The Gift of Giving
What we give returns to us. Appreciate the gifts you have been given and the gifts you have to share. The highest form of consciousness is the gift of your service. When we donate money, we are giving of ourselves.
The Joy Of Giving
“Getters generally don’t get happiness; givers get it.” ~ CHARLES H. BURR
At first, we may give because it is the “right” thing to do. Later, we give because giving feels good. Eventually, we give because, well, that’s just what we do. At that time, the giver and the gift become one.
What is the most beautiful gift you can give? The gift of yourself.
We can get so caught up in trying to find the perfect gift or the right words to say to someone, yet the simplest and most precious gift you have to give resides within you.
That can be difficult to accept. We tend to look outside ourselves and compare. Everyone else seems to have more talent, money, and happiness—more of everything we think we want. Yet, the reality is that everything you’ve ever wanted or dreamed of having is already present within you.
You are a portable gift ready to participate at any given moment. It may be by giving a smile or by simply being patient. While one person has the gift of laughter, another person blesses us with the silence and peace they exude. Each one of us is important!
Appreciate the gifts you have been given and the gifts you have to share. Be grateful for who you are.
It is indeed a blessing that we all have an abundance of gifts to share.
What We Give Returns to Us
What we give returns to us. What we give, then, determines the currents and the currency of our lives.
What do you want most? Loving? Compassion? Caring? Tenderness? Laughter? Joy? Money? Whatever it is (or they are), give it away.
When it returns, you can choose to “spend” it, (use it, enjoy it, feel it, and so on), or you can give it away again. Certainly, you can enjoy it while it passes through your hands—or heart. Given away, it returns, and usually faster than the first time. Give it away again, and it returns. Give, return. Give, return.
Soon it’s hard to tell whether all that loving, compassion, caring, tenderness, laughing, joy, and money is coming or going.
Eventually, it’s not a matter of giving and then receiving love, but it all merges into a steady flow of love. There is no beginning or ending.
When Do I Get Mine?
“Lose yourself in generous service and every day can be a most unusual day, a triumphant day, an abundantly rewarding day!” ~ WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
You may say, “But when do I get mine?” With that attitude, however, you’re never likely to get yours. How about helping somebody else get theirs?
If you help them get theirs, then do you get yours?
It doesn’t work that way.
The highest form of consciousness is service. And the highest form of service is selfless service. Find someone to serve. Just do a random act of kindness without any expectation of anything coming back to you for any reason.
How Much Do We Give?
How much we give depends on how much we’ve been given: from whom much has been given, much is expected.
Those who are given much, or given the gift of making much, can, if they choose, become big consumers: more houses, bigger houses; more cars, more expensive cars; boats, limos, private jets.
Those who have lived the life of material excess know it is not a life of luxury: it is a life of maintenance. A life of obtaining soon becomes a life of maintaining. Keeping up with the Joneses also means keeping up all that stuff.
“Luxury comes as a guest,” as the Hindu proverb states, “and soon becomes the master.”
Luckily, some who have been given much have also been given the wisdom to see that the excess (be it an excess of money, ability, ideas, love, humor, or anything else we possess in abundance) was given to us so that we might have the joy of giving it away.
Receiving is joyful, but giving is blissful. Whatever we’ve been given in abundance, inherent in that gift is the bliss of giving away our overflow.
An Additional Compensation
“When you find yourself overpowered, as it were, by melancholy, the best way is to go out and do something kind to somebody or other.” ~ JOHN KEBLE
Walking through the many dark valleys in this life—pain, sorrow, loss, hurt, anger, worry, frustration, illness, and the rest—all people gain value by
surviving them,
overcoming them, and one hopes,
learning something from them.
Givers, however, have an additional compensation: they can use the experience and what they’ve learned to be of greater service to others.
Givers become more compassionate. They can say to someone, “I’ve been there,” and the other person will know they speak the truth.
Givers are more understanding. Where the less experienced might say, “Oh, just snap out of it,” givers might know that “snapping out of it” is not an option for this person at this time.
