Receiving 101

Clients and workshop participants often balk, initially, at our invitation to open to their power of Receiving. It sounds like it's for weenies. It's confrontive to their sense of being a can-do person. We know we're competent by the things we make happen, not by the ways we ask for help or feel our deep needs. It just sounds like a bad idea... at first.

But over time, as they recognize the long-term depletion they've experienced by continually pouring out, giving, providing, driving, producing, going, going, going, and seldom pausing to refill, refuel, and reconnect to their inspiration, many of them circle back and say, "Okay. I'm not sure I fully know what you're talking about, but I'm willing to give it a try. How do I open to receiving?"

And we gleefully rub our hands together. Aha! They're on a very good path! If you're in that place of willing and wondering, too, we'll share with you the bottom-line, most basic tool for receiving:

The #1 most important component in receiving is seeing yourself – in part – as an empty vessel hungry to be filled. It’s not that this vessel-facet of your being is ALL of who you are, it’s just that to expand your receiving capacity, you have to be willing to taste for yourself that void, so that it can be filled. Practice having your guard down, within your body: Spend 10-20 minutes in a comfortable position like savasana (relaxed on your back) or sukhasana ("easy pose" - sitting comfortably cross-legged, perhaps on a pillow or blanket) or simply sitting in a chair with your feet on the floor. During this time, scan your body for the sensations of need, longing, hunger, sadness, emptiness, or just willingness to receive…. Not so you fall into those, but so you can say “here’s the doorway” through which you can receive – those are the places where you can open to that which you desire, and that which you need but are so courageous and generous that you don’t even know you need.

After you've spent this time noticing sensations in your body, your mind will likely ask (impatiently, I might add!), "Okay, so now what?!" That's its impulse to drive, to do, to make something happen. But there isn't anything to do this time. That's the counter-logical power of receiving: it's a form of power you have seldom used. As a result, it's untapped. It's new territory. It's like finding a fat wallet full of cash in the the other pocket, in addition to the one you already had. Jackpot!

Just don't ask your receiving power to behave exactly like your driving power. It doesn't. It's more yin, in contrast to the yang of driving. Your attention to those sensations will cause changes in your attention, in your presence, and in your feeling state. It will, almost without your realizing, give you new ideas and new options in responding to people and challenges.

If you keep doing it, you'll find motivation naturally bubbling up to help you do things you've wanted to do but that your driving power didn't get done. What happens when you tap into your receiving is different for each of us. Please leave a comment and let us know what arises for you.