CHAPTER 7
Serving Humanity. You Want Fries With That?
So, how can you make all this practical in your daily life? After all, the proof of a philosophy is that it enhances your existence. What can be more enhancing, then, than a perspective that places you smack in the middle of your own personal universe with the power to choose its contents and no obligations of any sort to fulfill? Everything you have been taught since birth tells you that your worth will be measured by other people and how you contribute to their lives and eventually by a God outside your self with the same agenda. Here we have said something quite dissimilar, haven’t we? We say that other people, as you perceive them, are your creation. We say that your life is entirely about you. A quandary!
Splitting yourself down the middle so that you can live happily on the one hand and serve others on the other hand, eventually serves no one. It fills your world with people who need help and denies you the fulfilment of your own time in Paradise. In order to experience a life in Paradise, you must believe that you reside in Paradise. You must see and acknowledge and appreciate the perfection of creation in which you live. Just as with healing, the perception of imperfection becomes your first hurdle. Even the apparent pain and suffering of others has its divine purposes, just as your pain and suffering has proven to have. Deciding that another’s pain needs to be fixed somehow simply buys into a painful experience of reality, extending the suffering by one more person, you.
There is a word in your language to describe a relationship based upon the perceived neediness of its participants: co-dependent. Such a relationship, and these are incredibly common, is not a happy making one for either party. Even if one party in such a relationship feels certain that their motives are pure, they intend only to help the other, both are locked into a view that enhances neither of them. We suggest that a healthy relationship is one which encourages honest self-expression. It promotes honorable behaviour that is true to its parties deepest desires. It expresses a coming together to share, joyfully and lovingly, the present moments of life.
This is not such a fantasy either. It is the result of present moment choices. You can accomplish this immediately in all of your relationships with a few careful choices along the way. For instance, stay true to your self. If your every expression is of what is true for you, open and honest and genuine, it will lead to your happiness no matter how it is responded to by others. Trying to be someone you are not, or don’t really want to be, just to please others or avoid confrontation, takes you out of your centre and leaves you dangling in the wind. There is no reality on which to stand. Making someone else more real than you are by denying who you are and what you want is a very loud argument against your own happiness. It is also not relating. It denies the other person the free choice to be with you.
This idea may well seem risky to you. It does suggest putting yourself on the line in your relationships. It asks you to make your self more important than the approval of others. That is such a strong statement of your value and your safety. Such statements shape your universe. Besides, what is the point of being surrounded by people who don’t even know the real you? They can never really love you if you don’t share yourself with them. When you think about it, what have you got to lose really? People who don’t even know you? Strangers!
If your every act or word becomes an expression of your truth in the present moment, you will be expressing your soul into this Earthly dimension. That is kinda the whole point of being here, right? The best way we know of to discover what the deepest longings of your soul might be is to express as much of them as you are aware of right now. Express them loudly and often. In the sharing, you will find new aspects of them coming into your awareness. As you have those longings supported by life, and you will, deeper urges will be encouraged. You will come to speak the very words placed within you by your highest awareness. You will come to speak for your soul in the world. This requires no special skill, just the courage to be who you really are.
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The world that you experience from moment to moment is the world that you believe is “out there.” If you believe there is suffering and cruelty and injustice “out there,” then there is. We ask you to take credit for that. It is to be found “out there” because you find it in yourself. Your internal urges spring from both sides of every coin. There is light and dark, love and hate, peace and war, justice and injustice, kindness and cruelty within you. The Kingdom of God is within you. As you look outward at the world, you will see all of that, ALL THAT IS. Your definitions of all of that might benefit from some exploration though.
As we have said, every expression has both the seen and the unseen components of the wholeness inherent in everything. You may see pain on the surface but its balancing aspects will be there even if unseen by you. Accepting the latent wholeness of an action or expression offers a new and more joyous perspective. The angry words of another person are seen in the context of their inner fear and pain. They are not about you until you decide they are. They do reflect your inner world but they are not personal. The apparent suffering of others has a divine purpose, expresses its divine holiness/wholeness, whether you perceive that wholeness or not. It does not need to be fixed! Just like your internal fears, you can embrace it, acknowledge it and release it by choosing to look at it differently. See the fiction of it as the expression of your inner self showing you how large you really are.
