All meditation, rightly done, serves. It serves on the level of consciousness. The real service of the soul never runs out of more to give, just as the water pot that we referred to never empties out.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us, and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our theme for today is the value of service-part 2. The dialogue that you’ll hear on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey, who wrote twenty-four volumes of literature which can best be described as spiritual philosophy. Alice Bailey is also the founder of the Lucis Trust organization. The following quote is from her writings: “The idea of service is at this time the major idea to be grasped, for in grasping it we open ourselves wide to the new incoming influences.” That’s an intriguing thought because if we enjoy doing service to others and we get an intrinsic value and we really love doing it, then we do get a reward without looking for that reward. Apparently the reward is that we ourselves become open to the new incoming influence. What are those incoming influences? I hope they’re positive.
Sarah: Well, it’s a reference to the new age. Probably many of our listeners have heard that we’re moving into a new age. What that means essentially is that we’re moving into a new era in human consciousness where people are more responsive to a number of qualities or characteristics that were not so prominent in the past. One is the idea of group relationship, and particularly of a subjective group relationship with their fellow human beings. I think we can see this realization in the growing idea of networking that’s so prevalent and in the amazing growth of the Internet which is a physical symbol of this network of relationships, of common values and ideals, that links people all over the planet with each other. This is an essential aspect of the new incoming influence: brotherhood. The idea of freedom is another aspect of the incoming age. All of these are conditioning us for a new type of approach to service.
Dale: Yes, service is the basic influence for these new energies of what is called the Aquarian influence, and its symbol is the man with the water pot on his shoulder. That’s the symbol of service right there: the water pot that never empties, that keeps flowing.
Sarah: Actually, it was Christ who mentioned it in the New Testament when he had the Last Supper with his disciples. He told them to look for the man with the water pot, implying that that would be his future presence on Earth, and that is the age of Aquarius, which we’re entering now. But that’s another story, another program.
Robert: Sounds like an interesting story though. I really think that most of us, including myself, at one point in time, had a certain definition of what service is and sometimes it was affiliated in my own consciousness about being a job, I guess. But do you think that our understanding of service is changing?
Sarah: Yes, it is, and you make me think back to my own childhood. When I was a very tiny girl, I loved to draw and I used to draw pictures of nurses with red crosses on their nurse’s cap. That was my idea of service; now nurses don’t even wear caps! Also, if my mother were ill, I’d go out and pick dandelions and tie a bow in her hair. That was how I understood service when I was two or three. Can you imagine my mother? She endured that so sweetly. (laughter) Well, fortunately, I guess my understanding of service is evolving and that’s probably true of all of us. We start out thinking it’s something that you do for another person and that’s a good intention—there are things we should do for others. But gradually we come to understand that it is more what we are for others, how we relate to them, the essential quality that we project or emanate towards them. I think service is becoming more and more subjective and not so focused on the outer form and action. I was thinking that maybe this is one of the effects resulting from the crisis caused by the events of September 11th because we’ve seen from that crisis that traditional ways of service like sitting down and talking with people with whom you have a difference, trying to reason, trying to find common ground, trying to overcome hatred with forbearance and a good attitude, some of these things don’t seem to work in overcoming this enormous chasm of difference. So, I think now we’re realizing that if we’re going to change the world, we need to serve in a whole new way, starting out with maybe more silence.
Dale: Yes, and I think this changing nature of service has been kind of growing on us and it’s just something we’ve taken on. Our country used to be a manufacturing-based country but now it’s moving very closely to a service-based country. The service industries are far stronger and more prominent than the manufacturing capacity. So, all that sort of thing has grown especially since the invention of the personal computer. I think the service industries have grown because now there are services in just about every aspect of life and they all involve some kind of computer work or computer services. There’s been an increase in the social welfare programs and philanthropy with all the .com people that made their pile of money. Many of them are turning to philanthropy to find uses for that money and that’s all a response to the impulse of service. I think that’s coming through by way of the soul, and that this will continue to change and undergo a tremendous transformation in the next few thousand years because, as we just said, the influence of the energies that we’re being subjected to now in this age of Aquarius are based on the impulse to serve, so that’s what’s going to characterize human life for many, many years to come.
