Dear friends,
It is obviously a good thing to be serviceful and to want to help others. But as with everything in life, rules of thumb can lead us astray. I will share a story to illustrate this thought.
I was doing my stress management training program in Colorado for a government agency. A woman came up to me at the end and shared that one of her stressors was not enough time to get her work done. Hardly unique, but I felt to probe a bit for more details. She was a manager there and found she spent so much time helping staff she fell behind on her own work. My first impression was how sweet she must be. But, as sometimes happens for me, a few alarm bells went off and an intuition came. Something seemed “off.”
I got a hit on what the actual problem was. I said, “I think you have trouble watching other people struggle, so you jump in in order to ease your own heart and not really because helping them is the right thing to do. You are motivated by your discomfort in watching someone in pain and not so much by your desire to be of service.”
She immediately teared up, and said, “Yes. I can’t stand watching my people struggle.”
But what if they learn a valuable lesson through their struggling? Our job on this Earth is not to “fix” everything. That is of course a lovely principle and service is wonderful that can actually be a path to inner freedom. But, as with all things, consciousness is everything. The higher principle is to do what Spirit wants of us and not merely to cater to our own desires and urges, no matter how noble they may appear to others (and even to ourselves!).
May we be able always to find the stillness in our center and from there, with freedom, choose what is best to do.
Blessings,
David G., manager
for the Gang at East West