Not long ago I listened to a talk by Dr. Scott Mills about the various games we play in our lives. “Games” meaning our perceptions, mindsets or approaches to life. He said that in one of these games, the Gratitude Game, we can learn to fully receive.

That phrase took root in me. What does it mean to fully receive?

As a species, we’re skilled at receiving many things. Air, food, water, sunlight, information, and the like. Many of us recognize areas where we’re not as comfortable receiving: money, compliments, love, success, etc. But those are the more obvious things.

As I sat with the idea of fully receiving, questions came to mind. Big Kahuna questions.

How good are we at fully receiving ourselves? (Our true selves, divine selves, higher selves, multi-dimensional selves. However you want to phrase it.)

How willing are we to fully receive ourselves?

How much are we even aware that we can?

A few months ago I had a direct experience of receiving myself. I was lying in bed after listening to one of Aleya Dao’s Tall Cups of Consciousness events. I was happily floating in a very high vibrational state when I felt something unusual start to happen.

With sudden, unworried clarity, I realized I was leaving my body. For good. The consciousness that was me was simply falling away. I had the fleeting thought that I was dying, but I quickly understood that something else was happening. Something entirely new.

As I felt myself gently fall away, I had the dual awareness of falling INTO my body. Of walking into myself. I understood that a different level of consciousness or piece of my wholeness was essentially swapping places with the “me” that had been here in this body. It was all so peaceful, purposeful and planned. After this experience felt complete, the same thing happened with my physical body and its consciousness. In the span of a few minutes, my body and I were new in so many fundamental ways.

Life has had a déjà vu quality since then. It’s been a period of integration and the house cleaning of anything not aligned with who I am now. When we receive more of ourselves, the truth of our essence brings in a bright, bright spotlight, and trust me, it shows you everything. Every dusty corner the old me was content to live with has been looked at, and much has been cleaned out. This cleaning out has not been easy, but the necessity has been piercingly clear. There’s a new level of purity that I, the new me, insist on. Purity not in the sense of perfection (thank goodness), but purity in the sense that all that remains and all of the new I bring in needs to be aligned with the person and presence I truly am.

We can all do this. And as added motivation, the more of the old we let go of, the more we align, the more space and capacity we have to receive more and more of ourselves. Allowing even greater expansion here in our physical lives. In the moment and going forward.

A few days ago I saw just how easily we can get in the way of fully receiving ourselves. (And when I say we, I definitely include myself.)

I went into meditation intending to retrieve any gifts, abilities or other things I’d given to others that actually belonged to me. I immediately saw a squat, clunky, boiler-type machine with a wide funnel intake on the top. A rather comical representation of the inner mechanism I use to receive directly from Source and all that I am.  An aspect of me was there tending the machine, also looking cartoonish, squat, and covered in grease. The machine was vacuuming back the things I’d asked to retrieve as well as other bits and pieces. I saw things fly into the machine at a relatively slow speed, slow enough that I could see what was coming in.

Then I realized that the top of the funnel was tilted to the left, not pointing directly up the way it was supposed to. It was not allowing me to receive fully. I realized that in trying to help other people in the co-dependent ways we all grew up with, I’d skewed my own reception channels. I was trying to divert my own incoming energies to help others before that energy could even get to me.

Not healthy and not the least bit effective, folks.

In the interactive manner of my meditations, I crawled up on that machine and shimmied the incoming vent back into its proper place. Immediately things changed. The gentle inflow turned into a torrent. The machine changed as well. It smoothed out, became sleek and took on a luminous crystalline quality. Instantly it clicked back to its full multi-dimensional form. And as more and more of the flow moved through the machine, filling it to capacity, light radiated out through the mechanism itself. Light filled my body. Light radiated through me out into the world.

I felt how the more I embrace the flow, the more fully I receive myself, the more I can radiate out. I felt how an endless expansion was and is already happening. An expansion that benefits everyone.

This is how we can be. This is who and what we truly are. This is what is possible every time we more fully receive ourselves.

You don’t need to have a walking-in experience like mine in order to receive more of yourself. You can go into meditation and ask to receive. Or simply close your eyes and open more and more with each breath, relaxing into who you truly are. You don’t need to know what that means. You don’t need to know exactly who your true self is. That is the journey. That is the adventure.  And that is the experience that can change your life.

Which might freak you out a bit. After all, change means change. The more we receive ourselves, the more evolution happens, the more the old falls away. (A theme that’s familiar if you read my previous blog post, A Word from the Mammoths.) But trust me, this change is worth it!

To more fully receive ourselves is a tremendous gift. In the receiving comes more elevated wisdom and knowing. More clarity, joy and ease. We can more fully play with our lives and use them to express who we truly are. We can become more authentic, more fulfilled, more excited to share our expanded presence in the world. And in this way, we become an even greater gift to the world than we already are.

Imagine your own life with you more fully receiving yourself. Or even receiving a tiny bit more than you did before you started reading this message.

Imagine if everyone did this. Just imagine.

I close in gratitude for this crazy, delightful journey. And with deep gratitude for you, for who you are, and who you are becoming.