Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by infinitely precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 00:12

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's another episode of the Infinitely Precious podcast. I'm so delighted to be on this journey with you as your companion. This is my second recording of this particular podcast. The first time it did not pick up any sound.

James: 00:30

So I am hoping it will be different this time. In any case, I hope that the podcast is meaningful to you and if it is, you will share it with others. So what has been coming up for me today and for the last several days is thinking about life as a series of transactions. It seems like we live in a world, in a culture that shapes us to see every conversation, every interaction as an opportunity to gain something, to give something and get something back. To everything has seen as a transaction.

James: 01:23

Now, maybe you don't, but I encourage you to just take a step back to some of the relationships you have in the world and think about the things that you gain from it and the things that you put into it and the balances and how sometimes, maybe not for you, but for some people in life, we ask the question, what's in this for me? What am I going to get out of this? And when we start asking that question, what we're asking is a transactional question. We don't just ask it with people, but we ask it with God. We enter into the relationship with God or we anticipate entering into a relationship with God and we believe that if we are faithful to that relationship and faithfulness could mean a variety of things that you follow a certain moral code, that you live ethically, that you simply believe that God is God, and that in turn God will protect or look after or respond to your prayer requests, that it's a kind of a tit for a tat transactional experience.

James: 02:34

I do bad things. God sent God's son into the world to die, and that I am now the transaction is God's grace, God's sacrifice covers up, washes away, depends on who you talk to, the mistakes that I have made. And when we think of a relationship in that particular way, it is a transaction. I agree to believe so that God will forgive me. I agree to believe so that I get a beautiful afterlife.

James: 03:18

Now, oftentimes all of us begin in a place like that, in a transactional place. If we're really honest with ourselves, sometimes we you know, in our worst moments we're bargaining with God. And when we bargain with God, we try to convince God to do something for us, and in turn we'll do anything God asks, whatever it may be. That's a transaction. In the same way when someone comes and offers to shovel your driveway for you in the wintertime after a snow, and they offer their service, and you offer to pay them, you go back and forth about what the value of it is, and then ultimately it's a transaction, it's financial transaction.

James: 04:04

Before there were financial transactions, there were bartering transactions where I decide that, you know, a half dozen eggs from your hen is worth planting 10 fence posts and the crossbars for all of them. Whatever it may be. We trade this for that. This work for that. Transactional.

James: 04:26

We trade our allegiance to God in response for God's watching over us in a particular way. That's a transaction. Now, what I want to suggest to you is that there's another way to see it. It's a more nuanced way perhaps and it's one that feels more comfortable within me. If transactions work for you and that's the way you want to see it, I'm not here to judge you about that.

James: 05:00

I'm simply saying that for me, I had to begin to think about God and my relationship with God as something more than a transaction that was about what I got out of it, what God got out of it. My allegiance, God got, for special privileges I got. There was a time when my struggle with God was all about that. But perhaps that was that's a story for another time. So if our relationship with God is something more than transactional, if our relationship with each other is more than transactional, then the question doesn't become what is in this for me?

James: 05:44

What am I going to get out of this? How much am I going to have to give to get something? It instead becomes how can I be my best self in the space in which I find myself? If that space is in my connection to God relationally, then that might be one answer. If it's in relationship to a friend who really needs a listening ear or an encouraging word or just someone to take a walk with, then how can I be my best self, be fully present in the moment that is?

James: 06:25

Because really when we think about our lives, the gifts that they are, that's not a transaction. A gift is not a transaction. We don't give gifts with strings attached. At least it's not a gift if there are strings attached. I'll give you this if you give me this or if you do that thing with the gift.

James: 06:44

A gift is given without attachments. God gave us our lives, the universe manifested the divine in and through each one of us in human beings as a finite reflection of God, of the divine. And we have a unique thing to bring to the relational fabric of it. So if we are bringing something to the relational field, to the connection that is the world in which we live, then the invitation for us is to bring our best self, not for what we get out of it, but because in reflecting our best self, we'll get to be ourselves. We'll get to discover who and how we fit in to this larger world.

James: 07:41

We get to reflect back just a small bit of the grace we've already received. And that's less about a transaction. I'm sure if we could be playing with semantics here and you could argue with me that it is a transaction. But there's something in the subtlety of it that feels different to me when I begin to think of it as a relationship. How much do I have to do in this relationship in order to get something out of the relationship?

James: 08:15

That is a transaction. I'm going to just be me in the relationship and that's enough is instead a relational rather than a transactional model for me. So, my invitation then would be for you to try that on. When you are engaged in conversation, don't be looking for what you can get out of the conversation, how you can win a conversation, which is an oxymoron in itself. You cannot win a conversation.

James: 08:56

You can't really ever win an argument. Somebody will be silenced in the end and walk away and you may feel you've won, but you may have lost the possibility of friendship ever because you won by pushing the other away. Instead of measuring, just be the best person you can be in that moment. Bring yourself relationally into your connection with other people, into your connection with God. Bring that self because what you bring adds to the relational fabric of the field in which we find ourselves, this infinite field of love energized by spirit that we walk in.

James: 09:48

So pay attention. Is there something I'm hoping to get out of this conversation? Is there something I'm hoping to get out of this walk? Is there something I'm hoping to get out of showing up for this event? Is there something I bring to it?

James: 10:13

Is there a way I can be my best self in this moment? Whatever the moment turns out to be. Because I see those as different kinds of things. Sure, you can ask what you can get out of it and show up as your best self at the same time. But there's always that underlying what is motivating us is what we can get.

James: 10:37

Whereas perhaps if we're asking how can I bring my best self into every moment, what we're asking is how do we contribute, be a part of all that is? Because after all, we're a part of all that is, of the great singularity of all things, the unity of all things, the relational field in which we find ourselves. And at the same time, we are a unique individual reflection of that field, of parts of that field, can't even be the whole field. So that without us, the field is missing a piece. Bring your best self.

James: 11:23

Be your best self. Find a way to live from a place that is less transactional based on what you can get and what the other can get from you as if it's a tug of war. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to pour yourself out in the world, to get to be who you are because you are a gift, and the gift that you are is what we need. What the whole universe needs is for you to be you. Now it sounds like I'm saying to you this is what we need from you.

James: 12:04

This is what we get from you. But by adding to this beautiful, big, infinite relational field in which we find ourselves, by adding to it, you are also a beneficiary because you're a part of this larger sense of connection. So examine yourself. Ask yourself, why am I doing the things that I do? What is it that motivates me?

James: 12:38

Is it purely, you know, give and take transactionally? Maybe there are some places in your life where it has to be that way. Work is a transaction for you. I don't know. You know, you need to work because you need to be paid so that you can have a life and you do that transactionally.

James: 12:56

If that's the case, then at least you're honest with yourself that that's a transactional connection you have. But don't you benefit in some other ways when you bring your best self to that place too? It's just worth asking. It's just a question. At the same time, in every relationship, why is it that you do whatever it is that you do in that relationship?

James: 13:21

Are you doing it because you love to bring your best self, that it brings out the best self to be in that relationship and the other person you hope you're bringing out their best self by being present? And isn't that enough, that relational field that you're creating by being present in it fully, transforming it by your very presence within it? Is that enough? I can't answer that question for you, but I can for me. I'm trying to live intentionally in what I perceive to be a relational field which is infinite and which I am a part of uniquely as well as a part of the whole as the unique piece I play in it.

James: 14:17

So my particularity as well as my part in the larger unity altogether. That's how I see myself. So I invite you to ponder how you see yourself in all that is. And no matter how that is remember that you're infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And until the next time, I wish you all the best.