I believe that in our lifetime we must learn both to give and to receive. They are opposite poles of the same spectrum. They are about love. They work with your heart center, and in their truest forms they both open your heart.
I have learned that it is when I give little things, my heart opens. When I allow myself to receive in the same way it opens wider. It is an opportunity for a never ending circle of love and it puts me in a place of gratitude.
There is a huge difference between True Giving and sacrifice….likewise there is a big difference between True Receiving and taking. I believe we have confused what is at its essence Pure Heart energy at work. We have come to hold in high regard someone who gives and gives and gives at their own expense. Often this energy holds within it the needs and fears of the giver. It can become sacrifice and martyrdom. This is not True Giving. True Giving has no need for acknowledgement, praise or recognition. It is not born from the need to feel better about oneself in any way. It is a desire, born from the heart, to gift another. These gifts can come in so many forms but they come from the desire to give, rather than the desire to feel good about oneself because they gave.
True Receiving is to open the heart and allow another to give to you. To accept and receive it from an open heart, without feeling any less about yourself, accepting only with feelings of love and gratitude. True Receiving has within it no need to reciprocate to the Giver outside of acceptance and gratitude…merely a knowing that in another time and another place, you will also be the Giver. In fact, when you look at the energy of True Receiving you will see that there is inherent within it the gift of giving. You give by receiving. You allow another the gift of True Giving.
These flows of energy are what Love, Gratitude and Life are truly about. A person who has found the gift of True Giving and True Receiving is a person filled with love and at peace.