Thank you, Debbie, for being part of New Spirit Journal through your column. We have enjoyed your insights and wisdom. If any of our readers want to stay in touch with Debbie and her writing, please sign up for her email list: www.debbieritter.net
– Krysta Gibson
The giving season is upon us. In the coming weeks we will be buying presents, making donations to our favorite causes, and hopefully thinking of those less fortunate. We started off with Thanksgiving and gratitude for all we have, and now we are meant to share the bounty.
Debbie Ritter is a spiritual intuitive who reads and teaches the Akashic Records. www.debbieritter.net
But what if we’re not feeling it? What if we are tired of the mailbox filling up with pleas for money, and late night cable TV ads rubbing our noses in unbearable hardships? Or perhaps it’s the opposite: there are those for whom the giving and spending are fun, part of the holiday binge, along with the eating and drinking. We have a free pass to overdo until after the ball drops in Times Square.
Across our culture, much of our generosity has become a transaction. We give to get, from a schoolyard lunch trade, to sending the Sierra Club $25 because we like the knapsack we will get as a “gift.” Wait, you may protest, I have people in my life I love and I give them things because it makes them happy. Or, hey, I don’t even like the knapsack, it’s the cause I believe in.
Of course. Those are unassailable acts of generosity. But what happens if our giving is not somehow reciprocated? Do we have hidden motivations, like hoping that giving will make us feel better about ourselves? That’s fine when it works, but if it doesn’t, we end up resenting that we gave, that it was somehow a bad bargain. It is worth asking: how many dollars would we have to give to feel deserving of love? Why did I just break my budget with that last donation or knock myself out organizing that benefit?
For generosity to work cleanly, it has to come from that spanking clean place within, a place that is not keeping score, or using giving as a quid pro quo. Done properly, giving and generosity are some of the great joys of life. This is because they automatically align with our higher self. The “giver” disappears and the big self merges with others through our hearts. We are still ourselves, but also part of the whole. There is no cost or burden to us because we have eliminated the transactional piece. A need has come our way that we could meet, and we do. That’s it.
There’s a relief, and a simplification that occurs when we throw away the scorecard. We can just trust the process and allow it. We may not “do” anything differently. We will still hit the Paypal button or show up at the soup kitchen. But we have no extra skin in the game, no need for gratitude from someone who can’t afford a decent meal on a holiday, or to secretly feel we’re better than the friend who doesn’t volunteer like we do.
And if we do want gratitude or we do feel better than another, if we lose humility and slip into feeling virtuous or prideful, we can stop for a moment and let whatever prompted those thoughts to well up into awareness. Chances are the underlying feelings will contain a longing to be witnessed and appreciated as a loving and good person. We all need that. Every single one of us. When we know the truth of that, there is no need to pretend. We really are just like everyone else, connected in both our humanity and our divinity.
At some level we know instinctively that giving is love and that generosity comes from the heart. So uncomplicated. The holidays are the season where we can get a lot of practice in this. And there’s no reason we can’t keep going after the clock strikes midnight.
