Tag: self

The soul must give itself away

True surrender is generosity. We say that to surrender is to be generous with oneself, to give of oneself, to share something intimate with another. But what exactly is being given when we, in our generosity, give of ourselves? What can it mean that we are generous with ourselves, of ourselves, for ourselves, that we give our selves? How can we both give and be given?Who is surrendering and who is surrendered? We are both the giver and the given, we are the giver and the gift. We are the actor and agent of the gift, the object, the thing, the gift that is given. We are divided asunder by the act of generosity.  By giving of our selves we give ourselves and thus our selves away, We give away the self that is the giver, the one who gives. We give the giver. To whom?

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Giving oneself – potlatch

Potlatch is the name of the practice of certain indigenous groups of the Pacific Northwest. It is a ritual whereby wealth, prestige and power is demonstrated through gift-giving. In order to affirm or confirm power and legitimacy, a leader ritually dispenses with or destroys material.  Enrichment through impoverishment, rising in stature by ejecting or even destroying what is materially valuable. And yet unlike the ritual of surrender, potlatch commonly takes the form of a competition. During the ritual one of the honoured guests takes the role of the recipient of gifts, and yet in the closed logic of the ritual the beneficiary is expected to match the sacrifice of value.  Giving or destroying in equal or greater amounts, the value given by the host. The greatest honour and recognition falls to the one who is most able to dispense with the material value held. 

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Giving oneself – giver, gift and receiver

The giver possesses the gift. The giver recognises the recipient. In between these elements, the giver also possesses a will to give, a need or a justification to give, a value in the giving. There is a will to give, but there is also a courage to give, a courage stemming from the awareness of the danger in giving, of the loss, of the cost, the awareness that the gift will change this world, this microcosme or beyond. It’s an awareness that the giver will be changed by the gift, and through the giving, that the giver will no longer be the giver who gave, but another, the one-who-will-have-given.  

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Generosity, a story of the self

Generosity is often associated with material value, wealth or riches. It refers to giving away a material thing of value that is external to us, a thing that we ourselves had been given or had acquired, an article of clothing, a parcel of food, a precious stone. At the origin of this kind of generosity is the act of an other, of someone else who showed us some sort of generosity. It’s an exchange whereby we were given the thing, or perhaps purchased the thing in exchange for something of value. 

In this sense an act of generosity is a kind of story, a narrative, a chronology or a history, a chain of events. It’s the story of a thing that becomes possessed, then dispossessed. It’s a relation to things that come and go in a kind of cycle, things that we might, in another world, another life, have lived without, and with which we live now briefly or for a long period.

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