The Greatest Service

The greatest service is to recognize the essence or the reality of the other person...who that person truly is beyond form.

Eckhart Tolle

True service isn't about form serving form, ego serving ego, as so much of our human service can be. It is about soul recognizing soul.

I have been thinking a bit about my need to serve and how I go about it when I happened upon this video from a very wise teacher. 

Over the last year or so, I have been so intent on giving and doing for those who I felt could benefit from my service. I have been spending hours here, hours doing up books and learning packages for others, hours doing what I can for loved ones. I have been giving all I have to my now dependent adult children, draining the bit I have in the bank, draining my energy, draining my time. And though I can be very much present and wrapped in being when I am with these people or "doing" for them...I can also be very egoic, lost in this idea of "me" as helper.  Service is, I realize, a form of redemption for me.  

Do you remember how I often refer to the ego twins: Shamer and Redeemer ego? Part of my psyche is full of stored shame and to keep that shame down in a place where it is contained, ego will often set out to redeem itself through what it does or through how it appears to others. It will seek to become the hero. Part, but not all, of my service here and there is to enhance my self image. I want to see myself as "the yogi that serves selflessly", "the mother who gives all to her children", and part of me, in some small way, wants others to see me in that light as well.That is hard to realize. There is still an ego seeking to redeem itself in me so I do not have to deal with the shame emerging. And of course, the shame is emerging.  The more I practice, the more those samskaras are coming up to the surface for release. My automatic reaction to those feelings of shame is to redeem myself. Redeeming my self -image  is a way of pushing the shame back down.So service is not just a expression of the energy within  using this vessel and mind as its conduit...it is also a game ego is playing. Sigh!

I have to realize when I get all caught up in this idea that I am spending or wasting my energy  in doing for others that:

You are not giving anything of yours because ultimately nothing is yours. The energy is not yours. It is just universal energy coming through.Eckhart Tolle.

There is, though, a genuine desire for this natural and pure expression of service to come out, as well. My serving  isn't all ego derived.  I do see now, more than I ever have, the essence and reality of the other person.  I see myself in them and them in me.  I see less "me". It just seems natural to give time and energy away in the way I do because I see that it doesn't belong to me. I do.

So there I am jumping from one foot to the other when it comes to service and helping others. Up on my tip toes  of one foot, serving to meet ego's needs ( to be seen by self and others as  selfless), and then down solid on the other foot, balanced and connected just allowing all that wonderful loving energy to pour through this body and mind. Then  ego calls me over again when shame emerges to be released..."This is too painful. Redeem yourself by doing  something helpful!" I am told so I go off seeking redemption in service again. Then my practice pulls me back to balance, connection and realization. I serve from there. Back and forth I go like I am doing some kind of funky dance. I am, however,  leaning on that solid leg more and more, spending more time in balance than in self image redemption. It is coming. My aim in service is to be more like the quiet listener Vasudeva, in Siddhartha.

While he was still speaking, still confessing, Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain, like this motionless man was the river itself, that He was God Himself, that he was the eternal itself. Herma Hesse, Siddhartha

Vasudeva did little to serve but be.  He was connected to the Source, the everflowing river of Life, and allowed that energy to flow through him. He did not seek to serve, nor did he seek to be praised or acknowledged for his service, he just was service. In this passage Siddhartha is recognizing his friend as  the essence beyond the form, that which was actually doing the serving. And then he began to see that same natural flow of serving energy in himself through recognizing it in the other. 

I am beginning to truly recognize it in the other as well. I am beginning to recognize it in the essence beyond this form I call "me". 

All is well in my world!

Hermann Hesse ( n.d.[book was written in 1922]) Siddhartha. Amazon.

Eckhart Tolle ( May, 2024) Eckhart tolle on the role of Service in Spiritual Development.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRESz_CpBVU