Reflections On The Culture of Giving During the ‘Month of Love’

Just recently, we saw hordes of young men flocking the flower shops in search for big bunches of flowers for their loved ones. We are also witnesses to young couples giving away or taking money to celebrate Valentine’s Day with their families in restaurants, movie houses and coffee shops.

What I found sad about this scenario is how many of us expect to take something, to have something or to be given something during this occasion. This only shows that our world has become a world of takers. Through time, people develop a culture of taking.

Taking comes in many forms: the desire for physical things such as name, fame and possessions and even for subtle things such as respect, attention, and recognition. Our expectation from other people, especially our loved ones is also a very subtle form of taking in terms of relationships.

By taking, we deprive ourselves of God’s blessings because our actions are already tainted by desire. In the spiritual sense, desire robs our actions and purity.

Here are some of my reflections for this Month of Love, which I hope you will also think about:

• When we ask for or take something we already have, that is greed.
• When we receive something from someone and give the same thing to somebody else, that is merely an act of transferring—we do not receive God’s blessing from doing such an act.
• When we give something in the form of a donation, that is helping.
• When we donate something valuable that is important and useful to us, that is sharing.
• When we share our positive thoughts and vibrations with others or when we give good wishes and express our pure feelings to other people, that is bestowing—the greatest and most elevated act of giving.

These remind me of one of the many powerful lessons, more like life guides, which I have acquired in my journey to spiritual transformation with the help of Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University: That everything is made up of matter and energy and the best communication is through vibrations, which defy time and space, and that everything that happened, is happening and is to happen to all of us and to this world is fixed, accurate, and exactly repetitive in nature.

Therefore, there is no such thing as giving or donating, only the act of returning what rightfully belongs to God, who simply entrusted all these things to us. Sharing God’s blessings is more appropriate because we can never give anything that is not ours. Before any act of giving and donating can be blessed, it has to satisfy the following criteria:

1) The Giver must be a worthy giver.
2) The Item given must be a worthy thing.
3) The Receiver must be a worthy receiver.

This simply means that if the source of giving is questionable and dirty, the act of giving is not blessed. Likewise, if the source and resources used in acquiring the item are dirty and questionable, the item will also not be blessed. Similarly, if the beneficiary is not worthy of the item—for example, because he or she will just use the item for bad actions, like gambling, drinking, smoking, or buying illegal drugs—neither the recipient nor the giver will not be blessed.

By the principle of the karmic chain, the giver is as responsible as the recipient. If one of these criteria is missing, no blessings can be gained from the acts of giving and donating.

Every Month of Love and the months that follow, with our materialistic culture of giving and taking, just remember that most valuable thing that you can give to yourself and to your loved ones is far from material; it’s positive vibration. And in everyday life and in this field of actions, every time you act and move (with positive thoughts and vibrations), you either settle or accumulate excellent karmic accounts without you being conscious of it. (by June Luna)