“Only a powerful soul can offer love. Only a powerful soul can afford to be humble. If we are weak, then we become selfish. If we are empty, we take; but if we are filled, we automatically give to all. That is our nature.”
Dadi Prakashmani.
There was a farmer who grew excellent quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best grown corn. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbours. “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.
“Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn.”
So is with our lives. Those who want to live meaningfully and well must help enrich the lives of others, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.
Beneath the surface energies of a loud world is a quiet resurgence of the human spirit. Moving from a material focus to a spiritual focus and drawing power from inner spiritual resources, a critical mass of human beings is empowering a new approach to living – that of giving. The life-sustaining energy of spirituality enables giving, freeing us from the limitations and polarity of the old paradigm based on body consciousness.
We think we need to ‘get’ something to complete ourselves or prove our worth. One of the most important spiritual insights or secrets in life is that you already have what you need to give away. Most of us are taught to live a life of always desiring and wanting. We do so because we think when we get what we want, we will be fulfilled and esteemed by others. But it is an illusion. Only giving allows us to know what we are and what we have within. We are all already complete and worthy, but we do not know and experience it, until we give it away. Ask the question – how can I serve? The intention to serve will point us towards what we need to give. If the intention is real, it also generates the will. The most successful people in life are the givers.
Simply by giving I will receive all that I need. Giving is receiving. Today let me find a way to ‘give’ unconditionally and with love. Give a smile, give a word of appreciation, give a thought of good wishes, give cooperation for a task. Make today a day of giving and tomorrow you will receive the fruits.
The method of becoming a giver and not someone who is always asking for help, love, and respect from others is to start filling oneself with those treasures first by connecting with a Higher Source or God, who is full of those treasures Himself. God possesses every virtue – He is an Ocean of all virtues. In daily meditation, we strengthen our relationship with the Supreme Being and fill the self with what is lacking within us. When we accumulate virtues, it is then that we can share them with others. When I am full, complete and have conquered selfish needs, I can be naturally generous, enriching the lives of all.
Chirya Risely is a Rajyoga meditation teacher based at the Brahma Kumaris Peace Village Retreat Center, USA.