In order to give, one
must first receive. If you are not yourself feeling joy
and love, what you are giving to another may not be of
much value. In other words, it's important to feel good
yourself before you try to help another! This is a
little fact which I have often overlooked, and which has
caused me some painful set-downs. I have noticed that
when I'm purely resonating to well-being, others come to
me voluntarily and are really interested in what I have
to say. When I set a vibrational example to others,
there is an instinctive, and positive, response. But
when I’m helping because I feel that it’s required, or
when I’m not really into it, or when I’m trying to “fix”
someone, I’m not really very effective. I wind up
bringing others down to my level.
Receiving before giving
(as I’m defining it) doesn’t mean refusing to love
another until they love you first, or declining to give
Uncle Harold a birthday present this year because he
forgot yours last year. It doesn’t mean grabbing as
much of the pie as you can before anyone else. All of
these actions are based on a consciousness of scarcity
and lack, and are guaranteed to bring more scarcity into
your life.
The receiving I’m
talking about is vibrational. Just as a battery cannot
provide power without first being charged, a person
cannot give effectively unless he or she is feeling
positive emotion. Consciousness interfaces with life
force energy, batteries interface with electromagnetic
energy!
The feeling of giving is
just a connection to or allowance of life force energy.
It results when you feel prosperous and abundant
yourself. When you feel fulfilled, you just naturally
want to share with others.
Receiving has less to do
with physical objects than it does with a state of
being. The difficulty is that we’ve been taught how
difficult it is to feel good, and how easy it is to feel
rotten, but it’s just the opposite! Feeling good is the
default – all you have to do is open up to the universal
ocean of life force energy that surrounds you.
Physical objects are
often used as substitutes for that connection to
source. The giving and receiving of presents makes it
easy to feel good, for when looking at something
pleasing, it is easier to remember the inherently joyful
person that’s hiding inside.
However, like the guy
who says one thing and does another, material objects
may not be an accurate representation of our true
feelings. For example, Aunt Hilda gives you a card on
your anniversary, now you feel obligated to reciprocate.
You don’t really want to, but you do because it’s
polite. To you, sending a card represents an obligation
because Hilda is not one of your favorite relatives.
Interestingly, when viewing things from the perspective
of our vibrational model, the card itself will have
little effect on your relationship with Hilda. The
non-local characteristics of vibrational interaction
suggest that Hilda is not likely to view your gift with
enthusiasm if you have sent it with the vibration of
“I’m only doing this because I have to.” In other
words, the physical object is less important than your
vibrational orientation.
This may seem like a
strange and even delusional statement, but if you
carefully examine your own relationships from the
viewpoint of consciousness and energy flows, it may
begin to make sense.
The kind of receiving
I’m talking about is not physical, it’s energetic. Of
course the physical object is very important, simply
because it’s tangible. But physical objects do not
determine the way we feel about ourselves or about
others. When Beauregard Clifton Densmore IVth receives
a new car for his 16th birthday, he is very
upset. “But mumsy,” he complains, “I specifically
requested the blue Bentley, not the grey one!” I
remember one of my old chums in grade school got a new
bike. He thought it was awesome, but his parents were
upset because the bike was a gift from his uncle, with
whom they’d had an argument. Same object, two entirely
different reactions!
“Receiving must come
before giving” just means that it is helpful to first
feel the love before you outflow. And if you aren’t
feeling very loving, then your giving is probably not
going to provide a lot of comfort on the other end.
In order to give
effectively you must communicate effectively, and in
order to do that you have to be real to the other
person; in other words, you have to be in vibrationally
proximity. If you want to help someone in grief you
can’t walk in whistling a happy tune. However, it is
possible, and necessary, to stay as high as possible on
the scale of emotion/vibration while accessing the lower
emotional levels. In fact, that is the only way to raise
tone, for without establishing a vibrational potential
there can be no movement up the scale. In other words,
it is up to you to be the positive pole in the
relationship.
It turns out that ALL
help is vibrational/emotional help. For example, you
join a group which passes out food to the needy. This is
a very helpful activity, but without a vibrational
movement on the part of the recipients up the scale,
conditions for them will not change. You will constantly
be catching fish, instead of teaching how to fish. This
again is a simple application of the Law of Vibration
and the Law of ‘like attracts like.’ Help in the form of
physical assistance only postpones the inevitable
vibrational reckoning.
Before giving, you have
to fill your tank first. When you receive, however, you
do not deprive another.
It’s always possible to
fill up at the gas station of positive emotion without
harming anyone else. You don’t have to come cash in hand
and exchange for your share. It’s not possible to run
out of life force energy, so gorge yourself. The better
you feel, the more valuable is your service to others.
It is always appropriate
to feel good, no matter the circumstances. Some feel
that it is inappropriate to feel happiness when others
are sad. Some counselors feel that in order to be there
for the client, they must feel the client’s pain, but
this only serves to stick both client and practitioner
in the client’s vibration.
