When the ego hears that question it believes it is being asked if you are getting your fair share.
When the Spirit hears this question, it knows you are being asked if you realize what you give.
To give is to receive.
When you receive with joy and gratitude what you give, you are always fulfilled in the giving.
To Spirit, getting is meaningless. To Spirit, giving is All.ACIM
Many measure their worth by what they get from others in money, gratitude and service.
Many find their power in what they have and keep and invest.
Ego is focused on survival, security, accumulating, protecting and keeping.
Spirit, the true Self, receives Joy from giving, sharing, appreciating, enjoying.
When we are trying to overcome our fear, we often protect and project our fear.
When others feel our fear, they often become more fearful and withholding.
When we are needy or greedy, others are aware even on a subtle or unconscious level.
They identify with their own neediness or greediness and hold back on giving.
When we feel expansive, full, unlimited and happy to serve, help and contribute, others feel blessed.
When others feel benefitted by our joyful giving, they open to receive and are more willing to give.
The one receiving often believes that the happy giver has enough and they give to those who lack.
Those who receive usually trust that those who give have their needs met and they give elsewhere.
People often forget to feed the goose who lays the golden eggs. They may drain the givers.
We have created a culture of giving to the needy, the poor, the weak and lacking.
We believe when we give to those who believe they don’t have, they will return the favor.
Thus our experience is to feed and increase the ones who cannot feed themselves.
Our culture has created a society based on need and greed.
Thus we have poor getting poorer and rich getting richer.
When we know how to share equally with all in a fair way, we think, speak and behave differently.
When we recognize that we are receiving from everything we give, we benefit ourselves in all ways.
I am building the world in which I want to live by how I live and love and give.
When I give, I see the wholeness and give with dignity.
When I give, I listen within to see what is really of value, what strengthens and encourages and awakens.
When I give, I trust the other and free them to be and use and give all they have to others with joy.
Are you giving with gratitude or with sacrifice?
Are you giving always and only what and how you want to receive?
Are you giving the highest Good that you know?
Are you giving with respect and dignity or with pity and guilt?
What you give your receive?
Feel joy or feel resentment?
True gifts create no loss for anyone.
Trust gifts expand everyone’s Love.
Loving us all as we learn to receive all the gifts we give and stay full and overflowing with Goodness.
Betty Lue
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow."
Melody Beattie
Helping, Fixing, Serving
--by Rachel Remen (May 29, 2000)
Service is not the same as helping.
Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your own strength to help someone with less strength. It's a one up, one down relationship, and people feel this inequality. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.
Serving is also different from fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don't fix people. When I set about fixing another person, it's because I see them as broken. Fixing is a form of judgment that separates us from one another; it creates a distance.
So, fundamentally, helping, fixing and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole.
When we serve in this way, we understand that this person's suffering is also my suffering, that their joy is also my joy and then the impulse to serve arises naturally - our natural wisdom and compassion presents itself quite simply. A server knows that they're being used and has the willingness to be used in the service of something greater.
We may help or fix many things in our lives, but when we serve, we are always in the service of wholeness.
--Rachel Remen, from Zen Hospice