Tag Archives: abundance

Generosity – Guest Post by Bob Wing

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“To be generous means giving something that is valuable to you without expectation of reward or return. Many traditions measure generosity not by the size of the gift, but by what it cost the giver.” 

Give me your heart

For awhile I have been pondering the topic of generosity, wanting to share some reflections – and I might still do that.  However, in the meantime, I am delighted to share reflections from my good friend Bob Wing, Warrior of the Heart Sensei and Art of Hosting Steward.  I resonate with much of what he wrote in response to an email thread on this topic and delight in how he is sharing his reflections through story.

I asked him if he would be willing to guest blog here on Shape Shift and he agreed.  He is my very first guest blogger and this is what he wrote:

I have some experiences and thoughts I would like to share, though they raise more questions for me than answers. 

A true story about generosity:

I learned something of generosity years ago, in a liquor store. I was in the check out line to buy some good beer. I remember it as being Guinness Stout. There happened to be two men in front of me, also waiting. One of them, a Native American (most likely a Lakota), asked me what kind of beer I had and what it was like. Well, you can’t really just tell someone what Guinness is like, so with a great sense of generosity and a very good feeling about myself, I gave him one.

It surprised me how reluctant he was to accept my gift. It actually took some coaxing. Finally he would only accept it if I would receive one of his Coors beers in return. Compared to Guinness, I find Coors quite anemic and I didn’t really want it.  In that moment, however, I realized that genuine generosity lay in me letting him give me something in return … a trade …not a gift… and then he could leave without a feeling of obligation to me. My real generosity was in accepting his equality by allowing him to give me something in return. 

Another true story about generosity:

In the early 1980’s I knew of a small group of very respected Lakota medicine people who had been invited to tour places in Europe to bring their “medicine” and to lead healing ceremony for whomever wanted to come. Their travel had been paid by sponsors but by tradition they could not/would not receive any money for their work. Medicine, both physical and spiritual, is held to be a gift and not a business.

The problem arose when most everyone who came saw it as being “free” and failed to offer gifts in return. While the medicine people could not “charge”, they did expect (this also by tradition) that their generosity would be met with material generosity in return. A medicine person does, after all, also need to support his life and his family, so it is important there be a way to do that, or the medicine/generosity-based culture crumbles. In their traditional culture everyone understands this and so are as generous as they can be in return.

 What finally happened was that after continually not getting anything in return the “medicine stopped flowing”. They perceived not getting anything worthy in return as being neglected, devalued, and even insulted. They stopped doing anything real. I think it was a misunderstanding of cultures, not so much of Native American and European, as of business culture and gifting culture misunderstanding each other.

 Some ideas on generosity: 

Gift culture is based on openness to a return and business culture is based on demanding a return, though maybe they are not really so different in essence. In both, if the return is not at least of some equality, then each will soon stop functioning–the medicine will stop flowing. 

 However, the language and gesture of each seems to be so very different. Maybe the difference involves who is perceived as having responsibility for seeing to the equity. In a gift culture, the responsibility for equity of the return is usually with the receiver of the medicine, and in business culture the responsibility for the equity of a return is usually with the giver of the medicine.

 Also, I think that business culture tends to promote separateness and gift culture tends to support relatedness. In our culture, business culture seems most dominant, though I suspect that the basis for keeping a sense of relatedness, even in business, is actually an expression of gift culture. It may come from the sense most humans have of needing to be related to others. 

 Personal awareness of generosity:

I am aware that I am in love with gift culture and I suspect most of us are. I love being generous as I suspect most of us do. I love having the means to be generous in all ways, although I don’t always seem to have these means. It’s a quandary.

A big problem for me sometimes comes in my skillfulness to communicate my needs in a culture where people most often seem to act as though it is either “free” or it “costs”, maybe similar to the essence of the problem the Lakota Medicine people had. When I sense that I’m not in some way being gifted enough in return, my “medicine” stops flowing. I don’t like it when that happens. I search for good ways to travel between these two. I like the saying I’ve heard many times before and have really taken to heart, “I don’t work for money, but I do accept money for my work.”

And this, to me, is some of the crux of what we meet up with when the work we do is for the good of ourselves and others, to shift the shape of patterns that no longer serve and generate new patterns that serve us better.  How do we value this important work in the world and not feel embarrassed or awkward about being paid well for the work?  What is the spirit of generosity and reciprocity that creates expansion and openings for things to flow in the best of ways and continues to make what we offer widely available, recognizing various capacities to be financially generous and knowing that generosity shows up in other ways too?

Thank you, Bob Wing, for your willingness to have your reflections shared here.

Play is an Attitude

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I am becoming more and more serious about play – as an attitude as much or more than as an activity.   These days I’m reflecting a lot on the Law of Attraction, abundance, energy, flow and what blocks flow.  I have been soaking up Abraham-Hicks and their teachings on the Law of Attraction.

Things like worry, stress, fear, negativity, seriousness of character all get in the way of attracting what you want in your life – anything that constricts the essence of who you are slows down the manifestation of what you want.   Anything that gives relief – laughter, joy, love, delight, hope, fun, playfulness – all fuel a vibration that attracts to you what you want to manifest, contributing to expansiveness.

There was a time, a long time ago, that I used to have fun and be fun to be around.  Wherever I was, there inevitably was laughter.  And somehow, when I was distracted by the seriousness of life, running a business, being in relationship, raising children, my natural joie d’vivre slipped away until all that was left was this grave seriousness, worry, fear and strain.  My world and my energy became more and more constricted and flow was blocked off.

