The power of giving
Master Sri Avinash shares how quickly the power of giving transforms a life of misery and insecurity into unimaginable love and beauty.
I’d like to share how the power of giving changed my life.
There was a time when I was very miserable and insecure. I was always telling my sad stories and seeking sympathy from others. At the time, I could not feel love in my heart and I was yearning to get out of the misery.
Then I read a book that said something like, “Whatever you want for yourself, give it to another. If you give to another, then you’re going to have that.” Whatever we want for ourselves, if we give it to others then we will have that. The book said that this is the ultimate truth because we are all one.
My heart felt very touched by that idea. There was something beautiful about it—it wasn’t just some information. My heart connected with the beauty of it and it had a big impact on me. I didn’t know for sure if it was true or not, but I was in such a desperate situation in my life that I was willing to give anything a go.
So I decided consciously to start living a life of giving.
I had always been a kind person in nature and I would do things for others in an ad hoc way. But when I made the decision to live the truth suggested in that book, I started to fully apply it, fully live it and practice it.
Whatever my heart felt like giving, I gave away! If I was with friends and I was buying an ice cream for myself, I’d buy one for each of them too, no matter how many of them there were.
It was just about giving little things, not big things.
If I went for dinner with friends, often I would pay for them even though I didn’t have much money. I almost went out of my way to live this, to be a giving person. If I heard that somebody was in genuine need, even classmates at university who I didn’t know very well, I would run to help them, to be there for them.
So I lived this. I always put myself last and others first. I started to live the power of giving. I didn’t just give money, but also my time, my heart, my good thoughts. Every aspect.
I started to live like this, and what amazes me is that it did not take long—I’d say around 4 to 5 years of living like this—before I started to know who I am.
I started to feel beautiful inside me. It was not an ‘opinion’ of myself. I just started to feel, “My God, I’m so beautiful.”
The power of giving is that you start to feel your heart, you start to feel yourself as so sweet and so beautiful!
You start to know yourself as that—the beauty and the love just become part of you. And because I kept on living like this, those qualities kept on growing and growing. They keep on growing until living that way becomes effortless.
You become a flow of love. You become full of love and that love just wants to flow. Then there’s no more effort to be loving—it just comes naturally. You cannot separate yourself from love itself.
It almost feels like you are engulfed by love and beauty. It becomes inseparable from you.
From that perspective, you become the embodiment of love. ‘Embodiment of love’ simply means love flows through this body and this body knows nothing but pure love.
You feel like this within a short period of time. It happened so quickly. Before I knew it, my misery just disappeared, my insecurity just evaporated, and I was filled with love and beauty.
So that is the power of giving. Whatever you want for yourself, give to another, and then you become that love and beauty.
This truth is not just my truth, it is applicable for anybody—anybody who has the courage and the sincerity to live it. Anybody who loves to feel happy, who loves to feel love in their heart, who loves to feel beautiful about themself. If you have the courage to love it that much, then live this truth and you’ll experience the transformation for yourself.
Giving like this doesn’t only benefit ourselves. We benefit the most, but it benefits everybody in our life, everybody we come into contact with. And the positive impact on others that receive this from you then leads them to impact others also.
If everybody had the courage to live this simple truth, then this would be the solution to all the world’s problems. This would be the end of all wars, this would be the end of all violence. If we all lived this truth, what a beautiful place this earth would become. What a world it would be.
So I urge you all to strive to live this, and receive the beauty of this in your life. That’s the power of giving.