Choosing your words and actions based upon your deepest desires is the most exalted way to serve your world. It makes of your world a happier place. Create a vision of a world that supports your joy, that blesses you and all who live in it. Embrace the idea that your happiness enhances all life in your world and choose to stay within that idea and express your happiness, always. As all the people around you are merrily choosing which reality to inhabit, the part of them that chooses a happier world (yours) will enhance all of their infinite alternate selves. Just as your joy in the present moment expands into your personal past and future, it expands as well into the whole Earth you occupy and its past and future. Your happiness expands into every aspect of you that your soul touches, which is pretty vast territory. When you choose joy, right now, you change your world in profound ways. Don’t underestimate that power. The power of Being is far more real and vast than the power of Doing.
As you begin to share your vision of your world as Paradise, others will be even more profoundly affected. Even those who hear but adamantly disagree will be indelibly marked by your expressions. The more genuinely true of your deepest desires your expressions become, the more power they have to shape your life, manifest your dreams and change your world. There are an infinite number of worlds for you and every one else to choose from. When you choose the world which is Heaven on Earth, which expresses the Kingdom of God which is within you, you bring everything you love with you. You will be there because you love everything, by the way. You will even love, honour and embrace the suffering of self and others as the expressions of the divine that they are.
So, why, you might ask, does my culture encourage me to be of service, especially the aspects of culture that express spiritual values? We would suggest that religions, even the New Age religions, have humanized spiritual thought into moral codes. They place judgement upon the wholeness and by thrusting that judgement onto others, take away the right to choose. Thus they remain caught in the expressions of spirit and miss some of the wholeness of which those expressions are part. They acknowledge that feeling and acting out of love unconditional feels wonderful. Such a focus as unconditional love invariably feels right and good and holy. Why not make it a commandment? What gets lost in the shuffle is the awareness that every thought, feeling and action contains love unconditional. Each experience is the God stuff of which everything in creation is made. Therefore, no act can be more holy than another. All acts contain pure love. There is truly nothing to manufacture a commandment about.
We suggest instead, choosing actions that express what you want to experience in life, not because they will be more pleasing to God. They will be more pleasing to you. We only suggest expressing unconditional love because it is a source of tremendous joy. Sometimes, you do not want tremendous joy. Go figure!
There are no demands or strings to unconditional love. There are no attachments to the result
s of the actions inspired by unconditional love. There is no pain or fear or suffering to be found in the experience of unconditional love. There is nothing missing, or needing to be fixed or changed or condemned. From unconditionality comes true compassion, understanding and honouring of the experience of everyone. When you sit in unconditional love, you look upon the world with God’s eyes, loving what is in its known and unknown aspects.
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Sit back and relax and open your self to the flow of life through your body. Breathe in that life force and let its flow fill your body. Let yourself become connected to your world through the centre of your heart, drawing from all aspects of the world in large increments as you breathe it in. Open entirely, without fear or demand, to the flow of thought and feeling and solid matter that comprises your world with each inhale. Release all fear and concern with each exhale. As you feel yourself expand in this unconditional acceptance of everything in the world through your mental, emotional and physical bodies, begin to offer this feeling outward with each exhale. Let the total of the love you can experience flow through you unchecked into the world.
Let go of all of your concerns and fear. For just this time, suspend your doubts about how safe your world is. Embrace it all for just a few moments. Let this large feeling permeate you like never before. You do not have to understand anything, or control anything or do anything. Simply be in that wonderful feeling. As it washes over and through you, apply it to yourself as well. Unconditional, accepting everything, loving everything; really feel it now. Don’t hurry back from this experience. Bask in it as long as your concentration skills allow. As your attention wavers from this state of being, go back to your breathing and draw in the world with your inhale and send it out lovingly with your exhale. You will find yourself able to recreate that marvellous feeling easily, whenever you choose to, with a little practice. Becoming familiar with this experience will come in very handy as you walk through your life’s journey.
