Honoring the Goddess: The Practice of Offering
by Ariel Spilsbury
There was a time when one never came to the temple of the Goddess empty handed. There is a reason for this, that has long since been lost in our culture. The actual intention of the practice of Offering has been trivialized into coming to the home of ones “date” or loved one with flowers, wine or candy.The Love that is the Divine Feminine is the very substance out of which the Universe is created. Thus this substance cannot actually be given or taken. It can only be shared, flowed with, opened to, allowed. This is the primal nature of the Goddess. The concept of “given” or “taken” only exists in duality, outside of the primacy of the Goddess’ Unity. In the Goddess, there is only the conscious participation in the circulation of the energy of Love. That is where the spiritual practice of Offering came from: a conscious act of circulating that energy of love without consideration of return.
The practice of Offering actually emanates from a desire to be whole, to experience union, oneness. Offering provides an escape route from the isolation and loneliness of subject/object perception and the intrinsic separation that stems from this way of perceiving reality. Offering springs from an overflowing feeling of passionate adoration and devotion that has no where else to go but to spill over from the opulent bounty of our gratitude. Have you ever loved someone so much that even though you weren’t a poet or an artist, in your desire to somehow express your gratitude or your adoration, you were prompted to write a poem, or draw a picture etc.? Or in our culture more likely you wanted to buy them something special. Love is a source spring, an overflowing chalice which naturally spills into the lives of those whom we care deeply for, offering a channel of expression for this unending, opulent supply of Universal substance.
The Goddess responds directly to offerings of gratitude, and with as much immediacy as our response from being lovingly touched. If your life is not as full of love, fulfillment, abundance or intimacy as you would like, be willing to look at how you actually practice gratitude. When you are truly grateful for that which you have or are, the Goddess naturally responds by offering you more, much the same way a mother naturally offers you more, as she sees your face filled with delight, eating something she has made. Gratitude is a powerful magnet for the influx, the completion of the circuit of love.
Practicing the act of Offering opens the floodgates of overflowing love in the Goddess. Offering generally does not exist in cultural terms. From the point of view of the ego and culture we often offer things very conditionally to other people to bolster bonding and in hopes of receiving something in return ( love, support, power, sex, acknowledgment, etc.). An authentic act of Offering is the kindling that fuels the powerful fire of love that burns within the Goddess, because such an act is coherent with Her energy. In the way of the Goddess, an offering is not an offering unless it is given without thought of return. The concept of return doesn’t exist within Her Primal Unity. The Goddess pours out the substance of Her Being, Love without any thought of what will come back. This is Her nature. Thus when someone authentically makes an offering from this same purity of intent, She naturally responds to ones honoring of Her true essence. This response to ones genuine act of Offering might come in the form of inspiration for your creative process, feelings of connectedness and primal unity, tangible abundance in your life, deeper intimacy in relationship etc.
Honoring is the way of the Goddess. Honoring through offering, honoring through gratitude. This was taught in the ancient Goddess Temples in the simple precept that one never came empty handed to the Goddess’ temple. Since there is no concept of large or small, trivial or important in the Unity of the Goddess, all offerings are equal. The Goddess only looks at the sweetness of the intent of the offering heart. Have you ever been touched by a gift given to you in innocence, by a small child who labored for hours on something they made that touched your heart so deeply that you kept if for years as a
treasure? Most probably it was the look in the child’s eyes when they gave you the gift that so deeply touched you. That is the real and immeasurable gift of true offering.
As a female emissary of the Goddess, a woman, I have been given many things in my life of large and small relative “value”, but the gifts that I cherish are those that were offered out of innocence, out of an obvious desire from the being to proffer a part of themselves in a sweet gesture of honoring and gratitude. My heart flies open when someone offers me something that I know comes from this authentic desire to honor and offer gratitude to the Goddess. My heart is so touched that all I have, in that moment becomes available to that person and we enter into the transcendent circuit of the eternal circulation of love. And something mysterious, something alchemical happens that cannot be explained or defined in words, but the Universe responds with the offering of the ever expanding Chalice. That is the way of Offering in the Goddess.
