We are all actors here. What character are you playing? Does your character uplift and liberate you or depress and limit you? When we allow ourselves to examine ourselves and loosen the ties of all the strong beliefs and ideas, we begin the path of liberation into wholeness, completeness, and pure awareness.

There is no shortage of physical and material items on this Earth today, but there is a dire shortage of love, patience, presence, understanding, and peace. Instead of adding more clutter to your life, or to the lives of others, and putting a strain on our Earth’s resources, we can each choose something else. We can choose to enrich ourselves and others via these 5 essential, timeless, and truly transformative gifts.

If you choose to or “have to” buy gifts for others, consider how you can change those from material gifts to experiential gifts, from mind-numbing gifts to educational gifts, from obligatory gifts to “for-the-love-of-doing-it” gifts. Consider how you can bring real value to the lives of your loved ones. We don’t need more stuff. What we do need is more love, more understanding, more patience, more presence, and more peace in our lives.