GIVING AND RECEIVING
Free Cookies
A vision: Walking around the Lower East Side, I spot a little shop down a half-stairway. Inside, the vitrine display cases bulge with mouth-watering french pastries and elaborately sculpted cookies, wafting an orchestral aroma. The clerks tell me, take as much you want, they’re all free. I fill a mammoth box and leave.
Rushing along, I can’t wait to tell everyone I know about the shop. And then it occurs to me, I can be the one to always bring them the free cookies. Well in that case, I should at least charge for my time. Actually, if I sold them inexpensively everyone would be delighted. But with just so much time in the day to run back and forth and everyone wanting, if I charged what the market would bear just to hold back the crowds, it would still be the greatest bargain, for ambrosial sweets such as these.
I was never able to locate the bakery again.
Our mentors teach us the Principle of Provision: Tap our inner Resource and we see It giving. When we let God flow through us, we continuously pour out like the sun.
Listen: I own nothing, so I have nothing to lose. For “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” Then that same Presence proclaims, “All that I have is thine.” What does It have? Not bread alone. “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.” The divine gift is boundless, appearing in whatever mode fits the moment for our mission, with choicest care.
A Giving Soul
As the holy spirit is always giving, we are always giving. As great a sacrifice as laying down our life in service: living our life in service. We offer the cup of cold water, tangible help. We quietly do the humblest physical tasks. Yet we are not do-gooders. First comes meditative contact, and when as a result we are on the beam, our energy and actions blossom out from within, God lives Its life As us. We can’t do all this humanly, so it’s all right when we fall down, in the process of releasing our ego. We’ll be picked up. “He performeth the thing that is appointed for me.”
We tithe of our income to charitable causes, anonymously, not to be seen of men. If we meet homeless people on the street, we might buy them some groceries or help another way. Yet we send these gifts along with the prayerful notice that people have within themselves all of which they will ever have need.
When Elijah met the poor widow, he asked, “What have you in the house?” She had a little oil, so he told her to pour. The oil filled every container in the village.
First we begin by pouring out, whether money, forgiveness, service, recognition or friendship. We’re never needy, despite any semblance or feeling. We are a full vessel already. Nothing can be added, nothing can ever be taken away. Then when the Spirit within us outflows, there’s space for fresh water, new relationships flowing in. It’s always circulating in ever greater love, we just become aware.
When we give, we give to Ourself. If we withhold or steal, we withhold or steal from Ourself. What runs from me to you just moves from one of My pockets to another. Freely giving is Enlightened Self-interest; we partake of the living waters streaming through. My cup runneth over.
Some travelers found their way to hell. They were astounded to see a banquet table covered with every manner of luscious delectable food. But jarringly, the dinner guests were ravenous and skeletal. Yard-long forks and spoons were strapped to their wrists. They shoved each other aside, speared great hunks of food, and made pitiful grotesque attempts to eat. But the utensils were so lengthy, they always over-reached their mouths, starvation in the midst of plenty, a heart-wrenching spectacle.
Then the travelers visited heaven, and saw an identical feast laid out. Here the guests wore the same elongated forks and spoons, but they were gaily laughing and joking. Companionably, they were feeding each other. (A contemporary tale)
A genie is a slave who supernaturally grants all our wishes. God doesn’t act like a genie, or reject us or indulge us like Santa. And governments or other institutions can’t supply everything from outside like Santa, either. Unnoticeably, society as a whole supports itself from the Within.
When we fear that everything is limited, we stint and ration and begrudge, donating dutifully while we give. We can in sacred awareness give wholeheartedly, cheerfully, abundantly.
All good is spiritual, whether it’s unseen or manifest, and healing, peace, beauty, love, nourishment, self-contentment, can gush from a Source within us. What flows around comes around. In the way we most help others, we are helped the most. We give to our brothers jubilantly without thought of return, and it recirculates back to us multiplied so there is not room enough to receive it. We all can give, not by the sweat of our brow, but divinely. We all can receive holy love and understanding and support.
Our Neighbor Is Our Self
We behave ethically and then some, as an added thing, a natural consequence, for our goal is neither to be “good” humanly nor “bad” humanly, but to reach up to the region beyond the tree of good and bad. When we imbue ourselves with principles of truth and surrender to the Presence, we become giving people, bringing reconciliation and smoothing the paths around us.
So we act with ethics, and treat other people well. The teaching of Confucius, the Greek golden rule prevails in cultures everywhere. (Moral dictates are irrelevant to our spiritual studies. Morals vary widely from culture to culture.) Taking it to this higher level, learning Who we are: Love others as Ourself, for our neighbor truly is our Self. God, the only life, appears As us all.
