The Act of Offering
The activity of the training was to offer 108 times in a month, in whatever ways felt natural and fun. The method was up to you. The one thing I insisted on was the intent underneath it.
If I tell you I would love to meet you in person, and then keep telling you the flights are expensive and the hotels look booked, do I really want to meet you? If I say I am cutting snacks to lose weight, with a hand full of popcorn, do I really want to lose weight?
Read between the lines of your own life. We say we want a successful business. We say we want to make money with it. And we are not offering anything while we say it. So: do we actually want to succeed?
You cannot make a congruent offer if you do not want to be offering. And when you do shift into that state, people come. I guarantee it, because it is how everything already works. If I bake too many muffins for a two-person household, I genuinely want my neighbors to have some, so I invite them to take a few, and of course I run out of muffins.
Take it from me. I have had clients do my Buddhist practice with me. People who had never heard of proper Buddhism before we met, waking up at 5 AM, bowing 108 times, meditating ten minutes. How does that work? It works because I congruently offer this path as a path of freedom from suffering. I want them to have it.
You have to want to offer. That is different from saying you want to. Underneath the person who says and thinks it, you, the one who acts, has to want it. And the only way you will want it is if you genuinely believe you have something good to give. Anything you do from that state is an act of offering. Anything that looks like an offer but comes from a different state is not one.