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	# 2018-09-14 - The Path Of Service

	Serving Together

	All sincere efforts at spiritual development have as their aim the
	steadily increasing ability to bring through or release our essential
	nature in some form of service to others. This service work is the
	most important part of the spiritual path and the means of giving
	back a fraction of what has been given to us...

	The things we value so highly about ourselves are generally not the
	things that are viewed as being of most importance from the
	perspective of our soul. Since most of us are still largely living
	within the confines of the material world, we tend to place a more
	material interpretation upon our lives and our service work. In this
	way, we err by putting the cart before the horse. Someone once said
	that people who have had near-death experiences report that when they
	passed through the portal of death they came to realize that the only
	thing that matters in life is the amount of love that we have
	expressed and shared with others. That's it.

	The external aspects of service therefore diminish in importance as
	we learn to serve in a more subjective fashion--silently, behind the
	scenes, and with our group. Gradually we develop the capacity to
	"stand, not only in spiritual being, but together with others,
	working with them subjectively, telepathically, and synthetically."
	We learn that it is not the outer achievements that matter--our job
	or outer service projects, our creative work, the force of our words
	and our personalities. What matters is something else, something
	subtle, less tangible, that happens largely within the silence of our
	own hearts and minds, related instead to the group aspect of our
	lives and work. When we place the emphasis upon the soul, upon the
	inner recognitions, we learn to work and follow in the footsteps of
	the great servers whose lives and work stand as models to us all.

	There are currents of energy that become available to us, especially
	as we learn to work with groups and feel ourselves to be part of a
	vast and intricate pattern of relationships.

	--Kathy Newburn

	p.s. A note on utility value versus intrinsic value:

	> All creatures have existential value, although they may not
	> fulfill the immediate need to human beings, or we may not be aware
	> of their intrinsic value. This existential value is sometimes
	> specific, sometimes collective, and sometimes both. It may be
	> mentioned here that non-human creatures have the same existential
	> value as human beings.

	tags: article,inspiration,spirit

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	inspiration
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