nothing and hold back nothing.  There is nothing to lose and only the gift of being and sharing remains.  

The gift is the giving of your being just as you are.  When your heart is open it includes all inside of it, all beings, all others.  Care is inherent.  As you increase your dial on what you can give to others all of your needs, wants and desires will be taken care of.  That which is in alignment with you will be your experience.  There is no lack when we give, but rather natural overflowing abundance of giving and being.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado