The message is always the same......

I brought my friend to the airport in the early hours of the morning. Her sincere gratitude to me for doing something which didn't cost anything to me gave me a feeling which is unlike any other. Once again it brought home how rich life is when it is about contributing to making other people's lives happier. I have found through experience that my life only works when I forget about me and go out to others. Everywhere the message is the same, do onto others as you would like to have done onto you'. This is because at the most fundamental level there is no separation between me and others. So when I am kind or generous to another I am also acknowledging that worth to myself.

Since I was young generosity has been a strong personality trait in me. Part of it has come from the Buddhist emphasis on transcending the ego by being generous and unselfish. But when did I decide that this was going to be a quality that was going to help me to win in life. As children when we decide to take on a quality like generosity it is total. There are no half measures so I was generous in absolutely every situation and to everyone whether they deserved it or not. I was thinking about this the other day and I realised that I took this quality on when I found myself in an Irish catholic boarding school and I was this young girl with an English accent among others who had a different accent to me. Immediately I knew 'I don't belong' and in that instance I decided that in order to survive I had to be generous. The result was that I gave everything away. When my parents came with food to the school I would go around giving it away. The generosity was an attempt by me to try to belong. Thus has it always been. I saw with crystal clear clarity how this generosity was an attempt to buy my way into belonging. I have done it in every situation I have ever been in.

The limitation of this though is that there is a lack of straightness in communication. To be generous for me meant that I couldn't be straight with people because that wasn't generous. I saw this so clearly and the impact that it has had since I was a teenager. I have been generous with people who haven't deserved my generosity and as a result I have been used and exploited on a number of occasions. People will always sense when a quality is there to make up for a weakness and thus may exploit it. A quality that is developed to cover up a weakness, in my case of feeling 'I don't belong' can be seen to be a strength but the truth is that it is also a weakness.

I saw this so plainly and after sitting with the impact of this for a couple of days have created a way of being that goes beyond this quality of my personality. This new way of being is to be straight and direct. I wrote in this blog last Saturday about my assisting agreement which was all about me being straight. Then I didn't understand why I found it so difficult to be straight. Now I understand that my strong quality of generosity which was driving me would not allow it to be. For me at that time straightness equalled a lack of generosity which my identity would not tolerate. The assisting agreement began the process of cracking it and then working with the people in my seminar group to identify the elements of the ego personality which comprise each one of us as humans and the event that happened which resulted in us putting that quality into place to survive did the rest.

Generosity is never going to leave me. It was a quality I put in place when I was young to survive in life. But now I have a choice in each situation whether or not to be generous. Now my generosity will come from a place of strength and not of weakness. I no longer need to be generous to cover up my fear of not belonging. This is a huge discovery for me and once again demonstrates how many and complex are the layers of the design of human. It also doesn't take away from my realization that there is no separation between myself and others so that when I am generous to another, it is also to myself. This will not change, it can't because it is a fundamental truth and a powerful law of nature. I now though have the choice around generosity whereas before I was driven. In choice there is power, being driven has no power even though to an onlooker it can seem powerful.

This showed itself at work today when I was more direct with people than I have ever been. I am so inspired by the technology which Landmark Education provides that I was sharing myself and this discovery with wild abandon. Usually when I share myself my quality of generosity was running me and I couldn't be straight because this was being aggressive. Being aggressive was totally against the quality of generosity. The result was that oftentimes my generosity felt like manipulation. Communication is often felt as manipulation when it is not straight and direct.

As a result today at work was so different and I felt a freedom to communicate directly and honestly about what the Landmark technology offers people as an access to power, freedom and full self-expression. I talked about this insight I had into the quality I took on to survive and the impact it has had and what I am now creating. I shared not to talk about myself but so that somewhere in something I said that my work colleagues would see what is possible for themselves and make the move of transformation for themselves. I cannot do it for another, nor would I want to because this is taking away the power of each person to do it for themselves. All I can do is show a way that I consider to be the most powerful and quickest route to the discovery of human and then the transformation to the spiritual.

After work I met a friend for a drink and was also direct with her. The result was a new closeness which was lovely. I was her bridesmaid when she got married in Australia a couple of years ago and she had once said that she felt she couldn't be herself with me. Last night she said that had all changed and she felt comfortable with me now. This just shows that when we can be in control and choose and not be driven by forces that we are not even aware of that this awareness not only transforms our own quality of life but also the quality of life of those around us. This is the proof of transformation. Once again it's not about me, but is about me in relation to others.....

But don't just take my word for it. Try it out. Do one generous unconditional thing for another. It doesn't have to be big and observe the effect it has on you. For me I don't take anything on until I have direct experience of it. Up to then I will listen and ponder but it is only direct experience that makes it real....