Practice Receiving

Everything you yearn for waits for you, sits patiently at the door until you are ready to open it.

When we feel stuck in our relationships, when we feel stuck in our lives, most of the time it is not because the love is not there. ?It is because we are speaking a different language than the love being offered us. ?It is because we have forgotten how to receive it.

Learning how to open the door to the abundance of aliveness that is constantly knocking is a practice, a practice of receiving.

The practice of receiving is not what we might think. ?We are often good at receiving what?we want to receive–love me like this, touch me like this, tell me this, but not that.

The practice of receiving is much deeper–it involves receiving?what is.

Hug somebody and focus on receiving a hug. ?Feel yourself being enveloped completely, and take it in. ?Savor it like homemade ice cream, and when it’s over, let go and receive the next moment just as fully: the aftertaste of emptiness that follows; the remembrance of having a body that feels separate and sometimes lonely, that is in need of far more touch than it gets. ?Let in the contrast, sip it up like sweet wine.

Sit outside and stare at a tree. ?Receive it in its entirety: the leaves dancing in the wind; the sunlight speckling through; its invisible breath. ?You may notice sounds in the background–perhaps a stream of cars or crickets, depending on where you are. ?Receive this, too, as part of your experience of the tree, of this moment. ?Be just as curious about those rumbling engines as you are with the dancing leaves. ?Practice receiving.

Now try dedicating an entire day to the practice of receiving: “Anything that happens today, I will receive. Anything I feel today, I will welcome as if I invited it.” ?Practice living the truth of Rumi’s Poem,?The Guest House:

This is not to say we should be utterly passive in our lives and receive abuse, or not take responsibility as free agents in our lives. ?This is subtler–receiving what is means opening your eyes and senses to what is right in front of you. ?In order to say no, take action, or truly give, we must learn how to say yes to ourselves, how to rest in the being of nature and receive what is.

There is a book by Gary Chapman called?The Five Languages of Love. ?In it, Chapman, a Marriage and Family Therapist, shares that most of his clients are at odds with their spouses not because they don’t love each other, but because they are speaking a different language of love. ?These languages of love are quality time, words of affirmation, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. ?We receive love and give love most fully and naturally in the language we speak. Chapman’s theory is that each of us have a primary language of love, and that we need to learn each other’s language in a healthy partnership in order for our love tanks to be full.

What if every moment, every day, is right here ready to meet you like a lover and offer you the depths of love? ?Can you let it in? ?Can you learn the sky’s language of love? ?Can you learn the language of the stars, of the subtle smile of the cashier behind the register, offering the tenderest love within the confounds of what’s socially appropriate?

Practice receiving and you will begin to experience new depths to what it means to be alive, new depths to the love that surrounds you.

Fully receiving is a language of its own, for it involves dropping the thousand-layered spectacles of our expectations, hopes, fears, and projections that we carry, and opening our eyes to the naked truth of what is.