The Real Joy of Giving and Receiving

by Soren Dreier

Some people have trouble giving, some people have trouble receiving. Rarely do these two poles meet, fall in love and form a happy relationship. Since I won’t approach this on a psychological level but more a metaphysical level, I will just say that underneath those conditions there obviously can be some psychological issues to work on.

We might need to consider why and how we give and how we receive, and in that we also have to look at the conditioning both in the giver and in the receiver.

Society will have us believe that we somehow will get rewarded if we behave and we are good. Being good in that context means we fold to the demands of society, whether it be getting good school grades or doing what society wants, and we will get some kind of bonus. Since the Vortex point in this is called punishment and reward, which stems from behavioral psychology, which is the most primitive form of conditioning there is, hence: Pavlov’s Dogs.

So, if we do not behave – we get punished, either expressed punishment by some kind of judgment or just the lack of reward, endorsement, a gentle look and what have we. We get the cold or the silent treatment. The last is mean, since it often leaves us guessing as to what we did wrong or did not do to please our masters, bosses, teachers, parents and down that line.

Most of us are parents who were kids once, so we have to look really hard into ourselves to find out what we were conditioned to, and if it so much as slightly smells of Pavlov we might have to break the chains of conditioning. If you do not have children, it’s equally important to examine.

Well maybe our bad is really good and their good is really bad. So spiritually/metaphysically it does not make sense. For serving the system, it makes a lot of sense. All we do in our lives is to try to peel off the layers of either conscious conditioning, from whoever sets the parameter for good or bad, to find our own parameter of the same qualities.

The gifts are not real, since they come with a motive or on special occasions. The gifts are not real because they are bribes:

“If you do this and that – I will reward you.”

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