Givers are more able to be with a person, to let the person know he or she is not alone, and to help the person believe that healing lies ahead. They might even be able to offer suggestions that can speed the healing along.
Giving Without Expecting Anything In Return
A common perception, and perhaps it is something we grew up with, is the mentality of, “I gave you something— now you’re going to have to give something back to me. You owe me.” This is a trading situation, rather than giving. And it probably makes up most of the way people approach our world today.
The more fulfilling approach is to not only give but also to observe how people receive the giving, and what they do with it. I have seen a person look ten years younger, instantly, by getting free of something that was disturbing them.
All that took place was a simple service to them. But it was done in a loving, giving, unconditional way. I look at service and the consciousness of serving as being the highest one on the planet that we can see. Someone truly serving another human being with love is a joy to behold.
Why Is It Such Fun To Give?
“Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness. ~ ERICH FROMM
If you give with no ulterior motives, the look on the person’s face who receives is such a wonderful thing to see. It’s like Christmas—every day.
Giving and service are not necessarily the same, but they are Siamese twins. You can serve begrudgingly, and you can give and expect a return. But what I’m talking about is where you give and you don’t expect anything in return. You just give because there’s loving and giving inside of you, and why wouldn’t you do that?
You look at everybody as your brother or your sister. Why wouldn’t you give what you can?
And when you can’t, you don’t. You don’t have to explain it. But you might want to say, “I don’t have it to give right now.”
That’s taking care of yourself, which is serving yourself.
Donating Money Is a Symbol Of Exchanging Energy
Money is simply a symbol of energy. We trade an item, idea, or activity for a symbol of its value—money. We then exchange that symbol of energy (money) for another item, idea, or activity that we consider valuable.
Because money represents our energy, it can be looked at as an extension of ourselves.
Money represents a personal investment on our part—a symbol of our work, energy, ideas, or good fortune. As such, when we give money we are giving of ourselves.
So when someone says, “Oh, they only give money, they don’t give of themselves,” they are usually making a mistake. Of course, love, affection, tenderness, and simply being there are essential to service. But money does have its place.
After all, in any service project, someone is paying for the food, tools, transportation, office space, printing, telephones, accommodations, aspirin, and all the other goods and services necessary for service.
Money is sometimes as important to the act of giving as the love that inspires the act.
There Is No Limit To the Good You Can Do If You Don’t Care Who Gets the Credit
“Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires something that riches cannot give.
~ CHARLES CALEB COLTON
We primarily give because it feels good to give. The recipient is but an innocent bystander.
Yet there is also a selfless dimension to service: giving with no thought of credit, reward, or appreciation from the recipient or the world at large.
Part of the fun of giving is doing it anonymously. Like the Lone Ranger, who never waited around to be thanked, leaving the grateful townspeople to ponder, “Who was that masked man?” I prefer to do good, disappear, and leave people wondering, “Who was that loving, crazy fool?”
“Hi-ho service, away!”
Be Kind to Unkind People — They Need It Most
“Don’t use the impudence of a beggar as an excuse for not helping him.” ~ RABBI SCHMELKE
Some people spend an inordinate amount of time and energy making sure that the recipients of their gifts are truly deserving and have the right attitude.
Frankly, if they had the right attitude, they probably wouldn’t need your gift.
You’ll find that giving freely is a lot more fun. The heart is so much bigger than the mind.
Certainly one of the reasons givers wish to ease other’s difficulties is because there is already entirely too much pain in the world.
This is not an easy life.
Those with feelings can feel the pain in their own lives; those with compassion can feel the pain in others’ lives. Those who feel this pain, this darkness, have no desire to add to the darkness.
Givers by their nature want to ease burdens, lighten loads, and spread Light.
Source
Excerpt from the book “Serving & Giving: Gateways to Higher Consciousness” by John-Roger and Paul Kaye (Mandeville Press, Los Angeles, 2009)