Creatively Forgetting Yourself
I created this intuitive drawing several years ago while sitting in my car during my lunch hour break from the art studio. My drawing seemed to illustrate a tentative new belief in giving that went beyond my habitual self-concern.
I was starting to consider the possibility that I could be revitalized by giving. As generosity flowered in my mind, I pondered how much I withheld my fullest self. I had an ego fear that if I gave too much, I would become depleted.
Giving must come from an authentic place. Depletion through giving is a flawed logic that our defensive ego likes to perpetuate. True giving requires that we set healthy boundaries about what we can and cannot give. As we learn to discern between genuine and false giving, we become more alert about where to direct our generosity.
False Giving
When you use your intuition to choose where to give and where not to give, you build a strength of generosity that feels good. The basic rule of thumb is: false giving feels wrong in your body. The more you generously give from a true heart place, the more right it feels, and the more energy you build.
True Giving
~ Gabor Mate
Many of us strive to prove to others that we are good people, yet we rarely tap into the warmth, richness, and power of authentic generosity. When we genuinely give with our whole heart, we are enlarged beyond our emotional pain and feelings of inadequacy.
When you set aside your self-concern and give wholeheartedly, you will go beyond your limited emotional capacities. You will become energized by your own spiritual power to offer love to others generously. When you give truthfully, you will always be rewarded with emotional healing.
Here is a quote from Sakyong Mipham that deeply speaks to me:
"Helping others represents a new approach to life. We often draw a blank about how to help, because our caring energy isn't flowing outward yet."
"Care and warmth invite a different energy than thinking we should give. When we think we should give...we'll feel tired because we are not really thinking about others. We're thinking of ourselves. "Enriching our thoughts and actions with love and compassion releases tremendous positive energy. When we churn "What about me?" into "What about you?" we are consciously changing our molecular structure by engaging the big mind chromosome."
Creatively Forgetting Yourself
There are many ways to transcend your limited psychology. All forms of transcendence involve losing yourself in some form of all-absorbing activity—whether it be falling in love, genuine generosity, deeply focused creative work, or physical activity. This self-forgetting of the defended self can lead to heightened states of consciousness.
You can learn to discern when your true generosity is required, and when you need to set healthy boundaries. We all have our own way of false giving. My early childhood experience of false-self giving was to smooth things over and not ruffle feathers. In this way, I disappeared into a cloud of niceness and often felt drained.
We can feel enlarged and even enlightened in the process of genuine giving. And, we actually do not have to "give" as much to others as we might think. Life does not require us to spread ourselves thin in untruthful ways. It does, however, require that we intuit where our true generosity is needed. We are all called to uplift the quality of life for others in some genuinely helpful way.
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