All of the sticky situations in life become so much easier when you live them from within this perspective. You will find it easy to accept others as they are and to respond to the world around you lovingly. Within this point of view, you know no obligations to the world, only opportunities to feel and express this love which practically bursts through your skin into the world. You will naturally and easily begin to express what is true for you, not trying to fix or convince others, just for the joy of expressing your joy. You will find it easy to accept others as they are, not wanting them to change to conform to your vision of who they should be, happy or kind or competent or healthy. You will see and enjoy the perfection of what is. Sounds pretty good eh? All it takes is the decision to give yourself this unconditional love experience over and over until you get it right! Er, maybe get it down pat, instead.
Standing within the experience of unconditional love, we look at your world with a new perspective. We honour the experience of each aspect of your world. We see and express its perfection and thus offer it our highest frequencies, our loftiest thoughts and our greatest service. Loving people just as they are is the greatest service you can offer. Even if you lapse a little and want someone to change, just to alleviate their pain, change is totally up to them. Each must choose their own path in life. You can inspire one another but you simply cannot change one another, no matter how lofty your motives for trying. For most, the desire to change the world springs from fear. Perhaps the fear is expressed as the desire to make your mark in the world. Otherwise your life may have less meaning? Perhaps the fear is expressed through the desire to heal others, as though you possibly could. Always the refusal to accept the world as it is springs from personal internal fears that you are not enough. The possibility that the world might function just fine without your interference does not suggest that your existence has no purpose or effect. Hardly! Your world is a pure reflection of the quality of your life. When you look at the world through the eyes of love, it is a genuinely brighter, happier place. This is no illusion. Your joy changes everything.
Perhaps our suggestion that your happiness is the greatest gift you can offer your world brings up the question of selfishness versus humility. Do these words truly have meaning when you set aside judgement and just observe life? When you set aside your fear of not being enough, having enough, doing enough, your acts begin to express your true desires to love, to share, to understand. It is fear that drives selfishness, arrogance or greed. Fear has no purchase in soil rich in unconditionality. From all embracing love, there is no comparison, no measurement of self against other. Humility is a non-issue. So, too, is validation. You no longer need to seek validation in the eyes of others when you accept yourself as you are.
Imagine what a gift it is to offer your world this point of view. Every living thing that touches you is uplifted by your love. You need not do anything for this to occur. If you perform the exercise described in a public place, everyone in your vicinity will be affected by it. Within this love, it matters not if you see how they are affected. It matters not if you get credit for taking a role in that effect. You choose a universe to inhabit with this attitude and everyone around you chooses this universe to experience with you. There is no credit to be granted. There is, simply, love and joy to be shared.
This willingness to accept what is will guarantee your safety in this world. Every occurrence becomes an opportunity to experience and express love. The little tragedies that pepper your life experience provide challenges that sharpen your focus upon this lofty attitude. Like all skills, practice, especially in game conditions, sharpens your reflexes. Having your new attitude challenged by cranky people, difficult circumstances or internal upheaval makes it possible for you to make this unconditional love your new norm. First, such challenges remind you that you aren’t there yet. They then inspire you to shift back into unconditionality with a
good reminder of why it is a preferable state of being. As you do shift your attention and see your world change around you, you are encouraged to foster this perspective even more. Challenge, therefore, is a
blessing. Seeing the blessing right from the start makes challenge an opportunity for joy and inspiration throughout.
Having made a short story very long, we would summarize thus: Service to Humanity is a red herring. It is not a matter of what you do. It is a matter of who you are. “They also serve who sit and wait,” is more
true than you fully know. Be who you really are, in this moment. Express that fearlessly and all the love that is in you will come out into the open. Whenever that happens, the whole of infinity shimmers with it. Your love and joy brighten every world in a limitless number of worlds, human and otherwise. Perhaps the results in your immediate vicinity will be vague and hard to see but your choice for joy sets a direction for your entire world that all life is influenced by. Making a joyful noise is not just about singing with the choir in church. It is about how you choose to live each moment. And it changes everything!!!
On to Chapter 8
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