A week or so back, my sister forwarded me a link for The Receiving Project, a 32-day commitment where you set an intention every day to receive gifts of loving from the universe, and then acknowledge what you get. It seemed just like the thing I wanted to do, just like the thing I needed to do.
Even when I have things and get things, they seem to pass right out of me. I don't quite take them in. I am scared of pulling them towards me. I am scared of needing them or being touched by them. It feels like I can't quite take in the very air that is available to me, that it is there but my capacity to pull it in isn't.
I am learning about my heart. It needs to receive as much as give, that there is a delicate balance and that for it to be open, there need to be both movements - of giving as well as receiving. Without receiving, I work against the very nature of my heart, against its yearnings. I want it to be wholly self-sufficient for myself, and yet be able to give to others, and that leaves it depleted.
If it doesn't get from somewhere, where is its pool to give from? What store can it dip into? It walks hobbled. It wishes it were like it was once a long time ago, when it felt like it was connected to an infinite source, when it could give without falling over itself.
So, this project, this intention is to look at the way I relate to the world, to trust again in it. It is to take in things fully, to look at what I am already receiving. There are things that are coming to me, but that I am not integrating, am not giving thanks for. On some level, I feel that I am rejecting the gifts that I get because I am angry with God, and you don't take things from someone you are angry with.
There's that, and there are other things. I am scratching through many beliefs. Another one seems to be that receiving makes you weaker. You start needing something, and it is more self-sufficient to just not want or need a whole lot. It makes you invulnerable. But it also makes you gasp for breath. It makes you treat yourself as someone who shouldn't have any needs. That seems to be another pattern. You shouldn't want too much, some voice tells me. You should just make do.
But receiving is not making do. It's about becoming more expansive. It's about listening to the stars dancing inside you, listening to the nudges that come from deep withing and from outside, engaging in the magical reality of the world, taking up more and more space and not shrinking to fit some imaginary space you think has been marked for you or that you are allowed.
It is about drinking the water slowly, instead of gulping it down. It is okay to trust in this moment.
It's okay to give things importance. It is okay to need things.
I am just beginning to step into this space where receiving is as good as giving. In fact, it is what I need more of right now. Maybe, you are a bit like me, struggling in this space between receiving and giving, feeling like you need to or should always be on the giving side. Maybe it is time for both of us to shift, to move over to receiving, to fill in and get nourished. Maybe, giving and receiving are cycles in our own beings, and each brings something that we need.
We need this rain. We need this thing we are thirsting for. How can we allow it to soak inside of us, instead of putting up obstructions so it can't reach us? What is the cost of remaining impervious, of pretending to never need anything? There are cracks that need to go through our exterior so we can stop being so nice, and both authentically receive and authentically give.
I wonder what that would look like.
This morning, here's something by Nathaniel Branden on writing. It seems to talk about how to make something artful, so I think it goes beyond writing, into anything that we are trying to infuse with spirit, but yet want to keep empty enough so someone else can enter into it:
"If you want to obtain the strongest emotional response, then you write between the lines, never on the line; you write around the feeling, you don't spell it out explicitly. Because -- if you tell the reader everything, if you don't leave spaces for the mind to fill in, if you don't engage the consciousness by giving the reader something to do -- if, in effect, you try to do it all -- then you leave the reader passive, the consciousness is not engaged as it could be, and so the reader is not that involved emotionally."
What's one challenge you face when interacting with people? Sometimes, the biggest dissonance for me is when I can see what is motivating the other person, but they themselves can't see it. It seems like they are not even aware of what's driving them. Sometimes though, I felt doubtful about my own perceptions because I had the belief that everybody is equally aware of what is happening inside them.
They aren't. The blank space we can feel as sensitive people is because we are much more in touch with the unconscious aspects of our own selves, and as a result, of other people's selves. We know emotions in the most nuanced way. The downside of that is that we can get overwhelmed by this knowing, by wanting to process things deeply. But the upside is that we can take the emotional temperature of a room without even thinking about it.
Because it comes naturally to us, we sometimes feel at a loss when it doesn't come naturally to other people. That's why we can be left feeling that we looked after someone else's needs, but very few people look after our own. This is why we can start getting resentful.
We need people who can see the world like us. We need kindred spirits, people who truly get us. On one hand, interacting with people who are different from you can stretch your horizons, expose you to new ways of being. But deep friendships are built on commonalities, on a similar world-view.
If we have to convince others that the world we see is as real and they can't see it, our needs to be heard and understood go unmet. Our need to connect in a real, authentic way go unmet. We might be continuing with looking for meaning in such connections, connections where we can't seem to only barely touch the being of the other person, because we might have a belief that truly loving people accept everyone into their lives.
But maybe part of loving is about realizing that people find their own people, and everyone has different needs. Maybe part of our love can be directed toward nourishing our own selves as well. Maybe when we accept that not everyone is a good fit for us, we can let go of the need to force things where they are not working.
Maybe we can also examine other beliefs about friendship. Maybe a friend is not just someone who matches us in outer specifics, like age, life stage, or gender, but can be anybody whose heart resonates to the same things ours does. As Anne Shirley, the heroine of one of my favorite children's book series did, maybe we also need to be on the look out for our kindred spirits and when we find them, to realize that they are indeed precious, that they are they ones who feel right, who seem to understand who we are.
