I had the pleasure of interviewing a dear friend and colleague, Chris Davis, as a Woman of Power and Spirit. During the interview, she reminded me that I introduced her to the concept of “giveaway” in spiritual practice some years ago. Giveaway has a way of stimulating your spiritual journey and your sacred work in the world.
What is giveaway in spiritual practice?
When you know it is time for you to share your gifts with the world in a new and more deeply meaningful way, you begin with your giveaway.
For example, before I was taught how to pour a sweat lodge, I was asked what I would be giving away. Before I was introduced to my husband and began our sacred work together, I knew there was something I needed to give away. Before I began offering spiritual counseling, I had something I needed to give away. Before I did my first vision quest, I had to make my giveaway.
The giveaway can be a physical offering, or the release of a belief or attachment, and most often, it is both. Throughout my life I have given away almost all of my possessions more than once. I’ve given away my partnership with my beloved, my home, job, sums of money, and I’ve given away addictive substances.
Why give away anything?
With each giveaway, I was letting go of attachments to certain beliefs and fears in order to develop a greater trust in the Divine. In some cases, what I gave away came right back to me—like my beloved husband.
Because I love my husband so much, he would be the hardest person to lose. He is the one I tend to cling to. More than once, I have been called to giveaway an attachment to him. In the practice of giveaway, I release him to his greater good, supporting him in what is best for him, all the while knowing the Divine will take care of me with or without him next to me.
This doesn’t mean we got divorced and remarried. It doesn’t mean I left him or told him I was giving him up. It means, in prayer, I gave up all my attachments about how our lives had to be so that his greater good could be served. I stood naked before the Divine, gave my fears over to Spirit, and then humbled myself to be ready to be of service—ready to accept whatever was right and best—to be with him, not to be with him, or to be with him in a new way.
What can happen when we are called to make a giveaway and don’t?
You see, if we don’t do it consciously and willingly, it happens painfully. What we cling to gets ripped away from us. And we suffer in physical and/or emotional pain.
What we are clinging to is most often what is getting in the way of our healing or spiritual rebirth. We are asking and praying for something new and wonderful to happen in our lives, but we aren’t willing to let go of non-constructive habits, fears, limiting beliefs, or to make the changes that would allow us to fly.
Our prayers get answered in the form of a painful loss, unless we meet our fears consciously and give away whatever might be limiting us. What we are most afraid of losing is exactly what we will lose, unless we give it to the Divine consciously. After all, what we cling to belongs to the Divine anyway. So when we make our giveaway we are saying, “I am willing to let my ego step back, open to Divine wisdom, face my fears, and experience the brilliance of Divine love unencumbered.
If you want to know more about letting go into the unknown (the domain of the Sacred Feminine) with love, my book, Sacred Feminine Awakening: The Emergence of Compassion will give you insights for how to do that.
What happens when I do give-away?
When the giveaway is sincere, the blessings are abundant.
As the attachment releases, the person’s spiritual gifts open in the most beautiful ways—through mystical moments—the peak experiences we could never predict or plan to have happen.
What you receive is far beyond what you could have imagined for yourself, because now that your barriers have been removed, the blessing come forth from the limitless abundance of the Divine.
The realm of the unknown (what you do not yet remember) can now serve you. And the Sacred Feminine blessings of all possibilities opens to you. As you maintain a loving heart and serve from that surrendered love to the Divine—well, that’s where miracles occur!
