The end-of-year holidays are often labeled the season for giving, but the subject of receiving has been on my mind this week.
I was talking with a man I know who was considering commissioning one of my Soul Sculptures. I asked him what energy he would want his piece to hold for him. I was surprised when he said the divine feminine. Why would he want that? What would it do for him? An image of a darkly shining luminous bowl-like shape appeared in my mind, like a vast infinite womb. His soul was calling forth a blessing bowl, a cauldron of communion with the feminine mystery, a place to be held in the loving embrace of the divine mother.
As we continued to discuss the possibility, he began to shy away from the topic. I got very curious about this resistance to receive what he actually wanted.
This inspired me to investigate blocks to receiving, how it shows up in my life and others. Let’s give that resistance the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume it’s there for a good reason, that it’s trying to protect us.
There’s an exquisitely tender vulnerability and sensitivity at the core of this resistance. It feels young, like the innocent devoted heart of child. It feels ancient, raw and primal, like the opening of the mouth of the womb in childbirth.
To receive is to open. To open is to be vulnerable. And that can feel dangerous, especially if we’ve ever opened our sensitive heart and received rejection, judgment, shaming, or indifference. What do you do if you come into this world, a tiny boy or girl, with a super sensitive system, tuned to sharing the purest devotional love? How do you handle an unloving or unpredictable response to your open heart that just wants and needs to share love together?
The resistance to receive is there to protect ourselves from pain and trauma, from devastating heartbreak and loneliness. And this resistance doesn’t just operate in affairs of the heart. It often shows up in money blocks. It can show up in all sorts of ways.
How can we make it feel safer to open and receive?
Reverence heals blocks to receiving.
I discovered that an attitude of reverence towards our own sensitivity heals blocks to receiving. When we connect with the inner chamber of the heart, with our deepest most sensitive core of need and desire, it’s ultimately a need and desire for oneness with Divine Love. It’s the raw core of need for the presence of the Divine in our hearts. The appropriate response to that tender vulnerability is reverence, a respectful honoring and appreciation for that sacred soul desire for oneness with Love.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the more you open your heart to your own exquisite sensitivity, the more you connect with and approve of your need for love, the more you hold it all with a kind of reverence, the safer it will feel to open to receive.
Somehow this approach generates an ocean of allowing, a kind of benign approval of others, that acts as a filter. Only the pure love gets in and everything else washes through like seawater through a whale’s baleen. You begin to see love everywhere , in nature, in people, in the fruitfulness of the Earth. It’s all here for us, all here for you. You begin to feel the love of the Universe, of the Divine, that supports your existence in every moment, with every breath.
You are loved. You are valued. Your existence is significant. You matter.
Tis the season for receiving.
From my heart to yours, a blessing of receiving,
Mikhaila