What is giving?

What if all you’re here to do is to give love and gratitude unconditionally? What if that giving, despite its apparent selflessness, is actually the most fulfilling thing you can do? Is that the deepest purpose you can find in life? How do you give like that? How do you give beyond your boundaries and what you thought possible? Where does giving begin and how far can it go? What is giving? Loving selflessly? Wanting the very best for something beyond and independent of yourself? Does it have to be an externalization? An expression? Does it have to be selfless?

What about opportunity? What if everything you experience is a gift in the sense that it’s all pure possibility? What if there’s no end to the ways and how much you can give to it? What do you give to it? Meaning, value, purpose? Does it matter? What if it’s the nexus of self and selflessness since true giving entails contributing the deepest parts of yourself? What is the deepest place you can give from? Is it love or gratitude or attention or something else? Does it have a name? Is it a place you can locate? Where does giving come from? What is the source of abundance? Is it love? Are giving and gratitude just different forms, or even names, of the same thing? But can’t you give love and gratitude and compassion? Are there more forms of love you can give like creativity, playfulness, curiosity, attention? Is it more important to let the giving be flexible or to specify which form of giving has the most potential? Or is it about giving back in the sense that you channel what you already have an abundance of? Is it a feeling that you can give? Or a mode of experiencing?

Does it all begin with opening up? Do you open up your mind and heart before you can give love or gratitude? How do you become more open? Is it something like a softening? Physically first, in relaxing the tension, and then mentally and emotionally? Is it about letting go of the tension, the thoughts, and the emotions? Can you give most when you are most open? What about opening up to getting judged, hurt, rejected, scared? Does opening up entail knowingly welcoming suffering? When opening up to someone or something are you always more vulnerable? Does an open heart feel like anything? What if there’s no difference between an open heart and mind? What if it’s the same to be willing to be wrong, hurt, rejected, etc and there’s only arbitrary borders that claim to delineate thought and emotion? What would it mean to be open then? 

What is openness? Is it complete nonintervention with feelings and fully experiencing them? Is it the pure flow of emotions, neither pushing nor pulling? Is it total non-judgement? What if you tried to generate pure love for everyone you encountered regardless of their intentions, differences from you, influence over you, threat to you, etc? Is that total openness? Is it being non-reactionary and just giving the experience space and freedom to be? How is openness different from freedom and equanimity? Can you only give as much as you are open? Does giving open you up more? Is giving unconditional love almost a redundant phrase? Is “love” in that sense more like a formless but penetrating consciousness? One that reaches into somewhere strange and unfamiliar and lets it be anything it wants? 

How do you give love unconditionally? Is it a matter of releasing all reservations? While also elevating presence? Are reservations essentially limitations on pure presence? Is that presence so open and formless that it is nothingness? Why then does it feel like a force or a flowing? How can something be present and nothing at the same time?

What if the point is to love until it hurts and then open up to that and love it too, ad  infinitum? To love everything, especially the things that are most painful and scary? What would happen then? Is that absolute selflessness? Is the point to give yourself away so completely that you cease to exist?