The two tablets of the law show how our ethical actions issue forth from our deeper wisdom. The table of the first five commandments holds principles of the unseen. The second five dictums correspond one-to-one to these first five truths (nine and ten in reverse order), making them concrete as tangible ethical results.
Every being says: I Am. We don’t kill God.
Love only Me. We leave the mystic marriage if we desire anything else of itself, separate and apart.
We don’t steal credit, substituting ego for divine I Am.
Rest in the perfected universe, desireless.
See that God appearing As everyone nurtures and parents us, no matter what the picture.
888
Receiving
When we slip into the sense of separation, we manifest this as our ego body. This wanting body image shows our need to receive. Our physical sense of body believes that air is Father God and food is Mother God. When we breathe and eat, we receive the Divine in the guise of these things, providing us at this human level of awareness. The bud of our absolute, primitive need to receive blooms as our greater nature, to consciously and directly receive omnifertile Love in all its emanations. With such pure receptivity we finish our rounds and open the spirals of outflow, giving and receiving Love.
We’re meant to accept visible help. The meditative life teaches us our profound self-sufficiency and we give beyond measure. Yet Beloved, we want to avoid “spiritual” pride. At the critical juncture, our legions of friends, whom we have made by just being ourselves, will step forward as they did for George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Not dependence, but the beauty of the picture. Their help in every way is heavenly deliverance pouring itself forth and unfolding afresh in countless kinds of kinship.
Conserving things while living abundantly: a beautiful paradox. We honor every bit of creation, while knowing infinite supply.
Found a worn lucky penny, which fit just right as a shim to repair a window blind. If we accept God’s free gifts, they may be much bigger than they seem.
It is as blessed to receive spiritual impartation as to give anything out. Everything flows round without desiring it, from Really Being with You.
888
I was walking along the streets of Jerusalem, 1973, picking up litter. Sat down at a sidewalk cafe, and spied a crumpled paper. Why get up? What’s in it for me? A man hurried by, lifted the paper, and, a portrait of redemption, took a piece of jewelry that lay underneath it.
We can keep missing a waiting opportunity, as long as we remain desirous of its goods.
888
“Give me neither poverty nor riches.” (Proverbs 30) While going about our Parent’s business, we’re handed immeasurable riches. So we neither lack nor chase after wealth. Buddha’s middle path.
Money is play money, it comes and goes, don’t worry about it. If we’re afraid to buy things, we realize our inner Source, which just may lead us to start the flow by spending. Attaining our own Consciousness is worth anything and everything; and our path stages the specific plays that will bring us peace.
The razor’s edge: Let’s not go into debt, we’re not grasping, we’re in tune with the supernal rhythm. Our outer supply forms the tip of the iceberg of our Consciousness: I already Am the meat.
Free as the Wind
So we rely on our Consciousness As our divine supply, in a sacred world. We can roam from town to town without money, and be taken care of. Students in Japan and India and students of Jesus journeyed this way. We can go abroad and make the same demonstration, travel light, as unsecured and unstable as wind or water.
Yet even if we live in constant anxiety, this has no power, we still find we’re provided for and taken care of to the last.
A meditation: You are constantly bringing Yourself to me, in the finest quietness. From the center of my being, I continuously gather in and give forth all that the world will ever need.
888
Gratitude
As we’ll learn, all people give in ways that we can never see, and that even they themselves can’t see. And everyone on the path has a tremendous gratitude like unto their givingness.
Vision: Mountain ranges within. The higher peaks look clearer, lower slopes look hazier. I Am, We Are. The equality of all the heights, all of us. The lesson: “To receive is to give.” Seeing through the mist: We’re all the currents of one Ocean interwaving. The Divine in the form of a needy Other, receiving our recognition, thereby gives.
Sometimes when I am aware that there is only my Self to thank, and the Presence is right here As me, then I feel the most grateful.
God is hugely thankful---the thankfulness we feel, in the Spirit.
Since divine life is not a being, this thankfulness can’t be directed to a huge personage; it’s gratitude to our Being, for Being Is.
Gratitude. The paradox is that in attaining the spiritual level, we sense our oneness with the one divine Life. There’s no external being or beingness to thank. Yet we can feel this love and gratitude nonetheless, recirculating the holy tenderness. In part it’s gratitude for the beautiful way things really are, and in part it’s gratitude still towards that sense of relating we’ve created, transmuting our struggles in this dear human hiatus: The Self as my Beloved who’s mine.