Gift Rapt

Come bearing gifts. For a week try giving something away every day. You might offer a piece of fruit to a friend, some money to a favorite cause, or $5 to a street person. Buy a flower or a latte for someone at work. Give a present to someone who doesn't expect it—and give it anonymously. Call your mother! Try to give just a little past your edge. This does not mean that you break your budget. However, if in offering you can go just a little bit beyond your comfort zone, carefully monitoring your reactions, you'll find that the act of giving does, little by little, help dissolve the instinct to hold fast to possessions and expands your ability to open your heart.

Be of service. Consider volunteering your service in your community, working an hour or two at a shelter or in an after-school program. Or give time to a friend who needs company. Help someone move. Volunteer to do errands for a busy mom, or feed a neighbor's pet while they're out of town.

Imagine good things. When it comes to inward giving, you have no limits. In India, there is a meditation practice called mental offering, in which you create lavish gifts and offer them to God. You can do the same for a friend. If there is something you know that someone would love to have—such as a brand-new house or a wonderful career opportunity—imagine it happening for them. You can also make offerings to the environment: Imagine the oceans healthy and teeming with fish, imagine verdant trees springing up in dying forests and food growing in drought-stricken fields.

As you imagine these changes that are desired by others (as well as yourself), you'll notice that the practice cultivates feelings of love and generosity in your emotional body. And who knows? It might also help create an atmosphere in which these good things come to pass.

This practice is one you can do many times a day, or whenever someone you know comes to mind. It is especially powerful and transformative when you do it on behalf of so-called enemies, or people you dislike or of whom you disapprove.

Again, as you make these mental offerings, also observe your own state. Notice whether reluctance or smugness arises. If so, don't judge yourself; simply see whether you can hold these feelings in awareness. Often, the very awareness of them will allow them to change.