Beyond the Bow and Box: The Energy of True Giving

John Wheeler
Dec 10, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Dec 13, 2025

We grow up being told that giving is the ultimate virtue — especially during the holidays. Be generous. Give to others. Don’t be selfish. But what if most of what we’ve been taught about giving leaves out the very thing that makes it powerful?

The golden rule of gifts has become: give more than you take, but then we're also told to be grateful for what we have, as though giving and receiving are mutually exclusive. In Access Consciousness®, there’s a concept woven through many classes: true contribution is the simultaneity of gifting and receiving. It’s not an exchange, not a transaction, and not an obligation. It’s an energetic presence — and most of us were never taught how to be that.

Gifting Beyond Objects

Giving during the holidays often becomes a performance: the checklist, the presents, the pressure to impress or prove our love. But gifts (the real kind) don’t come from saying, “This is what I’m supposed to do.”

That's actually the place of obligation. The idea that we have to buy for everyone or no one, we need them to tell us exactly what they want, and then we must deliver. But I'd love to invite you to a different perspective where you can give beyond the object. Where it becomes more fun and more generative to actually give someone something. The way to give a gift is from choice and true caring.

What if every gift you gave could have the ability to make life greater for everyone? Both you and them. In order to do this, you've got to be willing to give up the need and requirement, and move into the question of "What's this going to create?"

It also requires you to be present with people in a way that acknowledges the need in their world, but you only deliver what can actually be given. The tricky part is that there is one gift that you can give that no one else can duplicate. YOU!

You being you and being present can change everything. Have you ever had someone hug you with so much caring that you could hold onto them forever and just forget about the world? Or someone who has given you such a small gift but with so much caring that it easily becomes the most valuable gift you've received? Why is all of that? Because they gave with a generosity of spirit and genuinely from being with you. It’s the energy, not the object, that transforms.

The Only Real Gift We Ever Give

Anybody who comes to you with any need, want, or desire really requires the only thing you can actually gift to anyone, and that's awareness. People can buy many things for themselves, but awareness is something that grows when we engage with one another.

One of the best gifts of awareness you can give someone is that you see them as they are. You honor that their existence is a gift in your world. That they have an impact, a purpose, and they matter. It's being present with them, as they are, without the judgment that something about them needs fixing.

You don’t have to deliver everything someone wants. You don’t even have to understand what they need. You simply have to be willing to be you - aware, present, spacious - and let that energy contribute whatever it contributes.

The Barriers We Build (and Why They Matter)

Many of us have learned to give from obligation. We’ve learned to give from guilt. We’ve learned to give from “being the responsible one,” or from trying to prove we’re a good person.

But when our giving is coated in expectation or pressure, the gift gets distorted.

A common term for this is “comfortable distance.” The walls and barriers we create to avoid being changed or affecting others by keeping them far enough away to not build closeness. It protects us, but they also keep us separate, and when we’re separate, we can’t truly give or receive.

When you drop those walls, even for a moment, something miraculous happens: your very being becomes a contribution.

Choosing to Be the Gift

Here's the cold, hard truth... You are already the gift. Have you acknowledged it yet?

So many of us refuse to see the space we hold for others. We dismiss the way people open around us. We deny how much our presence shifts rooms. We compare ourselves, judge ourselves, make ourselves small, so we don’t shine “too much.”

And yet… the moment you let yourself be without walls, judgment, or an agenda, you become a walking, talking contribution to everyone you encounter. Even strangers. Even people who only cross your path for a moment.

What If This Season You Gave Differently?

Not from pressure. Not from obligation. Not from “this is what good people do.”

But from presence.

From the generosity of spirit that asks:

What can I gift this person that they can truly receive? And what can I receive from them, from this moment, from the Universe?

What if the greatest gift you give to others and to yourself is the willingness to be?

No performance. No storyline. Just the space of you, contributing in ways you may never fully see or understand.

What if that’s everything?

If this conversation opened something in you… What else could become possible when you start receiving the gifts you already give?

Join me for Gifting & Receiving: The Energetic Exchange We Often Forget to Notice on December 22nd at 5 pm EST, and explore the space of contribution that can change your whole reality.