How do we serve?
Are we serving with Love or with fear?
Do we serve to handle our own fears or because we are guided to be truly helpful?
Do we serve because it is our joy or because we feel obligated to serve.
Do we serve in ways that are uplifting and loving reminders or feeling sorry and worried for someone?
Service “serves us.”
The intention with which we love and give and serve is receive by the one serving.
All that we give is given to ourselves.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” reminds us to serve with the best we know.
What we give we receive.
Our intention is important and belies what will be received by the giver.
When we serve, it is imperative that we pay attention to our thoughts and the beliefs we hold.
Thoughts held in mind create after their kind.
In practice, when asked for help, ask in yourself, “How can I serve the highest and best for this one?”
Often the individual does not know what is in their own best interest, so we need to listen with them.
We may be asked for something that we feel we cannot do, and we need to listen to what is best.
We may let our sorrow, fear, duty interfere with what we hear is our responsibility.
Sometimes people sacrifice to be helpful and find themselves guilty or resentful.
When we can give from our fullness, we give with joy and gratitude and blessing for all.
When we are blessed by our service, we have given from Love.
When we are fulfilled in our loving service, we know we are giving from a place that is inspired.
Our response-ability is indeed our ability to respond with Love.
Response coming from Love, freedom and trust is healing and inspiring and filled with grace.
Reacting from fear, concern and doubt, is unhelpful and discouraging and filled with worry.
When we are full of love, faith, and inspiration, we respond with more love and faith and gratitude.
Service serves all of us.
Service is a blessing of goodness and kindness for everyone.
Helping and Fixing often comes from worry and doubt, trying to do something good.
When we truly serve, we are setting others free, trusting everyone is blessed with trust and freedom.
When you do not know what to do, be still and listen within.
Am I willing?
Am I able?
Do I know what is mine to do?
Give for the joy of giving.
Give with the Love of Sharing with your brother/sister and yourself.
Give as you are called to give from within.
Give as a gift from God to God.
Let go and let it be.
You need not check on the value of your service.
The value is received in Spirit as the intention with which it is given.
And so it is.
All Good.
Loving us all as one.
Betty Lue
“There is only One of us.
In your eyes it’s me I see.
There is only One of us.
You are my reflection.”
Helping, Fixing, Serving
--by Rachel Remen (May 29, 2000)
Service is not the same as helping.
Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your own strength to help someone with less strength. It's a one up, one down relationship, and people feel this inequality. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.
Serving is also different from fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don't fix people. When I set about fixing another person, it's because I see them as broken. Fixing is a form of judgment that separates us from one another; it creates a distance.
So, fundamentally, helping, fixing and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole.
When we serve in this way, we understand that this person's suffering is also my suffering, that their joy is also my joy and then the impulse to serve arises naturally - our natural wisdom and compassion presents itself quite simply. A server knows that they're being used and has the willingness to be used in the service of something greater.
We may help or fix many things in our lives, but when we serve, we are always in the service of wholeness.
--Rachel Remen, from Zen Hospice