It has become apparent to me in the last year, as my life has realigned with a dedication to service, that it’s important to define for myself what I mean by service. The reason this is important is that I have spent so much of my life talking about service and what serves without actually doing it, because my ego has been hard to move out of the way. When I do this, it usually looks like a “holier than thou” attitude toward my fellow human, in which I’m chastising, judging or trying to control because I “know better” and I’m just going to shed the light for everyone else from my soapbox.

So one thing I’ve learned, in my practice, is that true service involves the dissolution of ego and honoring of the mysteries of my soul. I used to think that letting go of ego concerns would mean that I never spoke about myself or that I was always concerned with helping others and not being “needy” myself. However, what I’ve found is a little bit the opposite; when I feel my ego is truly out of the way, I can simply own my own experience without being attached to it, and allow others to have their own experience of the world, without judging or seeking to control. So it looks like, “X is just my experience, what is yours?” And once we have both shared that, it’s ok to just let it sit there and breathe! Like, “ok, here is your experience and here is mine, shared with integrity, and then… (big drum roll)… OK! Now to do the dishes,” instead of, “ok, here is your experience and here is mine, but wait, they’re different! We believe in different things! We have different preferences! Oh no!” I played that game for long enough, going around the world seeking only those people who have “things in common” with me; and actually, “things in common” with what my ego had decided it wanted to look like to the world, which is where the holier than thou originates from.

And I have compassion for myself around having done that and still doing it from time to time, because it comes from deep wounding. And at times it has felt like all my little wounded self wants is to feel connection with people, to feel seen and heard, to feel love and belonging. And I used to think that receiving love and belonging meant being around people with similar “goals” and “interests” and “values,” and being around people that agreed with me all the time. O how much suffering this brought me, and relational confusion when I tried to shape everyone into what I wanted them to be, which was like me!

I find the world very boring when everyone agrees all the time; it’s like the equivalent of the crops for which we have ruined the diversity of the gene pool through genetic modification. We are all incredibly diverse, within our own individual souls! but we often walk around like we could just reduce ourselves to some very limited, efficient, predictable set of labels. And then we actually pretend to “get to know each other” that way! “Ooh, you like sustainability? Me too! Let’s be friends.” And I say yes to that as a starting point, but yes even more so to starting points of disagreement and respect, and I say an absolute no to that as an endpoint instead of going deeper. I want to feel what is behind someone’s eyes when I look into them, and I want to know how clear and present those eyes are. You can see in someone’s eyes and hear in someone’s tone of voice if they have an ego agenda, and ego agenda is the anti-service. Let’s start the movement to stop genetically modifying our souls to be boring and understandable! Heirloom humans, those are the kind I like.

What I’ve come to discover is that the people who end up being closest to me, the people that make me feel the most seen and heard, the people who heal me, are the ones who simply see what I am and love it anyway. And I say “anyway” because I make mistakes, and I’m not perfect, and sometimes I hurt people, or do something irresponsible, and I’m not Buddha, and yet I am worthy of love because I exist, just like everything else. Kahlil Gibran says, “Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.” Who am I to deny food to the hungry, even if I am the hungry, if I have some to give? And we all have some to give, always.

In this vein, I know that to the degree I show myself to the world, to that same degree I can accept love back from it. So I’ve decided, as a practice, to avoid limiting the expression of my truest self with dogmatic buzzwords masquerading as “values” and “beliefs.” Rather, I know that in order to truly serve, I must listen deeply, and listen deeply within the moment, which is all that exists. When I do that, my “values” show up in my eyes, in my voice, in my actions, in my body, in my words. And the Spirit guides them, and the wisdom of my ancestors deep within my bones guides them, and they don’t need or want buzzwords. At the end of the day, when we lay our individual heads on the pillow, the voice of our conscience is the way we answer to the gods and the universe, not to each other’s opinions.

So to remind myself of these things, needing as I am of a practice, by virtue of my human fallibilities, this little motto came to me the other day:
Attend your own existence as if every moment you spend with the truth of the present is as precious clean water you feed to the ever-new growth that is forever becoming your life’s masterpiece, without your planning. The gift is in the watering, which we do every time we soulfully accept Truth’s invitation, and show up fully to its eternal dance, with no expectations but to listen, and no agenda but to dance according to what we hear. The masterpiece that is yourself grows like a tree, which you will notice does not grow in a straight line towards a goal, an endpoint. Rather, its growth only involves exposing more and more of itself to the sun and the moon, and drinking in more and more of the ever-abundant Spirit in the ether. Be as the tall tree and do not act from hollow duty, but rather, as the poet says, “give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.”