Robert: Well, when I think of service and especially the way both of you describe service and give your definition — which so much of it comes from the works of Alice Bailey — it’s wonderful! But is it possible that there are any pitfalls to service?
Sarah: Oh, yes. There is a selfish service. You might think that’s an oxymoron, but there is a kind of selfish service that really, underneath it all, has as an objective the gain of something for oneself, even if it’s to relieve one’s own discomfort at seeing another’s misery. For example, the good people that might see a homeless person here in New York and insist on finding that person a dwelling, whereas the person themselves may not be in any condition to maintain a dwelling, to meet the rent, to keep the furniture and the food supply stocked, and to live in a building with other people without disturbing them. That’s an example of selfish service where you want to relieve that person’s condition because it makes you feel bad. You wouldn’t want to live on the street homeless so you think they don’t either. There has to be an awful lot of sensitivity and psychological understanding about people to know how to serve rightly without interfering or doing what you think is best, which then becomes a kind of imposition. Another pitfall of service is martyrdom, where you give of yourself, but you feel bad about it and you feel put upon and you feel “poor me.” There’s an awful lot of that going around. I think it’s tied into the idea that as you serve, you deplete your resources, which in fact is not true spiritual service. The real service of the soul never runs out of more to give, just as the water pot that we referred to never empties out, but a lot of people think it’s like a cash register in that every time you go in and open the drawer and take something out, there’s less there for the next time. So, you pay it all out in service and then you’re left empty.
Dale: A lot depends on the motivation of the server and where that motivation is coming from. If it’s coming from a more emotional feeling point in one’s consciousness, then that’s going to put a glamour on the service that that person does, and the glamour of service is really one of the pitfalls that one has to be careful of. I think those who are stepping on the path for the first time perhaps are very prone to do this. They’re still very much involved in their feelings and wanting, as you say, to be relieved of this situation of suffering because they feel it more than the person themselves. So, there’s a lot of perhaps personal ambition involved, the importance in getting their own ideas across, and they may think that they have the only way to serve and to force their ideas to be the way of service. I think that builds up a tremendous amount of glamour and pride in oneself.
Sarah: Yes, the knowing what’s best for people kind of server. Nobody wants to be helped by someone who thinks they know what’s best for you; they don’t. What they really need to do is help you figure out what is best for you. That inner awareness of what your need is, is present within every human being. Authentic service awakens the realization of that need, of that next step in one’s development, within the person so that they can then take that step. This is what a really gifted teacher does with a student: awakens that student to what his next step is. They don’t tell him you need to do this and this and this. It’s the same with a really good parent. They don’t overcome the child’s will, they help the child realize what his will is. Every child is a soul in incarnation. What is the will of that soul to do in this lifetime? The parent and the teacher can help the child awaken to that; that’s service.
Robert: A good teacher, then, is one who brings to the surface the gold or the value that’s already there. That’s interesting.
Sarah: Education, after all, means to lead forth. We approach it more as to open up and pour into a child.
Robert: So, we should focus more on discovering the hidden talents that the child has been born with.
Sarah: Yes, drawing out what is present within that child. It’s not the same in every child. It’s different, but there’s something within the person that’s waiting to come into fruition.
Robert: Why is service so closely linked to spiritual growth?
Sarah: Because there’s a spiritual law that says that which is received must in turn be shared. You can never receive spiritual benefit and keep it for yourself. It’s the law that it has to be shared. The more you give, the more you can receive to give again, and thus in giving gain. As the spiritual teaching says, you have to release it in order to receive more. You have to open your palms and let it go in order to receive still greater riches. So, service puts you in the flow of a spiritual energy which is cyclic or circular, which in time makes giving and receiving the same, so that there’s no sense of depleting oneself or of being owed anything. There’s just the joy of giving, of energy, of spiritual abundance, and more automatically replaces it, just as a river never runs out of water — unless there’s a terrible drought — there is more water that follows in the wake of the water that ran past a particular point. There’s always more coming. That’s service, and that’s spiritual growth. Another aspect of what links service to spiritual growth is that it helps one to begin to see the link between intention and actual reality. You become more and more aware of the effect of your choices and your actions. It’s said, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” You start out with good intentions and sometimes they don’t work out so well. That’s what you discover by serving: that certain intentions may not be so well founded as you thought. So, it helps you to see how you handle energy.
