Two-Way Street

The phrase I hear in certain spiritual circles, You have to give it away in order to keep it, has always bothered me. So, lately, knowing I’m coming up against this as a block, I’ve been altering it to, I have to share it in order to keep it, just to make myself feel better about it.

I made a few realizations recently about my reluctance to share. Notably, in each case when I’ve been “down on my luck” financially, and have gone into what I call “lock-down mode,” I’ve been forced to surrender, and let go of my pride, or my ideas, and let other people know what’s going on, and let them help me.

It occurs to me that lock-down mode is a closed circuit. It says, anything that I get, I must hold on to fiercely, because I don’t know if I will ever get more (this goes for love, and finances, and jobs, and creativity, and more, I’m sure).

Lock-down mode is also a closed circuit because it is like battening down the hatches of a ship, bracing for a storm. Don’t move, or you’ll be swept overboard.

In these circumstances when I’ve locked-down, it’s been like increasing the speed of a flushing toilet, I realize. It’s gotten worse, not better, faster.

Abundance, community, love, creativity, require an open channel, an open circuit, one which allows energy in, and allows energy out.

I reported on here a little while ago about a meditation where I noticed that although still reluctant to do so, I allowed energy to pass through me into those behind me, instead of, as I’d done in a previous version of this meditation, simply fill others from my own bucket, denying and absolutely refusing to take in from those sending to me.

Either ends of this constriction is a closed circuit, depleting, and ultimately self-defeating.

Whether I choose to lock-down, and absorb, reach for, demand everything I can, and horde it; or, whether I choose to close off the inflow, and simply – and resolutely – give to you from my own bucket. This, is not a channel.

When someone had mentioned to me recently that I have to close these holes in order to be able to hold abundance, that there are places where I’m letting it seep from me, and will never in fact be able to hold it, this is a place of that fissure. Seems ironic that in order to have abundance I must begin to stop holding it, but, such is the paradox of spiritual axioms.

To quote what I’ve heard, There is enough time, there is enough love, there is enough money. Therefore, if there is enough, then I don’t need to hold on to it.

And, I need to address the other side too, the part of the inflow. Like in Tuesday night’s class when I’d recognized how little I’d been letting other people “give” to me.

In the moments when I’ve been broke, looking at the price of Ramen noodles in the discount grocery store, I’ve let go. I’ve stopped folding the end of the hose, and let it open, fear or not. And, miraculously, I’ve been taken care of … abundantly ;)

So, there are two sides of this constriction that I would like to address. The part that says, I can give to you, but you can’t give to me. And the part that says, once I’ve got anything at all, I’m holding onto it for dear life.

The “dear life,” it seems, occurs only, only when I do let go of strangling it.