It is clearly stated in the Wisdom Teachings that the natural urge of the Soul is to give freely of its love in service – like a brightly shining sun radiating light and warmth to all and asking for nothing in return. Our Souls are essentially primed for giving.
By responding wholeheartedly to the compelling inner call to be of service, we harness and mobilize the power of our Soul to help meet the evolutionary needs of humanity, overcome the challenges of these times and bring consonance and order on a new and higher turn of the spiral from out of the present chaos and churning.
Service can be viewed as any intentional act that supports the betterment of life on Earth for all beings. Service is predicated on the realization that each of us is an integral and essential aspect of the One Life and thus it follows, that everything we think, say and do contributes to the good of the whole. As the Whole is nourished by our acts of giving, it naturally and reciprocally nourishes all of its constituent parts. A lived experience of the positive consequences of unconditionally answering the call of the Soul is key in fully understanding the spiritual adage: “It is in giving that we receive."
However, the painful reality is that every time any of us thinks and acts in egotistical and separative ways, we do a great disservice to the entire community of lives upon this terrestrial sphere. Whenever the ‘part’ – be that an individual, a political party, a religious movement or even a nation – seeks to make itself greater than others and to actually become the whole itself, then we are seeing the tell-tale signs and symptoms of a re-emerging culture of colonization. With the apparent rise and spread of self-centeredness, where the ‘part’ persistently and insistently is attempting to take over the entire system, society is then in real danger of contracting ‘colonization cancer’.
Cancer is the term we use for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and invade nearby tissues. The uncontrollable and invasive growth of one cell that multiplies and seeks to take over the whole body to become the predominant life of that eco-system, will eventually cause a life-threatening disease inside the whole body of society. The spreading blight of selfishness and self-centeredness that we are now witnessing is a malignant malaise that affects nations as well as individuals.
So how do we restore ‘systems health’ and a sense of hope to all aspects of our society and what do we believe is the most effective prophylaxis that can be applied to realistically achieve these ends?
For me, the answer is simple: “Live from the heart”. By doing so, the life-giving and nourishing qualities of loving kindness, caring and compassion flow from our Soul out into the world as a blessing.
A while back my daughter shared that she was concerned about raising two children with so much negativity and hatred rampant in the world and asked what advice I had. My immediate answer was to put forward an invitation for each of us, every day, to intentionally create a microclimate of goodness in our family, our circle of friends and in our neighborhood. For me, this particular commitment to make a difference is a practical example of, ‘Think globally and act locally’.
Our various microclimates of ‘good weather’ then function as a positive force that influences the larger psychological weather patterns on the planet. The positively-charged weather cells of goodness, generated in our local communities, will eventually coalesce with other beneficent microclimates to create a more clement climate for human evolution to progress and will significantly help reverse the cancerous growth of unkindness and separation. This spiritual climate change moves us inexorably closer to realizing the dream of Martin Luther King, in which he saw ‘beloved community’ as a respectful and joyful way of living together in harmony on Earth.
The needed tipping point that moves us from sickness to health as a society and creates the right conditions for birthing this ‘beloved community’, is when we begin to live soul-inspired lives and move from an ego-centric to an eco-centric model of living. This state of communal beingness is one where giving, and not taking, is the norm and where we know ourselves to be integral aspects of the multidimensional planetary ecosystem we call Gaia. A Gaian society is one where everything serves and supports everything else as part of one evolving Organism.
The question is whether we dare to unhook ourselves from our present dependency on a non-sustainable model and plug into a greater renewable source of Goodness that nourishes all lives. In this radically transformed society, it will be normal to care for one another, normal to give and forgive and normal to see each person and each living thing as vital and valuable aspects of one living integrated system. Joyful service will be our normal behavior as joy is a characteristic of the Soul-in-action within a constantly regenerating world.
All of this is only made possible when each one of us consciously chooses to lead a life that contributes to the good of the whole. Do we have sufficient willingness and collective ability to make this shift as a species? I believe that the answer is most definitely in the affirmative. Why? Because of the reassuring fact that the Soul is always primed for giving and is, therefore, destined to succeed in all of its endeavors.
Michael Lindfield
Board President
Meditation Mount