Dale: You learn to serve by serving and that has a beneficial effect upon the individual because it goes right to the heart centre. If it’s the true spontaneous giving of oneself and sharing of oneself, then that begins to open the heart centre. That’s why it’s so closely linked to spiritual growth, because once that heart centre begins to open, so much of the energies from the solar plexus and the lower regions are lifted up. As Christ said, “I, if I be lifted up from earth, will draw all men unto me.” Christ stands as the heart centre of humanity and the heart centre within the human being has the same effect. It’s a magnetic effect that draws all the lesser and lower energies upward, and that’s the beginning of the path.
Sarah: The heart centre, spiritually, is the centre of life. When your heart dies, you’re dead. We too often use the reference to the heart as some kind of mushy, touchy-feely response mechanism, whereas that’s really more the solar plexus. The heart is the seat of the life and a heart-to-heart contact with another human being quickens that vitality within them—like I was saying earlier, what a good teacher or parent can do. It awakens the spiritual vitality or the spiritual force in another being and not just human beings. There’s a wonderful passage from the books of Alice Bailey that says that every human being who reaches the goal of light and wisdom automatically has this field of influence which reaches out towards the light and potency within another being. So, this kind of state of consciousness can quicken an animal, a pet, a flower if you’re a gardener, your friends, your fellow human beings, it quickens whatever you come in contact with to fresh effort, to a fuller realization of its flowerhood or its animalhood or its personhood. They are quickened by the presence of this true server. This inner potency is quickened. That’s a wonderful description of true service, I think.
Robert: I know that many different organizations have their own type of meditation that they have adopted and that they’re into, and of course, Lucis Trust has its own type of meditation, which I think is very effective for what you want to do. Is it true that meditation can be used as a way of service?
Sarah: Yes, it’s a wonderful way of service, and our view of meditation is that all meditation rightly done serves. It serves on the level of consciousness. Even if you are meditating apparently at home in your chair, if you are linked in consciousness with your fellow spiritual seekers, you are serving by radiating energies of light and love and power into the realm of consciousness, where those energies can then make an impact on responsive minds. By responsive minds, I mean people of intelligence and of a basic good will and of high moral and spiritual values. Those people can be reached and impressed in a sense, without their necessarily being aware of it, but they can be impacted by these energies of light and love and power, which are directed into the plane of consciousness through meditation.
Dale: Particularly in group meditation, which we advocate and practice at the Lucis Trust. Once a month, we have group meditations which everybody is invited to attend if they would like. If you call for a schedule we will gladly send it to you and you may come and join us at no charge. This is a group service that we do every month because we work in meditation on certain keynotes and ideas and themes, thereby building and strengthening these ideas like love, sharing, goodwill, and bringing those ideas into human consciousness, thereby strengthening those ideas.
Sarah: Triangles is another means of service through meditation. It’s very simple. Groups of three people agree to form a triangle, a three-pointed unit. They link with each other mentally in consciousness each day, see their triangle lighted with radiance and love and goodwill. Then each of them, wherever they live, silently say the Great Invocation— which always closes this program. They see their triangle linked with the whole worldwide network of triangles — a symbol for this might be the starry sky at night, where stars form patterns within the heavens — see that triangles network linking all these people and radiating light and goodwill into human consciousness, and it is a form of service. I once heard Kofi Annan give a speech at the Protestant Cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland, and he said, I feel the impact of your meditation for me, and it helps me. He said it so sincerely that I knew he meant it. People in positions of difficulty and struggle are strengthened and uplifted by group meditation, by the radiation of love and light. They are lifted on their way. It’s not an interfering kind of coercion. It simply gives them the resources of light and goodwill to work with in their own decisions.
Dale: Right. And these energies that we work with do not originate with us. We’re simply acting as channels and as go-betweens between the spiritual powers that govern the Earth and humanity.
Sarah: That’s the role of the human kingdom: to be a go-between, a channel for these energies. Man means thinking entity.
Dale: Absolutely and that’s the greatest service that we can give to the world.
Robert: You have been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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