“The universe is prodigal in its support. We are miserly in what we accept. All gift horses are looked in the mouth and usually returned to sender. We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.”
— Julia Cameron,
The Artist’s Way
I’ve written this to go along with the Unboxing Challenge, though it’s fun and meaningful to do at any time.You can use this as a meditation, a creativity prompt, or simply a fun mental exercise to rise above the day-to-day grind and refresh your sense of wonder and excitement for the magic that is in your life already. May it help you fall in love with the gifts of your life, big and small; embrace more fully the wonders of your existence; and become more comfortable with celebrating them. Openly.
Because how fully are we embracing a gift anyway if we’re still biting our tongues about the absolute treasure that it is?
Free-write about all the ideas that come to you through this exercise. Free-writing can unleash some SERIOUS creativity and help connect you with depths of feeling or understanding you previously didn’t even recognizes. Don’t censor yourself.
Ready for some cosmic wonder? Imagine this:
Setting the Scene
You are in soul form. On the Other Side. The mood is incredibly festive. The occasion? This is your life shower! Kind of like a wedding shower, except instead of getting married… you are getting Earthed!
WOOO! Exciting!
All around you are souls who love and admire you, and they are allllll giving you presents! It’s a diverse group, including your earthly loved ones in their soul form; guardian angels; divine energies you pray to (e.g., God, Mother Mary); versions of you from other lifetimes; even the symbolic energies of places (e.g., your hometown) and of activities (e.g., gardening). Observe as you sit there, while gift after gift is handed to you, wrapped so beautifully with love.
Everyone present is SOOOO happy and excited that you are receiving every single one of these gifts. Some of the gifts are practical, intended to support specific aspects of your big Earth adventure. Some are “just because” — because Heaven simply wants you to have this lovely surprise. There is no end to the generosity of the beings who feel honored and excited to shower you with gifts for any stage in your life.
What Do You Do?
As you receive and open each gift — SUPER-stoked — you’re glowing with happiness and announcing to the room:
“Oh, wow! A [X]! I’m so THANKFUL that I get to have a [X]. I LOVE this [X] because…”
Maybe you also express how these gifts will (or already do) enrich your Earth experience. Even if only to add superfluous joy — because joy is never superfluous.
“Always remember, joy is not incidental to spiritual quest. It is vital.”
— Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
(What he said ⬆︎)
Let yourself sit with the feeling of ALL the joy for these gifts and the fact that they’ve been given to you, whatever they are. A gift can be fun, silly, material, corporeal. Anything you need to spend more time appreciating, or even things you already KNOW you appreciate and you just wish you could sing your gratitude from the rooftops about them — let the Unboxing Challenge be your excuse to do just that.
Recognize that this is how we can consecrate a gift: by embracing it fully, with soul-deep
appreciation, and not trying to hide its light.
Your “unboxing” presentation can be as poetic, silly, or matter-of-fact as you want. Let yourself be inspired. Basically, what you’re going for is something like show-and-tell, in a heavenly setting with a heavenly audience. Since everyone around you is pure soul — the happiest, most loving version of themselves — you have absolutely no need to feel self-conscious about expressing ANY of your love, joy, or gratitude. Because the soul version of all of us LOVES to celebrate each other’s love, joy, and gratitude. Hence, by being so outspoken, YOU are just cranking up the joy in Heaven. Wut wuuuut!
What Counts as a Gift?
What kinds of things can you “unbox” about your existence? ANYTHING YOU LOVE. Maybe you love that:
- you’re bendy-like-whoa
- you’re great at math
- your eyes crinkle really cute when you smile
- your apartment is a dream
- you are a phenomenal cook
- you’ve come out to your coworkers
- your pet has some adorable idiosyncracy
- you’ve been sober for 3 months already
Or even something like:
- people are just plain nice to you!
You can celebrate both “you” things and “others” things: “others” meaning either that others have brought these gifts into your life and/OR that these are gifts you can share with others.
Even your achievements are gifts, because nothing is possible without the Universe’s support. So it is 100% acceptable (and awesome!) to be grateful for achievements; they are also gifts.
Turning This into a Personal Growth Exercise
Jot down your ideas all at once, shortly after you come out of the meditation. Later on, you can decide which ones to elaborate on, or even add more to the list. For instance, maybe you receive a sweet compliment later that sparks an epiphany regarding something lovely about yourself that you’d never before thought of as special; compliments often point us in the direction of gifts.
Follow my own posts for the Unboxing Challenge here or on Instagram (lalabelle.rose) for more inspiration. They can act as prompts, giving you new ways of looking at certain aspects of your life so you can see treasures where you did before.
Finally, if you want to do the Unboxing Challenge publicly but don’t feel like sharing your “own” gift on any given day, you can stay in the swing of things by devoting that day to a gift in others’ lives that makes you really happy. For example, have you passed a lot of people with new puppies today? Did they make you smile? Then you can simply celebrate LOVING the fact that so many people have new puppies. And that so many little baby dogs have found their ways to loving homes. Better yet, did you get to pet a puppy? That’s a GIFT you received! And maybe also reflects a gift you’ve forgotten: do animals always seem to love you? That is an awesome gift. Write it down.
Celebrating others’ gifts enriches our lives too; after all, we are all one. So don’t underestimate the transcendental beauty in finding happiness in the love and joy others are living all around you.
My Hopes for You
Whether you do the Unboxing Challenge publicly or privately, may you fall in love with yourself and your life and reach a deeper sense of peace and gratitude. May turning your attention to your gifts strengthen your sense of trust in life’s abundance and support.
I also hope that the Unboxing Challenge helps you to cultivate a heightened ability to see the miracles in even the most “mundane” aspects of your existence —
as you will have stopped drawing such a hard line between “spiritual” and “terrestrial” in the first place.
If you do this challenge publicly, I hope you also find the courage to be more authentic as well — so you can drop the exhausting work of suppressing your enormous spirit. Having dropped the habit of hiding your radiance by default and having given yourself permission to stop dimming your shine, you may find yourself more comfortable with embracing the opportunities life sends your way. This is a paradigm shift, and paradigm shifts open up new and beautiful pathways of possibility.
And, of course, your posts will likely have inspired others to see similar wonders in their OWN worlds. Letting your light shine brighter means allowing it to shine even further.
Which was probably what it was intended for all along. 😉
Jump in on any day of the challenge, start at Day 1 anytime, or even just do the meditation once and forget about it. There is no wrong way to do this: if you feel more connected with a sense of wonder, gratitude, and/or self-love, to any extent, then it has served its purpose.
Have fun, thank you for shining your light in this world, and may you fall ever-more deeply in love with the great gift that is your existence.
