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Service Is Its Own Reward

 

A true World Server strives to have a mind that is balanced at all times. This requires keen enthusiasm for disinterested, selfless service: Be kind to all. Love all. Serve all. Be generous and tolerant towards all. This is the way to purify both heart and mind, and to help forge the path to world enlightenment.

By performing acts of service, the heart is purified. Egoism, hatred, jealousy, the idea of superiority, and all similar qualities become purged and disappear. Humility, pure love, sympathy, tolerance and mercy are developed in their place. The server comes to feel oneness and unity, in touch with all life.

The person who serves the world at the same time serves the self. Only by first reforming oneself can the whole world become reformed. The greatest service that can be rendered is to impart knowledge of truth, for the basic cause of all human suffering is unconsciousness.

True service also purifies the mind, and can be a tool for self knowledge. This practice requires non-attachment to outcome and that all actions be dedicated to the highest good, with the awareness that all of life is good.

There may be a divine call for a certain kind of work, and if that happens, one can learn to recognize it in the moment. Though people are generally elated by success and depressed by failure, it's preferable not to be attached to outcome or even to a particular form of work.

Many people have core pictures giving them polarized attitudes about their work. They may be attracted to some kinds of work, and dislike others. Our true calling is not to seek success or failure, but rather to focus attention on completing the immediate task at hand to the best of one’s ability. Work itself cannot bring misery, but having attachment or identification to work brings in all sorts of worries, troubles, and unhappiness.

If we work for the fulfillment of Divine Purpose and do not expect any fruit ... if we do everything as worship of the Divine ... if we work in unison with Divine Will for the welfare of the world ... then, through the sacrifice of selfishness, the free flow of energy is intrinsically magnetic to the flow of funds as compensation. Through detachment, dispassion and discrimination, our work becomes worship, and we will become as free as a bird.

The infusion of Joy into our day-to-day service brings healing into the environment and generates positive energy that's contagious, in a good way.

For any workplace, such Joy is then imbued into all products and services offered by the enterprise as well as by individual professionals in all interactions with others. There's a ripple effect that follows not only the worker but also all those who are touched by their service offering.

When we give up ego and work merely for the sake of humanity, even eating, walking, talking, sleeping, breathing and answering calls of nature become joyous activities. Great joy exists in approaching work this way because there is no personal investment in it.

How is this freedom accomplished? When we perform any action, it's important to go inside and become centered. In this space of equanimity of mind, it is possible to understand the fundamental principles that govern all we do, and many of the outside forces become clearer and more manageable.

There is certainty in the practice of right work. Even a small amount of service to the community or to the poor brings forth its own rewards. This develops momentum, we will again be propelled to more good actions by the magnetism created by our impressions of the original action. This is a key detail of the way that service evolves.

While the unconscious cannot conceive of doing work without some personal gain, the World Server attains inner spiritual strength and power by performing selfless motives and practices. Gradually, as we serve others, the glory and splendor of unselfish work is understood. This practice requires great patience as the old ways of selfishness must be destroyed.

Non-attachment is dispassion or indifference to the sensual enjoyments. This occurs in the mind. The “I” and “mine” are "poisonous fangs of the mind serpent" which must be removed in order to tame the mind. We rise above bondage to material things like the body or possessions. The binding link ~ the mind ~ can and must be mastered and controlled.

As we work, the mind expands to see things in more creative, abstract ways. This brings detachment as humanity is lifted by the higher energies. In the process of doing the work, sooner or later we will no longer pay attention to old worries and difficulties. Self-knowledge evolves as we become less self-centered.

When we realize that in our work we don't answer to the boss outside but rather to the Deity who ordained us, there can be no more bondage to office mates and employer.

The external work may still appear to be the same, yet ...

We Are Free!

 

Service can be briefly defined as the spontaneous effect of soul contact. This contact is so definite and fixed that the life of the soul can pour through into the instrument which the soul must perforce use upon the physical plane. It is the manner whereby the nature of that soul can demonstrate in the world of human affairs. Service is not a quality or a performance; it is not an activity towards which people must strenuously strive, nor is it a method of world salvage. This distinction must be clearly grasped, or else our whole attitude to this momentous demonstration of the success of the evolutionary process in humanity will be at fault. Service is a life demonstration. (1)

 

At the time of the Goodwill Festival, there is an inflowing
opportunity to discover new aspects of world service.

 

Synthesis is from
Science of Yoga, Volume 1: Karma Yoga
by Swami Sivananda, Sivananda Press, Durban, South Africa

 

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(1) Esoteric Psychology I, Alice A. Bailey, p. 125
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