Love, Listening & Service

How can we give each other enough space to experience the array of emotions and thoughts, the motivations and honest intentions that arise within an individual, while at the same time being close enough to support those who have fallen or are ceaselessly struggling with an inability to reach out to those around them?

Do we actually trust that we would be held, that there truly are those who would step in and guide with gentle love, if they only knew they were needed. And can we trust that there are those times when someone who is hurting will find their way and in fact is the only one who knows their way, and we can step back, relax and watch them unfold?

We often, very often allow our own predisposed ideas, about the world, ourselves and others, stand in the way of acknowledging where another actually is.

If we ourselves have no previous context in which to understand what somebody is going through, how could we possibly support?

With love,
with listening.
With service.

I once had a teacher explain to me the difference between help and service: Help is assuming someone needs your assistance, that they are at a lack of power to complete that which the universe is asking of them. Service on the other hand is understanding and trusting that each person has the capability to complete the tasks the universe bestows upon them, that they are exactly where they should be, and that we as humbled servants of a greater good may offer that which we have in that service, purely because we have it and in the name of all living beings.

To me this is how an ideal community would interact, not from the assumption of “helping one another” but from a place of putting ourselves in service to the greater good of us all. Understanding the concept of ‘All is One’ is vital to our ability to give selflessly.

To truly feel the desire to give freely is a gift, for it comes through liberation from the idea of our well being being separate from that of any other.

So there is no reason to berate oneself for a lack of desire to give freely, for we are still just tied up in the feeling of being separate and therefore needing to look out for ourselves first. We suffer already in this space, may we be gentle with this understanding and learn to trust further.

My well being, is tied up in yours; may we be of service to the greater good through each other.