Giving has a powerful affect in and on physical life.
We tend to believe that control is the answer to life’s challenges—to arrange, organize or manipulate the outer world is the key to happiness. We think first to make changes on the physical plane to positively affect our being. In fact, life operates in quite the reverse order. All that we are, all that we have, and experience as real, comes out of our being. What we have unfolds from the way we manage consciousness, the way we create who and what we are. Our natural manifesting intelligence listens to and takes cues from thoughts we habitually entertain and come to believe. Thoughts are things, or thoughts become things, especially to the aspect of our being who’s job it is to make real (physical) what we suppose to be real. In other words, we create our own reality.
Cami Walker faced a “reality” she clearly had not asked for. Her diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis explained her symptoms and suffering; nevertheless the weight of implications to follow was crushing to her sense of self, her marriage and to the work she loved. The real challenge would be to not allow MS to define her, to dis-able her self-awareness and joy for life. During one particularly difficult episode with MS, Cami reached out to her neighbor, a Shaman healer-practitioner, Mbali Creazzo.
Mbali offered Cami a prescription for living in the now: give something away every day for 29 days. Cami’s determination to make the most of this experiment in giving to others shifted her focus to others, and to what she could do, to what generated excitement and gave her pleasure. Her symptoms began to fade and she became stronger inside.
The 29 Gifts movement was born in that first 29-Day Giving Challenge cycle. Cami’s blog expanded in popularity; she created a website to allow other people to share their stories and track their giving experiences. Later, a book proposal was accepted, then published; the website exploded with growth that took the 29 Gifts all over the world.
The list of accolades for 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life is very long; Cami toured, spoke to large groups, appeared on TV and radio, created a product line; 29 day giving challenges were issued schools and civic groups around the world ; the book hit the NY Times bestseller list and was printed in 5 foreign languages. Likely I do not have the order of this whirlwind correct, but it does not matter now.
What matters is the effect that giving has upon us as human beings, 50 thousand of whom actually wrote about it on the old 29 Gifts site. The stories illustrated how change in ones life comes from the inside, from shifting the focus to others—whether they are suffering from physical pain or from lack of acknowledgement, or both. Our outer world appears to change because we begin to see what is truly there—we are not alone, and our suffering and isolation diminishes when we re-join humanity. When we think about doing something kind for another human, whether we know them or not, we expand inside with purpose, compassion and love.
By participating in this marvelous giving experiment, we individually-privately shift our thinking-to-being relationship and collectively generate enormous good will in our communities.
“When we take action on faith instead of waiting for confirmation that all is well, or for permission to go ahead, we are operating from a perception of plenty.” Lynne Twist
Invocation 