Feeling good while
another feels horrible almost seems insulting, like the
white-gloved aristocrat who refuses to get his hands
dirty while others do all the work. However, that
feeling of inappropriateness is just the result of
non-matching frequencies. It certainly is true that in a
roomful of sad people there is “pressure” to feel sad as
well, but that is only because the amplitude of that
signal is very powerful indeed. In other words, there is
nothing inevitable about feeling crummy even though
everyone around you feels that way. Every person is
sovereign in his or her own experience, so it possible
(and desirable) to keep your balance when others have
lost theirs. Once you show yourself you can do it, and
notice the positive results which appertain, you’ll
never feel guilty about maintaining your positive vibe
even when confronting tragedy.
The subtle energy which
I’ve been calling life force energy may have its
physical counterpart in theoretical physics. Some
frontier scientists believe that space is not empty at
all, but a seething cauldron, or flux, of virtual
particles, and have called it the ‘active vacuum’ or
‘quantum particle flux.’ Some scientists have estimated
that there is theoretically enough energy in a cubic
centimeter of the vacuum to run all of the industries on
earth for many years. In this theoretical model, the
planet earth is surrounded by energy which may
eventually be tapped and utilized. In this model, we
live in an open system, not a closed one.
A good
example of a closed system is a typical electrical
circuit. Electrical generation is accomplished by
constantly feeding the generator with more energy as the
source dipole is destroyed by the back emf of the spent
electrons in the closed circuit. A closed system like
this always requires more energy input than is output. A
battery, even if it is rechargeable, will eventually
drain and be come useless.
An example
of an open system is a windmill or a waterwheel which
can take huge amounts of 'free' energy from the
environment. “Free” energy doesn’t mean violation of the
law of conservation of energy. It just means you tap
into the energy which exists in the active environment,
so you get more energy out than you put in. A water
wheel, for example, uses the flow of a river to turn a
paddle and generate electricity. A windmill uses the
power of the wind. You have to put an initial energy
investment of course to build the paddle wheel or
windmill, but once you’ve done that you have a
continuous source of power.
Whether or
not it is possible to extract energy in usable form from
the vacuum, all beings have the ability to tap into the
subtle energy stream of life force and become an
amplifier of it, because consciousness interfaces
directly with it. This energy stream has also been
called prana, or chi, and has been understood by almost
every culture that has ever existed on planet earth.
Access to this energy is free and effortless, and it
doesn’t require complicated machinery or government
funding!
Your supply
of happiness, joy, or well being depends only on how
much of it you ask for and how much you allow in.
Happiness, joy, well being, or any positive emotion is
not a depletable resource. It’s free energy that can be
tapped into at any time.
How do you
tap in? By opening up and asking for it. Everything in
the universe is composed of this energy. The human
energy field is a field of well being, and everybody has
one. Meditation, for example, is just a process of
stopping the flow of “junk thought” and becoming
receptive to your personal subtle energy field. It’s not
any more complicated than that! Receiving your full
complement of life force energy is as simple as thinking
and doing things that make you feel good. There are a
BILLION reasons not to, so just ignore them. (You don’t
get into trouble when you ignore the bad stuff, because
it becomes deactivated vibrationally within you).
On planet
earth there are lots of “Now I’m supposed to’s” and “Now
I have to’s” that others have decided are good for you.
But you are not a cog in society’s wheel! You are a
sovereign, independent being capable of deciding for
yourself what’s best for you.
A vibration of
well–being and abundance can only attract manifestations
that mirror it. Therefore, a focus on well being MUST
bring forth a positive response from the universe, a
response which benefits you, and everyone else as well.
This is true for an individual, or a whole planet full
of people. In other words, no harm can possibly come to
another if you receive something from a positive
vibration of well–being. If your brother has been in
perfect health all of his life, do you accuse him of
depriving someone else of health? It sounds ridiculous,
but that is the sort of mind-set that exists on our
planet! If Stephen Hawking is a genius, do we tell him
not to hog all of the intelligence? These examples are
exaggerations, but they serve to illustrate the idea
that although mankind is very good at dreaming up more
and more ways to amplify scarcity, the universe contains
an infinity of abundance. As with health and clarity, so
too with prosperity, no matter what form it takes.
“If everyone on earth
asked for and received abundance, all of our resources
would quickly be exhausted, and pollution would destroy
our planet.” That’s if the status quo (fossil fuels)
continues. However, the reason we have scarce fossil
fuels is a consciousness that mirrors scarcity into the
physical universe. When that consciousness shifts to one
of prosperity, cleaner and more efficient sources of
energy will be developed in response. It is silly to use
the status quo to argue for the impossibility of a shift
in consciousness, when it is a state of consciousness
that is responsible for the status quo!
Is it really “better to
give than to receive?”
Giving without first
receiving drains a person’s reserves and causes stress.
And it's no wonder that it does, for the idea that it is
better to give than to receive is unbalanced. Receiving
automatically opens the energy stream not only for you,
but for everyone else. Have you ever been in the
presence of someone truly joyful? It just feels so good!
That is what happens when a person connects to the
energy of life.
The primary attitude
should be to allow one's self to freely receive, which
then allows giving from a sense of joy and love.
Receiving must come before giving. Even in a closed
system, a battery cannot supply energy unless it is
charged.
It's OK to receive, and
in fact, it is vitally necessary if one is to be an
effective giver.