Receive - a blog for Christmas

Another Christmas has rolled around. I hope this means you are spending time with loved ones, feeling connected, nourished and rested. I know Christmas is not like this for many though so, wherever you are and however you are feeling, I am sending you love.

One of the strongest themes in our culture at this time of year is that of gift giving, and receiving. What is your relationship with gifts at this time if year? I feel I have moved through different seasons with it… in the past spending as much as I could afford, putting lots of thought into choosing and wrapping my gifts and, in honesty, expecting gifts in return. Gifts as a currency. This Christmas we have bought virtually no gifts, apart from a few yummy food items from Devon and a small poetry book for my mother-in-law, and for the first time I don’t feel guilty about visiting our families without all the paraphernalia. Because in my journey towards healing and embodying my authentic self, stripping away all the ‘stuff’ that clutters our lives, especially around this time of year, has felt as natural as the trees dropping their leaves in autumn.

I’ve also thought recently about what it truly means to receive. Yes, receiving presents at Christmas. But more deeply, to receive the gifts of this wild journey through life.

In order to receive something, we need open hands.

Aparigraha is a yogic concept usually defined as non-possessiveness. My own favourite teachings around aparigraha come from Tosha Silver who, in her book Outrageous Openness, defines aparigraha as non-grasping. To embody aparigraha is to not take more than is needed, and to let go of things that are not serving us. In material senses, this can mean living simply. But aparigraha’s most powerful teaching, for me, is deeper than this. It is about not being attached - to goals, outcomes, relationships, beliefs, even our idea of who we are. It is about living life with open hands, allowing things to flow freely without judging, reacting or attempting to control.

Carl Yung shared one of my favourite teachings:

“What we resist, persists.”

Resistance is a closed fist, or a raised hand - pushing away, struggling against. In the deeper realms of our psyches, resistance can look like not accepting certain truths or realities, ignoring our intuition, pushing away certain people or situations, or the now endless ways we can distract ourselves in order to avoid truly feeling.

And as Jung teaches, the more we resist something, the more it sticks around. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction and when we push something away, it pushes right back at us. And this is at the root of so many of the cycles of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, frustration and even physical dis-ease that we find ourselves in. The harder we dig our heels in the more stuck we get.

I have learnt that this also is true:

What we reach for, retreats.

When we desperately want something, rather than trust what is meant for us will come at the right time, we reach for it. We grasp. We chase after it in the belief that we can force it into our arms. But as Rhonda Byrne teaches about the law of attraction in The Secret, if we are in the energy of wanting something, we will always attract that sense of wanting. It will feel like what we want is always just out of reach.

What we have to do instead of reaching, is let go. Release our grasp.

As Tosha shares in her book:

Let what wants to come, come

Let what wants to go, go

If it is meant for me, it will stay

If not, whatever is better will replace it.

Letting go, I believe, is the hardest step in the healing journey. It is also the most profound and life changing. And it does not mean that we don’t have visions, hopes and dreams for our lives. We hold these as intentions - something that we put out into the universe, something that we call in, but then we let go. We let go of trying to control the outcome, trying to force things to happen for us. We let go of our idea of how things should be, instead trusting what is meant for us will happen.

As I said, it is not easy. But the more we can practice aparigraha, the more we can let go of resisting and reaching, the more we can relax and trust. And we when can do that - that is when the universe can finally share the gifts that have been patiently waiting.

Because if one of our hands is hardened, pushing away what we don’t want, and the other is grasping, reaching for what we think is meant for us… we don’t have any hands open to receive.

In order to truly receive we must have two open hands.

Prompts and questions for your own healing journey:

Resist

• What am I resisting in my life?

• Who am I feeling resistant towards?

• What situation do I not want to accept?

• What feelings or intuitions am I ignoring?

Reach

• What am I grasping or reaching for?

• What have I always wanted but never found?

• What is stopping me from trusting that things will come to me when they are meant to?

Receive

• Where in my life could I start practicing aparigraha?

• How would it feel to set an intention and let go of the outcome?

• What would my life look like if I relaxed and trusted more?