Giving Ourselves

 

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Giving Ourselves

Volunteering is a process of giving ourselves. It’s an opportunity to give ourself. We can simply sit here, close our eyes and give ourself to the world. It is possible but that level of awareness is not there in most human beings. Unless there is activity, people do not know how to give themselves. They need action to give themselves to something. Normally, what little work we do, calculations are there, “How much should I do? Why should I do? What will I get out of this?” In these calculations, all the beauty of doing is gone and the very process of life has become ugly. Most of the things that we are doing in our life are things that we have chosen to do. In spite of that, we are doing simple activities with so much struggle because we are unwilling to give. Somewhere we have forgotten that we started this willingly.

The whole process of Yoga is just to give ourselves. People may not know how to simply give themselves. People need some kind of means to give themselves. Whatever we may give in our life to anybody - we may give money, we may give food, we may give education. All the things that we give, actually do not belong to us, isn’t it? Whatever we have today, everything including our body, we gathered it from this earth and when we go, we have to give it back.

All that we have today with us is something we have borrowed from this planet. It is not really ours; we can use it; we can enjoy it. Though we believe we own it, we cannot really own it. We believe we own our house; we believe we own our clothes; we believe we own our children, our wife, our husband. They are here for us, we can enjoy them, but when we have to leave, we have to leave them and go.

Nothing really belongs to us. What doesn’t belong to us, we cannot give. There is really no giving. There is no value to this kind of giving but we need a means to give.

Fundamentally, the only thing that we can give is ourself but we do not know how to give ourself simply, so we give using things as a means. We are using activity as a means to give ourselves. If we are not aware of this, then giving becomes a great problem. If we do not make ourselves willing to give ourselves, it becomes a very painful process.

When we understand giving as giving only things, then naturally fear will come into us because - “If I give away everything what will happen to me?” It is because of this understanding, we fear giving. People have become stingy, miserly with their love, with their joy, simply because they only think that giving means - giving things. How much, how many things can we give?

No spiritual process will happen to any human being unless he becomes willingness. Thus, volunteering is a tremendous way for creating that willingness. This kind of willingness to start with is better when it happens in a protected atmosphere. That is why the whole process of Gurutattva is happening as volunteering to just provide us with that necessary protected atmosphere where we can be 100% willing and not be exploited.

We are always stressing on volunteering, so that we use the atmosphere to become willing. Then it will extend into our daily life also. Above all, it will permeate into our being, that we ourselves become willingness.