(Listen to the audio version below)
To truly teach the wisdom of receiving I would have to leave this entire page blank.
But for the sake of your entertainment and education, I will use the words that are available to me, though I share them with the caveat that none will ever measure up to that absolute nothingness that is the true state of spiritual receiving.
The Silent Nights
The first time I ever experienced this particular type of wisdom was when I was young and had stayed up far past my bedtime. Maybe it was at a sleepover. Maybe it was one of those long late nights during summer break. But it was in the silent dark after everyone who set my limits was asleep when I first felt that electric blue magic in my body. It was the stillness of receiving.
As I got older, I learned to push my attention outward. To unfocus my eyes on my own inner landscape and press my gaze forward at anything, everything. I lost the magic, until one day when I started doing something new.
I started to stop.
Just Stop
Stopping is the first step to develop a practice of receiving. It’s impossible to receive when you are constantly moving. You must pause long enough to collect all that scattered attention in one spot. And then you can practice drawing it deeper and deeper within you.
Of course this doesn’t mean you give up on all action. That’s impossible anyway. All it means is that you make little dates with yourself for inaction, for undoing. For standing in front of that gaping black hole within you and lingering until you feel safe enough to get sucked in.
If you don’t know where to find the black hole I’m talking about (and maybe believe it doesn’t exist within you), trust me, it’s there. Like all things that receive, it is waiting for you to show up.
You just have to stick around in stillness and curiosity long enough for the experience to become bearable.
The Beckoning of Receiving
Slowing down to receive is not entirely easy to do at first. You and I live in a culture that demands that we fill ourselves with activity and the ego’s sense of I amness. You and I have been taught that we should do, strive, know.
Receiving invites us to a different place entirely. It beckons us with a tender curl of its finger. Pause beneath your own skin. Here is the universe. Here is the sky with the Milky Way sprayed across by the hand of the divine. Here is every answer you’ve been looking for.
Turns out what you were searching for was never out there.
Ego Death
A warning – the ego will fight you on this turn toward your inner knowing. It will tell you you’re crazy to give up all its doing and pushing. It will tell you that you must prove yourself, protect yourself, grab at what you want. It will be a wrestling match, for sure, but if you can make it past that, you’ll have experienced the first miracle. But keep going, it won’t be the last one.
There is a different level yet. Where your belly softens as you breathe and you find your spine lifts to the cosmos without effort. And if all the pains and problems your body has experienced don’t clear up, they will at least begin to make sense.
Flash Forward
Like most magic, the power of receiving arrives at first in uncontrollable flashes. Then, with practice, they’ll arrive more steadily. Mastery is when you can turn the tide toward you no matter where you are.
The best part? When you make regular space for receiving, you will instinctively know when it is safe to rest in this soft place and when you should move to the opposite expression (not to worry – that will be our focus for next month).
What’s Here?
I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll find when you get there. But what I can tell you is that as you open, you will feel safer to open more. As you listen, your ears will become more attuned to the subtle whispers. As you continue to collect, you only will gather what’s truly valuable.
But don’t get caught here forever. The webs in this inner space can be thick and the hallways dark and twisting. You can easily pass hours and days gazing at your own reflection – even a lifetime. Don’t get caught in the same pool that tricked Narcissus.
The remedy? Look up every once in a while. Find some object beyond your skin that brings you delight and place your gaze there. Let it remind you that while the world within you is filled with endless fascination, the promise of life comes from enough self-exploration to know what you want on the outside.
This is one half of the dance that makes action doable.
