Survive or Serve?

The greater satisfaction in life does not come with the receiving of a gift but with the giving of a gift. Somehow a gesture that extends and gives is more powerful than an act that seeks to take. A generous heart is more fulfilled when it gives of itself. Emptiness tends to accompany accumulation. Most of us know this from our own experience. We might therefore conclude that the pursuit and practice of giving at all times in all places would almost guarantee a satisfying and fulfilling life. Unfortunately we learn the opposite and become highly practiced takers. We will even go to war across breakfast table, boardroom table and ocean table to get and take what we want. Why is this? Early in life we absorb one of the deepest beliefs that forms our habits of taking. It is the belief that life itself has to be survived, that life itself is a survival course, it is survival of the fittest, survive or die. This belief generates a continuous, free floating, background anxiety in our mind, which then drives us to gather the ‘stuff’ we think we need to survive, and to accumulate the money we need to build our systems of protection.

Eventually we equate ‘survival’ with both success and satisfaction in life and, as a consequence, we miss the deeper success and the greater satisfaction that comes with giving and the serving of others. We also fail to recognize an absolute truth which states that our spiritual growth and mental strength are directly linked to giving to others. The humble acorn will eventually demonstrate the efficacy of giving every day. Within the acorn is the blueprint of an oak tree which is destined to absorb carbon dioxide, transform it and give out oxygen, thereby serving all creatures great and small with lungs! It’s growth and strength is driven by this natural inclination towards giving, and if the oak tree were to cease ‘giving out’ what it is designed to absorb, it stagnates and dies. The same happens to us when we forget to make giving the ‘red thread’ that runs through our life. If we do not make giving the primary intention behind everything we do we will stagnate and atrophy both mentally and spiritually.

Like the acorn the natural inclination of human consciousness is to give. The inclination is suppressed when we learn that our purpose in life is survival. When we believe we must survive life we generate fear-based intentions which sound and look like competing, controlling, contending and criticizing (attacking). Paradoxically the fear and the selfish behavior it produces, actually weaken our ability to survive. When we realize spiritual growth and mental strength are only possible when we give based on love, we begin to transform these behaviors into sharing, caring, allowing and fulfilling the needs of others. Here is where motive can be subtle. If we give just because we understand it will be good for us, it is not true giving but taking in disguise. This is self-interest and it will be sensed by others. If it is giving as a response to a genuine need of another, but we give with an awareness that we are self strengthening in the process, this will be a truer giving, sometimes referred to as enlightened self interest. If we give with genuinely no desire for a return, as perhaps a mother would for a newly born baby, it is authentic and selfless giving.

The only way we can free ourselves from these subtle variations is to realize our survival is not an issue. This requires the realization of a core spiritual truth that as spiritual beings we don’t actually die. It requires a direct experience of our own eternity, where any death or endings are seen as illusions. Only then is survival seen as irrelevant. The ‘survival belief’ is seen for what it is, a belief based on the illusion that we are only physical entities. Only then can fear disappear. Only then can true love re-emerge from our hearts. Only then can we give naturally, where giving has no opposite. Only then will we be able to affirm the truth that when we enter into whole hearted giving from the deepest level of intention, the spiritual level, will our physical needs be met through the reciprocal process we call ‘cause and effect’. Only then will giving at one level generate the opportunity to receive at another level. In the meantime, it’s good to practice!