The way we practice rejection can take two forms: high or low. We may say, “I do not have to participate because I have been harmed,” or, “I do not have to participate because I am practicing something superior to the world.” Either way, we do not get the healing that would come about from entering the flow of life that comes with contributing. The identity that has formed in order to justify separation is the cause of the discomfort. We feel a lack of belonging, be it a superior lack of belonging or an inferior one. Precisely what the tumescent mind claims would be healing—retreat from the world as a means to tend to, care for, or even grow ourselves—is in actuality the cause of what needs to be healed. The way to secure our position is connection, exchange, and not just contribution but generous contribution.
To be generous is not something we do to be altruistic. It is not even something we do for another person. It aligns us with life. It affirms our internal wealth, while retreat affirms poverty. It is thus important that we are not contributing for anyone else. We most likely have a backlog of unexpressed love, care, and offering. If we can allow that to flow, it brings about the sensation we have been seeking in our hoarding, stinginess, or withdrawal.
We start with one simple declaration, which is at best an understatement but is also a stretch for many of us: I have enough. Life’s imagined debt to us will have to be written off entirely. We may not yet be able to admit it is in fact we who owe life a debt we could never possibly repay. We cannot say this because we belong to life, but we can say that irrespective of childhood conditions, broken hearts, violations, gender, ethnicity, or financial status, life is paid in full and we are owed nothing. It is a powerful stance to take. It is the first letting go of many that will bring us liberation.
Until we make this declaration, anything we do is from a black hole of scarcity. Our generosity is not generosity but an attempt to curry favor—with life or our own ego—or to get love or belonging or attention, or even to get peace of mind. It is a state of unhealthy codependency with the world. This is not even bad. But it robs us of the true healing power of generosity that would seat us firmly in a feeling of belonging, and empty us of the congestion in which we have been submerged.
When we release life from its imagined debt, we free ourselves from the endless accounting of “Did I get mine?” and “Am I getting what I deserve?” We untie the binding that holds us to a reality of scarcity, transactional relating, stinginess, and the energy that goes to accounting, which could otherwise be invested in joy. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and maintenance to keep up an identity of being owed, of needing to be recompensed. To do that, we have to concretize an identity of oppression, and the identity becomes our prison—a prison that takes a lot of energy to run.
Our tumescent mind may love the hit of satisfaction that comes with feeling like a victim and real hurt was likely involved; but a label that has rights that come with demands is simply so much less than we deserve. What we deserve is a mind open in unconditional freedom and joy. Relinquishing a righteous identity into the fire that will forge that reality is a small price to pay.
Most importantly, when we admit we have enough, we discover something powerful: our capacity for true reception opens. The tight, scarce reality we have been living in has been the result of a grip that blocked the abundance life has to offer. We discover that a backlog of life we had wished or prayed for has been waiting at the gate, the gate being a mind that, while entitled and demanding, secretly knew it was not deserving. It was not deserving simply because it refused to appreciate.
A gate closed is a gate closed; it doesn’t matter if it is for incoming or outgoing. Generosity opens the outgoing and appreciation opens the incoming. Entitlement closes the outgoing and demand closes the incoming. It is when we step into appreciation and generosity that we will likely get circumstances we wished for, but more importantly, we get the feeling we had been searching for. Nothing can confer this feeling except the flow that comes from exchange with life.
