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NOTE: Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Openings.
This week’s prose…an excerpt from Conversations with God – Book 3…
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One of your cultural myths about love is that it’s about giving rather than receiving. This has become a cultural imperative. And yet it is driving you crazy, and causing more damage than you could ever imagine.
It gets, and keeps, people in bad marriages, it causes relationships of all kinds to be dysfunctional, yet no one—not your parents, to whom you look for guidance; not your clergy, to whom you look for inspiration; not your psychologists and psychiatrists, to whom you look for clarity; not even your writers and artists, to whom you look for intellectual leadership, will dare to challenge the prevailing cultural myth.
And so, songs are written, stories are told, movies are made, guidance is given, prayers are offered, and parenting is done which perpetuates The Myth. Then you are all left to live up to it.
And you can’t.
Yet it is not you that is the problem, it is The Myth.

Love is not about giving rather than receiving?

No. It never has been.
Everything you do, you do for yourself.
This is true because you and all others are One.
What you do for another, you therefore do for you. What you fail to do for another, you fail to do for you. What is good for another is good for you, and what is bad for another is bad for you.
This is the most basic truth. Yet it is the truth you most frequently ignore.
Now when you are in a relationship with another, that relationship has only one purpose. It exists as a vehicle for you to decide and to declare, to create and to express, to experience and to fulfill your highest notion of Who You Really Are.
Now if Who You Really Are is a person who is kind and considerate, caring and sharing, compassionate and loving—then, when you are being these things with others, you are giving your Self the grandest experience for which you came into the body.
This is why you took a body. Because only in the physical realm of the relative could you know yourself as these things. In the realm of the absolute from which you have come, this experience of knowing is impossible.
Now if Who You Really Are is a being who does not love the Self, and who allows the Self to be abused, damaged, and destroyed by others, then you will continue behaviors which allow you to experience that.
Yet if you really are a person who is kind and considerate, caring and sharing, compassionate and loving, you will include your Self among the people with whom you are being these things.
Indeed, you will start with yourself. You will put yourself first in these matters.
Everything in life depends on what you are seeking to be. If, for instance, you are seeking to be One with all others (that is, if you are seeking to experience a conceptualization you already know to be true), you will find yourself behaving in a very specific way—a way which allows you to experience and demonstrate your Oneness. And when you do certain things as a result of this, you will not experience that you are doing something for someone else, but rather, that you are doing it for your Self.
The same will be true no matter what you are seeking to be. If you are seeking to be love, you will do loving things with others. Not for others, but with others.
Notice the difference. Catch the nuance. You will be doing loving things with others, for your Self—so that you can actualize and experience your grandest idea about your Self and Who You Really Are.
In this sense, it is impossible to do anything for another, for every act of your own volition is literally just that: an “act.” You are acting. That is, creating and playing a role. Except, you are not pretending. You are actually being it.
You are a human being. And what you are being is decided and chosen by you.
Your Shakespeare said it: All the world’s a stage, and the people, the players.
He also said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”
And he also said: “To thine own Self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
When you are true to your Self, when you do not betray your Self, then when it “looks like” you are “giving,” you will know you are actually “receiving.” You are literally giving yourself back to your Self.
You cannot truly “give” to another, for the simple reason that there is no “other.” If We are all One, then there is only You.

This sometimes seems like a semantic “trick,” a way to change the words around to alter their meaning.

It is not a trick, but it is magic! And it is not about changing words to alter meaning, but changing perceptions to alter experience.
Your experience of everything is based on your perceptions, and your perception is based on your understanding. And your understanding is based on your myths. That is, on what you have been told.
Now I tell you this: Your present cultural myths have not served you. They have not taken you where you say you want to go.

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This week’s gift of poetry
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I AM THAT I AM
and
so much more:
the Light, the Sound, the Living of God on the Ground.
*
I could show you every feather
in the Wing.
Every color and hue.
Every Beautiful thing.
But
I AM THAT I AM
wants to
*
Love
*
Whatever
has not yet had it
Whomever
has not yet heard it
However
Life’s not yet done it.
*
There is still so much Loving,
yet to be found,
just
Living God on the Ground.

(I Am That I Am – m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved)

For more of the work of this new American poet, you are invited to visit www.mclairepoet.com.