One day, I noticed.  I looked up and looked around and I noticed I was all seriousness, intensity and negativity and lacked any sense of joyfulness or play in my life.  Couldn’t even really remember the last time I had laughed out loud or had any sense of fun. How had that happened?  Little bit by little bit the shape of my life had unintentionally and, in some ways, unwillingly, shifted. I was deep in my own shadow.

That day, that observance, marked the beginning of a long road back to joy.  I was blown away by habitual patterns, belief systems that locked me into seriousness and the impact of the voice of my inner judge.  I learned about the voracity of my inner judge by working through the book Soul Without Shame, learning how to identify and disempower it.  While it still shows up, it has less impact for much less time.  I have learned about understanding my emotions as a guide to my experience and as an inner guidance system.

Over the last few years I have been picking away at of the things that have constricted my energy and constricted flow in my life.  I have been opening up to a greater sense of expansiveness and to taking risks and this has been accelerating.

And, I have been learning about play and playfulness.  When I’m leading workshops, playfulness hasn’t been my strong suit.  I rely on other team members to bring that element.  I bring depth and intensity of connection to group process and I do it well.  What is being reawakened in  me is the idea that play doesn’t have to be an action, it is an attitude that opens up or shifts energy in individuals and in groups and particularly in me.  I have been observing how it galvanizes attention and curiosity in the best possible ways even in a room full of strangers.

I have witnessed the impact of play as an attitude in social settings, at home and in the work I do. It is infusing the relationships I have, and even chance encounters.  Play as an attitude brings with it a greater capacity to risk putting myself out there more, risk being wrong, risk trying things that might not work, risk showcasing the imperfection of being human.  It means the willingness to try without needing specific results to show up as proof of success.  Everything then becomes a learning situation which, oddly enough, then contributes to breeding success – and in beautifully fun ways rather than with a seriousness that brings everything down.

Play as an attitude encompasses joy, delight and expansiveness.  It opens up channels for Law of Attraction to work in  favourable ways, bringing wanted things into being.

Now, I smile more even when I’m alone.  I’m enjoying the expansiveness in my own vibrational frequency.  I am more energetic, eager and focused.  All because I am understanding play as an attitude.  I can still be really serious about my work, the integrity of all my relationships and the responsibilities I hold.  But when I infuse them with an attitude of play I bring alive two of my favourite rules – Rule 6a and 6b:

6a: Don’t take yourself so f—–g seriously!

6b: Don’t take other people so f—–g seriously!

These are two rules I have had to be reminded of often for a long time and now they are becoming integrated into my being along with the delightful attitude of play.  What things can you bring an attitude of play to that would enable you to shift the shape of your experience?

Reconstituted Families and the Holidays

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In July 1990 I attended my 10 year high school reunion.  At the time, I was married to a handsome engineer, I had just graduated with my MBA, I had been the Executive Director of an Atlantic based health charity for just over a year and I was pregnant with my first child.  I thought I had it made.  Not in a million years would I have imagined how the shape of my life would have shifted 20 years later:  I have three children by two fathers and am twice divorced.  My two older children, now young adults, were born in my first marriage and my youngest, now 8 years old, was born in my second marriage.  Add to this, my mother is in long term care with dementia.  My father lives alone in the house they shared.  My brother also lives alone but in PEI.  And, since finding out I was adopted a few years ago, I now have birth family members in my life.  Over the holidays, to say the least, we are “stretched” in many different directions.

As I experience the comings and goings of my family over this holiday season and the times we are altogether, especially me and my three children, and as I am in conversations with so many of my friends in similar circumstances, I have been reflecting on “reconstituted families” – or, the term I became acquainted with through the adoption world, family constellations.

I like the term family constellations because it enables me to think of my vast array of family and friends, the various ways they show up in my life, and how they are connected to their constellations of family and friends, in an appreciative mode.  If I think of it any other way, I will be sad with feelings of “not enough” – not enough time with my children or my friends, not enough dinners, presents, experiences – what I’m missing instead of what I have.

What I have more than enough of  in my life and my relationships is love.  I have an abundance of love that overflows onto each of my children – individually and collectively – and onto my whole extended family and well beyond that to the people and relationships that I care deeply about – of which I also have an abundance.

I learned in my family growing up that friends can be like family and I experience that richly in my life.  I call them my soul family, knowing that we are finding each other along the way and feeling deeply grateful for how we enrich each others lives.  Some days I can hardly believe how rich I am.

When I greet my days, and my children in particular as I think about our family constellations over the holidays, with love, then there is enough.  It is perfectly right that they also spend time with their dads.  And it’s okay for me to visit with them at their dads’ place and vice versa.  Yes, please come in.  Please come visit – peak into a little part of your son’s life when he is not with you.  It is perfectly right that my children spend time with each other and with their friends.  There is enough time.  There are enough occasions.  There is an amazing amount of joy.  Even when I am the only one home.  I’m not lonely.  I don’t feel sorry for myself.  I feel grateful that these amazing children, friends and family are in my life, filling me up every single day.  I don’t need to be in their presence to feel full of them – although I love being in their presence too.

For those of us who live in increasingly complex family constellations, flood them with love (even when and where you are reluctant to do so – especially when you are reluctant to do so) and see how much love comes flooding back to you.  It is enough.  We are enough.  You are enough.  And in being enough, somehow we become more than enough and delight fills the space, as does joy and wonder.

I and my children may not live or experience a “traditional” family unit, but we fully live and experience the one that has unfolded in our lives, we are grateful for each other and the fullness of our family constellations and find our selves in a beauty and grace to be treasured.