The Art of Receiving
Are you stuck in a hidden pattern that blocks your ability to receive?
How are you at receiving? My cats are pros at it (yes, we will take ALL the cuddles, food, and catnip you offer!), but for most people in Western culture, we’ve been taught to have a huge blindspot around receiving.
Some of this comes from a culture that teaches we must continually give to others before meeting our own needs, and some comes from old parenting styles around not allowing children to speak their needs.
It takes an open heart for us to receive, and not just from others, but for us to even receive love from ourselves. So if we’re not used to having our needs met by ourselves or early caregivers, our heart closes down to protect us from feeling pain, but that also means it cuts us off from feeling love, joy, or playfulness with ourselves too.
Self-love can look like giving yourself plenty of time to rest; speaking compassionately to yourself; being your own cheerleader in tough times; physical self care like massages, good sleep, and eating nourishing food; and setting healthy emotional boundaries to keep your heart and your body feeling safe and respected.
When we have internalized shame, fear, or judgement around caring for ourselves or meeting our own needs we are literally cutting off our ability to receive from ourselves and the world around us. This can sound like “I must care for others before myself”, or “I don’t deserve to do something fun”, or “I must finishing all the work in my life before I can allow time for rest or play”.
But when we can take a step back to objectively look at the voices in our mind telling us what we “should do….” or “aren’t supposed to…” we can begin to see where our feelings of shame around having our needs met might be showing up as a pattern, keeping us a prisoner in our own mind.
And once we see it, that is the key to opening the door, or more specifically, your heart. Nourishing and opening the heart allows us to gain perspective on when the mind is bossing us around using fear from external expectations (“We can’t fail!” “Don’t be lazy!” We can do better than this!”).
Instead, we can begin to retrain the the mind to work in service of meeting the needs of our heart (“If we take a break now, we’ll have plenty of time to finish this project tomorrow feeling refreshed.” “If we finish one chore on the list now that we don’t like, it’ll give us time to do something fun we do enjoy.”)
I invite you to notice where you mind is driving you beyond your limits, and gently tell it to be patient when you need rest, nourishment, or play, knowing your to-do list will be there when you’re recharged. Find what you need to receive to feel as peaceful as a cat cuddled in a cozy blanket and see how that opens up your view on your day.
This article originally appeared on The Alkhemaerie.