To give and receive are one in Truth.

4-18-2024

To everyone I offer laughter.

I have found it easier to give this past week. Something has shifted within — more light is flowing into and through me. And I am receiving.

My trust in God feels stronger. The things I am wanting, I know they will come in the most benevolent way. For a long time, I was withholding – thinking that I was lacking and needed to hold onto the little I had. I built walls.

Right there in the middle of the great River of Love I built my enclosure. It leaked a bit, so Love’s light got in occasionally. Still, I gave only as much as my mind calculated that I needed to do to survive.

We so quickly forget we are surrounded by what we most desire

I’m thinking of those childhood wounds that had me begin placing the blocks of my enclosure. Was there another way to proceed if I had known giving and receiving are the same?

At a tender age I was ridiculed by siblings. I don’t think I could have done better unless I had help from another. With support from another to listen to my embarrassment and hurt feelings, bringing them into the light, so that they did not turn into shame. The light was needed. It is always needed.

Lord, guide me to offer the light to others. I don’t want others to be hidden in the darkness of their own creation just as I don’t want this for myself.

4-18-2023

We are asked in the practice to offer to everyone what we would have as ours. Through God’s Love I want peace in the form of a ‘stable base’, a loving and secure place to be. Not ‘safety’ because I have put in protective forces, but secure in the peace and joy that God’s Love insures.

In the practice I sent loving-kindness to a community which is important to my family. As I completed my giving loving-kindness to the people and the land, my mind brought forward the prayer of Saint Francis. In Hollie’s notes she offered, “It is through giving that we receive.”

My mind popped to this line …

“Make me a channel of your peace.” This is what I want for myself. _/\_

4-18-2022

I will receive what I am giving now.

I did the practice and found my attention on how my body felt as I sent out my offerings. I noticed the good feeling rise. Then I felt I was doing something wrong as my attention was on what I was receiving instead of my giving … guilt.

St. Francis: “for it is in the giving that we receive.”

I’m certainly not the first one in history to know there are personal rewards to giving.

‘You reap what you sow.’

I must just go with it instead of turning it into something negative, to be blocked.

I have observed how I block receiving. I will not block giving and will be open to receiving.

I am worthy of gifts from others, my Self, God, and the Universe!