What's in a Gift?

Isn’t it the nicest thing when you receive a gift from another? What is it about getting a present that feels so good? Is it the actual physical object that you received? Perhaps it is something that you had wanted and now you have it. Or maybe someone offered to do something for you or provide you a service that would have been difficult or expensive for you to do yourself. It could be that someone just brought you something nice. But is the gift really in the present you just received?

What if the present was only the messenger? Could the real gift lie in the meaning or intention behind the present? Consider some of the presents you’ve received. Have you ever been less than thrilled to get something elaborate and expensive because it felt empty or outlandish, or perhaps it was too little too late? Has someone ever given you something of little or no value, but its meaning was so profound as to make it priceless to you? Isn’t it really the energy behind the gift that makes it so valuable or appreciated?

In Stage 12, and in all the Awaken stages, there is a lot of talk about the giving and receiving of gifts. But what we are actually talking about is the energy behind a gift, not the gift itself. It’s that energetic essence of your soul that adds a “you-ness” to what you share with others. And not just with respect to intentional “gift-giving”. Rather it’s who you are and how you are as you act and interact in life.

In Stage 12 in particular, we talk about receiving others and their actions as gifts. This can be somewhat hard to understand when, often times, people do things that are not very nice or that hurt us. However, when you are in an Awaken level of consciousness, you see a gift in everything. The gift lies in the opportunity to discover a new depth of your “you-ness”, through how you receive others and their actions. In doing so, and thereby welcoming a new level of wholeness in yourself, you can give at a deeper level that creates greater wholeness in community.

You see, in community, there is a very beautiful thing that happens between all sorts of different people. Dr. Epstein refers to it as divergent energies. What it really means is people existing and interacting with such different behaviours and perspectives that they oppose. Nothing shows you yourself more clearly than opposition. These divergent energies in community are here to show us our perceptions and beliefs that could be tied up in a story whose time has come to pass. When we are unwilling to look within at this depth, the divergent energy will seem like a wound and our actions and behaviours around it will sometimes seem neurotic. The gift lies in the possibility of us taking on a new story about this energy and ourselves that changes the reality for our community.

Dr. Epstein is always saying that, “We are each other’s medicine.” We cannot learn about ourselves without interaction with another. Others allow us to see all parts of ourselves, especially the parts that we would rather not know about. It is very easy to live in peace and harmony when there is no one else to remind us of the sides of ourselves that we would like to ignore. When we react to someone else’s behaviour, something in us has been activated. There is a perspective or story to observe. If it was not there, we would not care what that person did. Consequently, when we are astounded by something amazing in another, we are also being shown a part that exists within us that may not yet be welcomed into wholeness. This is how we act as each other’s medicine.

As we embrace and commit to community in Stage 12, we obsessively share our gifts and look for the gifts in everything we receive. We know the gift lies in the energy behind the object or action and we must receive it for the good of our community.