What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Gifts Freely Given
September 6 2011
Today’s culture seems all about quid pro quo (Latin meaning “something for something”).
In other words, what have you done for me lately? What do I owe you — and what do you owe me?
Even gifts seem weighted with expectations of reciprocity.
Many of my clients struggle with feelings of self-worth, hesitating to step into their personal power and strength. For them, that sense of owing goes even deeper, becoming a feeling of having to buy attention, acceptance, and even love through what they do for others. They often find it hard to accept gifts without feeling an anxious sense of obligation.
If that sounds or feels familiar to you, what would it be like to open to accepting gifts as gifts, with no accompanying feeling of obligation or weighty sense of debt owed?
Here are some perspectives to consider as you ask yourself that question.
Obligation, “should,” and selfishness
My clients sometimes object that just receiving, with no sense of obligation in return, feels like selfishness to them.
They feel as if they “should” experience a need to give back, to reciprocate — they “should” feel as if something is owed.
If that sense of “should” comes up for you as you explore what it means to accept freely and without obligation, notice it — and ask yourself if it’s really true.
As one client wrote, “When I let go of the ‘should,’ I realize it’s natural for me to give. I don’t have to worry about it and keep a tally of what I owe to people. I can relax and simply trust myself.”
Freely given, freely accepted
A client visited a retreat center a few weeks ago, drawn by her discovery that they had a labyrinth on the grounds.
Walking the labyrinth, she found herself wondering what she owed in return. There had been no request from the staff to donate or pay a fee. She’d simply been welcomed.
“I realized that although I sometimes resent being asked to donate, it can also create a sense of security,” she told me. “When I’m asked, I know what’s expected. In this case, I found myself weirdly uncomfortable when there wasn’t any apparent expectation for me to give back in response to what I received. But then somehow in the stillness, listening to the breeze, experiencing the mountains and walking the labyrinth, something shifted. I found myself opening to an acceptance of the gift they freely offered, with no feeling of obligation.” She paused. “You know, I honestly can’t remember ever experiencing a gift like that before — completely open to just accepting what was given without being afraid of what I’d be asked for in return.”
The gifts of the journey
Many of my clients are so focused on where they feel they want to be and what they feel they want to attain that they overlook the apparently little things along the way.
Yet as one client said to me, “It’s those little pieces that make up the amazing mosaic of my life and of this journey. It’s the little shifts in perspective that ultimately reveal the miraculous freedom I can experience.”
Another client observed, “When I step back from feeling as if everything I receive has to be paid for, there’s a tremendous change in how I view my life. In experiencing that change, I realize how much I’ve felt that everything had to be earned — the sunshine, a new client, a friend’s smile — it was all about paying for each experience in some way. Now ... even though it sounds so cliché, there’s a real felt sense of life itself being a gift, freely given to me if I accept it. A feeling that if I just open to it deeply enough, it will give to me without my having to struggle for what I need.”
Trust generosity
When generosity springs from the heart instead of from a sense of obligation, it’s a wholly different experience. It becomes a sacred act instead of a discharge of debt or an action taken for an expected return. It’s more deeply rewarding both for the one giving, and the one accepting.
And paradoxically, when a gift is freely given and freely accepted, it creates results that go far beyond what anyone might have expected under quid pro quo.
“That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), French existentialist philosopher and social theorist.
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