Purpose and Service
PURPOSE AND SERVICE
If I had a purpose, I would serve.
If I serve, I will find my purpose.
If I found my place, my niche, I would know what to do (serve)
and how to do it (serve).
If, if, if …….
I can see others serving, everywhere,
my friends, in society, charity shops.
I experience others serving me, everywhere,
my friends, people in shops, a shared smile with a stranger.
Perhaps I could do it their way. If I try.
It doesn’t work. That’s their way. Where’s my way?
Oh God – perhaps it doesn’t exist?!
Perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t have a place?!
I can’t find it. Perhaps it isn’t there!
I’m lonely looking for myself in other people.
I’m lonely trying to find myself out there.
Where am I?
If only I could find myself, out there somewhere, waiting,
I would know what and how to do.
If, if, if…….
It’s not working. I give up.
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I’m back inside me now. I accept myself as I am; just as I am, here, now; rather small, but homely. I’m at home inside me. It doesn’t matter, being small. I’m comfortable, and there are things to do. They are interesting things, that need to be done, and I have time and energy to spare. I shall do extra what interests me. It’s amazing how many interesting things there are to do. These things nourish me, feed me, and, having dropped an artificial idea of myself, I am free to be me. I am surprised by who I am, how my spontaneous interest and response to conditions is so creative, and it’s good fun!
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I get an idea of myself again and build on it.
I know who I am and where I am going.
I have a purpose and I know how I want to serve.
Duality appears again. Me and my purpose, me and my serving, me and my idea of myself.
Soon I fall short of my idea, soon I am less than my ideal.
I can see people out there embodying my ideal. Why can’t I get it together?
If I could only find the missing part of myself, out there somewhere, perhaps in one of them?
I’m desperate to bridge the gap between me and my ideal; fill the hole between me and my dream.
If only I could get it together ……..
If only I could………
If….
I can’t do it. I give up.
The miracle occurs again and I am inside myself, with no reaching and striving to be more than I am. I am just me and it’s fine, a relief. What I am is enough!
SERVICE – SACRIFICE/ADVENTURE
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It is my experience that true service occurs when we don’t know we are doing it, when we are ‘merely’ doing our being, expressing spontaneously and comfortably who we are, whether in conditions of joy or pain or in between. This is, like synchronicity, the natural order. I (Perception) AM (Action) Service is the natural order of things when we are who we are, and to that extent the Piscean idea of true service lying only in self-sacrifice and poverty is outdated and damaging.
Life undergone in a spirit of adventure is a finer thing than a spirit of sacrifice. In adventure, sacrifice is a part of the adventure, part of the fun. We should put an end to the long face when we consider sacrifice.
Life cannot be lived, progress made, without considerable sacrifice being meted out on the way but there is a constructive and an inferior attitude that can be taken towards it.
The constructive, creative attitude is a mixture of acceptance, challenge, curiosity and exploration as to what is the long term benefit hidden behind the particular sacrifice faced; gratitude, even joy, that one has been ‘graded’ such that one is deemed fit for sacrifice; complete knowledge and trust that it is an opportunity for one to take a creative step to enable one to move further along the path. We know and need not dwell on the inferior attitude of negative thoughts and feelings ranging from self-pity, through anger, to blaming others and bad luck for our seeming plight.
One can appreciate the difference between carrying sacrifice with a constructive attitude of adventure and carrying it with an inferior attitude. Sacrifice given freely in a spirit of adventure is unendingly creative and the energy produced is of a fine quality that can be used. The inferior type of sacrifice is of little help to the whole, the energies being far too contaminated to be of much use. By the time we have labelled our actions self-sacrifice, they are no longer service. By the time we are doing something because we ‘ought’ to, the service element has evaporated - for with Love, serving is a Joy.
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PURPOSE – UNCONSCIOUS/CONSCIOUS
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Someone sent me these words once – when I was fretting about not knowing what my purpose was and worrying as to how I could carry out my purpose if I did not know what it was – and I found them very comforting:-
“You are doing your bit already. You think you are not doing anything because you do not know what it is – but you are doing something - does the knowing or not knowing of the river flowing from its source alter in any way the quenched thirsts of the animal and vegetable kingdoms nearby? Of course not. The river does its immediate job of returning itself to the sea. It needs to know no more than this immediate job of flowing to the sea.
Forget this idea of ‘when I am ready I can work’. You are working already. Remember – your job is choice. You do not have to look for things – they come to you. All you have to do is choose and listen. The world is on the end of each choice for everyone. You do not have to force anything, so do not fear. Your choices attract things and open doors, your eyes see the things, your ears hear the doors opening. So do not fear for the future. Self- responsibility replaces loneliness, if you keep working on it.
As for work, why there is nothing to do but what is in front of you. The work that is in front of you is all there is to do. Do not fear that your work is hidden and that you have to go scurrying around looking for it. There is no trick to this; there is no star given for finding the hidden treasure; spending time finding a treasure that has been deliberately hidden for the purpose of giving work is a waste. Life does not work like that. Life gives the treasure in full view and one’s job is simply to live it. The treasure is Life. The river’s job is to flow. A human’s job is to live. No more; no less; no tricks; no more complicated than that.
Do what is under your nose in your own way – that is your work. What is to come under your nose in the future belongs to the tomorrows. What is under your nose to-day is the work. Every time you discard today because it is not yet tomorrow, you refuse to work and waste clock-time and cosmic time. Attend to today, listen to today, serve today.”
THE SECRET OF PURPOSE AND SERVICE
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And here lies the secret to me of both Purpose and Service – and I learn this secret again and again, and with deadening regularity I re-forget it until, like Spring coming round, I remember it again.
There is no Purpose and there is no Service because all is Purpose and all is Service.
I do not have to go looking around for my purpose – I am my purpose.
I do not have to work out what sort of serving would make me happy – doing what makes me happy is the serving.
We’ve got the question all back to front; the answer is a paradox; and anyway, the resolution is, already – we are, I AM.