Affirmations:
Loving Reminders are a loving reminder for me.
Each time I share with others, I remember myself.
What I am teaching, I am learning.
When I am truly helpful, I am recognizing the One We Are together.
Truly Helpful
Helpfulness works when someone wants to be helped.
Helpfulness
doesn’t work when the other doesn’t want to be helped.
How
can we mind our own business and help only when asked?
How
do we wait until we are requested to be helpful?
When we are living on purpose, we are available to be helpful.
When
we live purposefully, we are being helpful as role models.
When
we are happy with our lives, we are content and not looking outside for
validation.
When
we are living in integrity with our own values and life path, we are content.
Sometimes we make it our mission and purpose to help others.
Sometimes
we get caught up in everyone else’s lives.
Sometimes
we lose sight of being helpful to ourselves.
Sometimes
we are waiting for someone else to help us.
Being truly helpful is not fixing, correcting or convincing others.
Being
truly helpful is being of service to those who seek our help.
Being
truly helpful is not needing to change or correct andother.
Being
truly helpful may include education, inspiration and demonstration.
First help yourself.
When
your own life is in order, there is time, energy and resources to be truly
helpful to others.
When
you are being truly helpful, apply what you are giving, sharing and offering to
your own life.
When
you are ready, willing and able to be of service to others, recognize you are
serving all humanity.
Life is a gift to be received and then shared or given to others.
Life
offers the help we need, when we are open and willing to receive.
Notice
how often we may resist what is given, because it is not what we want.
Likewise
recognize that the receiver often will not be receptive to the help you want to
give.
The attitude with which we give affects what is perceived and
received .
If
the helper is judging the recipient feels judged.
If
the helper feels better than, the receiver may feel less than.
If
the helper knows that they too benefit in the help. the receiver may feel
blessed.
All of us are learning and teaching, helping and healing, giving
and receiving together.
No
gift given is not received by both giver and receiver.
No
help being offered is only helpful to the recipient.
All
that is shared is received by all, whether recognized or not.
Give to others what you would want given to you.
Do
with others what you want done for and with you.
Love
and trust others as you want to be loved and trusted.
Recognize
that all we give is given to ourselves.
Loving us all as one with each loving reminder,
Betty
Lue
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