Being of service to others

Many of you are now returning from your summer holidays. I wonder if you are finding it a bit of an effort to re-engage with your job and your customers, internal or external?

It might be that you’ve had plenty of time for yourself, recuperating, lazing perhaps by a pool, maybe gazing over the sea, perhaps getting some much needed exercise, enjoying the company of others or time by yourself.

And now, all of a sudden, it’s back to the frenzied world of business or in some way earning your living. You need to switch back into work gear. It can seem a major effort sometimes. Seemingly having to think of others’ needs rather than yours.

We had a visit recently by a friend of ours who has a distinctive approach to any task that involves providing or delivering something for others. If you are on the receiving end of it, the sense is that something is being done whole-heartedly, without any holding back, any reserve, any expectation. It’s done just for us, as a pure act of giving, selflessly. She’s a natural at it.

We have a term for this, service.

To a lot of people, this term is an uncomfortable one.

What image, sense or words come to your mind when you see the word “service”? Many people would associate it with the traditional one of the servant, a lesser role in life, servile, at the beck and call of others, exploited, under-paid, used. Or they think of customer services in a business, of call centres, of endless phone menus, of complaints and, as the customer, not getting what you want. Today we think of customer service as a way that companies screw money out of us while pretending to care.

But when we, my wife and I, talk of service, we mean it in a different sense. Service for us is something done for another without expectation of reward. It is when the ego is put on one side, hence the term “selfless service”. The ego is the sense of “I” that has to be protected, looked after at all costs, fearing some kind of loss, in survival protection mode. In that space, service would be conditional on getting something back. Selfless service is beyond the small “I” of the ego. Here, you and I are One. When I serve you, I serve the greater “I am” which is intrinsic in all of us.

Service that I am speaking of is an act of respect, of veneration to the Self of another. It sees beyond the small rivalries and conflicts of the small self.

The guru that I spent some time around a few years ago spoke of service as having certain key criteria. There were, for her, 5 key tests that showed the depth of your service. They were (1) the attitude with which you offered your service, (2) the intention behind your service, (3) your expectation of reward, (4) your willingness to offer your service, and (5) the way you performed your service. Her point was that if a little bit of the small “I” got involved, all would get lost and muddled. Yet, when you gave yourself selflessly in the service of others, you built up “a pond of nectar”, even an ocean of love. The sheer act of giving selflessly to another – a giving without any expectation, in pure generosity, without anything intended for yourself, in total surrender - this kind of giving brought back eternal dividends, because the One who you are really serving is the Self of all.

Like all personal growth, it requires an effort. It is a path of its own. And when you come back from holiday, when going back to work feels like an effort of a negative kind, this is a good time to reflect on your motives for doing things for others.

Ask yourself when you next do things for others, how much are you doing it in accordance with those 5 tests. How much are you authentically doing it for another? How much is your ego out of the way?

Yet being a contribution to others is the cement that binds this world together. Most of us in one way or another are doing that.

So think on this. With what spirit do you do what you do? And bring spirit into what you do.

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