Receiving

I work in an environment of massage healing and lately I have been very intrigued in the way people use the word "receive."  Someone might say something like, "I received the other day from so and so, and it was awesome." Or, "I've been receiving from so and so, it's been so healing."

Receiving in this environment is clearly connected to massage by association, but people don't use the words in conjunction. They don't say, "I received a massage," they say, "I received." It's curious in a way, because receiving has been somewhat bred out of our modern day tribes, and yet it is such an integral part of life. Only doing doesn't work. Only giving doesn't work. For balance and equanimity, we have to give and receive in equal parts. For our sanity, we have to give and receive in equal parts.

A friend of mine wrote about working on the ability to receive a compliment without playing it down and inside I yelled, "Yes! We all need to work on this." We must work on the ability to accept what others give to us, whether it is a compliment, their insight, healing or kindness. By playing it down, we insult the integrity of that person. If someone has complimented you, and you play it down as if it was nothing, you are putting down their ability to appreciate the quality you put forth in the world. By only giving, giving, giving, we rob others of their own desire to participate in the world, in our world that we share with them, and we inadvertently puff off our consequence in doing so, as if to say, "What I give has more value than what you give."

Of course we don't mean to do these things, but the consciousness of receiving has been dormant in the last few decades. Maybe it needs us to revitalize it! Maybe we could make "receiving" a word with as widespread a value as "giving" has. I love this opportunity to explore receiving as a concept that is so much wider than a massage or a compliment, a concept that encompasses our kindness to others by allowing them to give, and a kindness to ourselves by allowing ourselves to receive what others give.

Here's to receiving...

Blessings.
 Darshan



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