To be in a place of service to all around you, is to be in a place of flow. It is the destination of so much of our work on our own growth and development, that looks to put aside our fears, our addictions and our negative patterns “to be”.
That place of being, is in a place called service.
Having spoken of our destination lets, for a moment, look at what we mistakenly think service is. One of the most common reasons, that I hear people not wanting to assume a place of being that is service, is that they assume it is “serving”. That it is a life of serving others or serving something that is somehow outside and superior. A thing that has control over their being.
To serve has a very different energy about it. Just trying saying them both to yourself. “I serve” and “I am of service”. See how they feel different when they are spoken. You can feel the draining energy of the words “serve” in comparison to “service”. Service has an energising quality to the word and one that feels comfortable in the saying.
There is a place for those that serve. In a place where a contract is created and the boundaries are defined and understood, there are many that look to a place where they serve as being comfortable for them. It is not however, the same as being of service.
The other and where it is more difficult to shift peoples views, is that of being of help. We have been bought up, many of us, on the belief that being of help is a positive vibration. Being of help rewards both the giver and the receiver. I was and as a child reminded, that to be a good boy, was to be helpful. Full of help for others.
My whole hearted desire is that we shift our focus from help, to service.
To be of help requires someone one to be of need. Need is a gap that can be filled by those that want to be helpful. Can we fill that gap with help? Help though also requires a response. To give help requires us to feel, that we were of help. For that action, to be defined by a response. If there is no response then we can feel that our help was not appreciated or needed.
It can also require that this place of need continues, so we can continue to feel that sense of helpfulness. Those that perpetuate a pattern of helpfulness, often will withdraw that when they are not feeling either in a place where their help is required or that what they see as help, is not appreciated.
Helpfulness seeks need to feel fulfilled.
What they miss out on, is that in being in a place of service they might not be needed but they are valued. Their acts of service are more meaningful and longer lasting in terms of their benefits. As well as being, potentially, a physical act of service, they carry with them a positive energetic mark that not only creates the present but extends beyond the boundaries of the act into the wider world.
Acts of service can be of help but that is not the intention behind being of service.
Service comes with the self belief in your own value. No one can truly be “of service” unless they understand their own value. It is when we don’t, that we seek to be helpful and seek out those that we think might show us that we are needed. Act in service and still we take part but we give of ourselves freely and without thought to appreciation.
Service given, creates value received.
This receiving may not though come in a way or a package that we thought it might. There may not be a physical and visible receipt of appreciation but the doing of the act or the being in a place of service, is self generating of its own value.
The best way I can describe it is that acts of service or being in service, are carried out with the highest regard to self. It is a conscious endeavour, on behalf of another consciousness, that we give with a full appreciation of our own self love and worth. In so doing, we require not any fixed form of reciprocation or reciprocity because there is no personal cost to ourselves either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.
What we get in the being in service, is a requisite return on what we do. There is a balancing flow between the act and the destination and then a return. If we limit ourselves to the being of help, we limit our capacity to receive and to grow through service.
Imagine if we were all in a place of service then any “needs” would be met automatically, there would be no need of help. This concept can be incredibly scary for people whose identities are wedded to a sense of themselves as being a helpful person. That the choices they make in life are governed by where they think they can be of most help. I have witnessed in myself the energetic change when I think I can be of help, as I become more animated and feel alive and reason for living.
I am neither and it is not.
It costs to be helpful and the reason we chase it, is because its rewards are short lived and we need to find a continual source. Value however, continues to grow within us, long after an act or being in a place of service has evolved.
It is a building block for us to flourish and to live a life.
Jeremy Rye 