Service?

 How do we know when and where to serve? There is no preset answer-the heart will tell us when we listen.

Jack Kornfield

Purpose and Service

Hmmm!  I have been thinking a lot about purpose and service.  Though I am seeking the path of enlightenment ( which sounds so "out there" I know but which really means I just want to live openly, honestly and lovingly, aligned with the truth...whatever that is), I know my living  entails more than just meditation,  studying what others have learned about this path and sharing what I learn. It requires a certain active  service to humanity, to the world at large...a certain "doing".  

I truly want to do what I am meant to do.  I want what I "do" to have a purpose, to benifit others, and I want to make my life one of service.  

A Fall From Productive Redemption?  

I also, on a purely personal and selfish level ...need maybe  to make more cash so I can survive in this world where I need to pay a mortgage, need to buy groceries and pay for services, independently. On my own, I don't make enough to survive. And I am not pitying myself or asking to be seen as a victim, which I know I am not.  Though there were some judgements and circumstances beyond my control that impinged on my livlihood and had something to do with the direction my life took...there were many, many  circumstances within my control and I actively made choices, with what unfolded in front of me, to be where I am now. I own this and I am okay with it! I know I am exactly where I need to be. 

Others are not okay with it, maybe.  They may look at me with eyes conditioned by a culture where one's "work ethic" is the most redemptive quality about a person and question why a woman like me, with nine years of post secondary education, is living below the poverty line;  and " why , since she looks like she is feeling so much better is she not out there towing the line like the rest of us do or did?"  

I am feeling better because I am stepping away from my conditioned need to tow the line and am placing my healing at the top of my priority list.  My need to tow the line was a symptom of a conditioned habit to run and hide from that which needed healing by keeping up with the world so I could at least appear to be worthy, according to its standards. My internal need to serve in a way that also served me got twisted up with my need to keep up with the Jones.  Though I did love teaching ...I was on automated pilot most times...working for the sake of working. I loved the income too...I was very attached to my great salary as well.

 When my body and mind began to scream at me, I ignored it. So numb was I from this collective habit of working for the sake of working and so ashamed was I of not being able to keep up in the way I was socially expected to,  I struggled with the message to stop and  heal  I was being given. If I were to stop and listen when it first started to get noisy it may have never gotten to the point it did. ...the point it gets for many of us. 

Exactly Where I Need to Be: Serving

So this is how my version of life unfolded and I made choices that led me to where I am now...broke, "unproductive" in the eyes of many but at the same time...I know I am exactly where I need to be...thus my feeling better.  I am reconstructing the  vision of my life  from one that keeps up with society's standards to one that reflects  what feels right to me. 

I am still in the process and like I say many times I am not sure about anything...but I know,  despite the fact  I could use more money to pay the bills...I cannot do what I do for others, expecting or dependent on payment. It just no longer make sense to do what I do for money...it makes more sense to give my life away. Now I have the time and energy to truly give to my family. What I offer in my yoga studio, for example, I offer as a gift for most people, at least partially. Some insist on paying and if it is that important to them I accept it but only after they have consistently received the gift of yoga from me.  I started teaching yoga knowing that it was never going to be something  I would do to pay the bills.  I thought if the bills got paid through my teaching, so be it. If they didn't, so be it. There was no attachment to income as an outcome.  I do that with my writing too...here or elsewhere.  I am  also doing and  willing to provide service to others in need without the need for payment.  Don't get me wrong, I accept and appreciate payment when it comes for a service I provide that proves valuable to someone but it is  not why I do what I do,  or give what I give. To me that is true service I want to provide.

Now to make money...which I see as something  as service to self not others... I wonder about taking on some very menial and manual  job for so many hours a week ...something that serves in a very general way ...but that has nothing about it  that will lead to ego attachment. Something where who I am on the outside, what I did in the past is inconsequential and will go completely unnoticed.  Like working on a farm, landscaping, cleaning gutters ...I don't know.  Something will come up.  We will see. 

Anyway, how I rambled today, eh?  

All is well in my world.

But the spirit of service asks us to touch and act from a deeper place, a chord of the heart that responds to life out of connectedness and compassion, independently of results. 

Jack Kornfield