To Give Without Wanting, To Receive Without Asking

The most beautiful step you can take on your journey is not a grand one. It is not in reaching the highest peak, nor in hiding away in silence. It is something much simpler, much softer: a prayer whispered for someone else.

A prayer for Mother Earth, who carries us so faithfully. Think of her for a moment. How she gives without asking anything in return. The fruits, the air, the rain, the flowers that bloom only to make us smile. She doesn’t demand thanks, yet still she gives. To pause and say, thank you, Mother, is to remember what unconditional love looks like.

Then let your prayer travel outward. First to those closest to you, those whose faces live in your heart. Then let it drift wider: to the neighbor you don’t really know, to the stranger you passed on the street, even to the one who once hurt you. Not because you must excuse them, not because they were right, but because blessing them frees you. You can say: thank you for the lesson, I release you now. Imagine how light your heart becomes when you do.

The question is : do you have space within you for that kind of love? The kind that doesn’t ask for anything back? Or have you built a little fortress inside, telling yourself you must guard your heart, protect your identity, never appear weak? Then even small hurts linger, scratching at your thoughts until they feel bigger than they are. You tell yourself, I must protect, I must not let this happen again.

But letting go is not weakness. Forgiveness is not defeat. To pray for another, even silently, is one of the bravest things you can do. It is a strength that asks for no applause and earns no medal, yet it makes your heart wider than the sky.

When you stop judging yourself harshly, you stop judging others. And when you soften toward yourself, life softens around you too. Judgment day is not some distant event, it happens every day, in the way you speak to yourself, in the way you hold your own heart. Your life has always been a reflection of that conversation within.

And when you finally begin to trust yourself, something beautiful happens: everything you once chased after begins to come to you like autumn leaves falling gently at your feet. And instead of clinging, you pick them up with reverence, smiling at the gift, and let them go. Because you have found something greater than all the things you thought you wanted, you have found the sweetness of your own soul.

This is why before we can truly love God, we must love what He has made in us. To look at ourselves the way a child looks at a parent - innocent, trusting, full of love. When you can do this, prayer no longer feels like effort. It simply flows.

So tonight, before you sleep, send out one small prayer. Don’t post it, don’t announce it. Just let it float softly into the silence: a blessing for Earth, for your family, for a stranger, even for the one who hurt you. Every such prayer is a drop of honey, a drop of nectar. When enough of them gather, your heart begins to overflow. And when it does, the whole world feels it.

And remember, only when you begin by giving unconditionally, do you make space within yourself to receive unconditionally. Letting go does not leave you empty; it empties you so that magnificence may finally have room to enter.