The Value of Loving Service

By Peter Shepherd

Serving others in a loving way can actually transform our own lives. In serving others we discover our essence, our truth, our love. To be of loving service we draw on our conscience, our religion and our values.

“To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart.” ~ Pearl S. Buck

Service is about connecting in a meaningful way, which therefore gives our life purpose.

Self-interest or obligation is of little value to anyone else; there’s no love involved, and trite as it may appear to some, it's love that we really need.

“Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.” ~ Albert Einstein

As Martin Luther King said, “Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

As soon as we begin to serve others, rather than only looking after our own interests, we begin to discover our essence, our truth, our love. Mahatma Gandhi too said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

And Mother Teresa said that at the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.”

Love has to be put into action to have meaning and that action is service. Love in action is service to the world. Similarly, through service we obtain a sense of connection, of oneness. Oneness is most clearly seen in what we do for others, through compassion, kindness and caring.

Sometimes we need silence, to cease our train of thoughts and be in a quiet place. Then we can get in touch with our real self. Our inner knowing is expressed through intuition, and that's with feelings and images, which the mind then puts into words if we give it the opportunity to do so. In the silence of your inner space you hear the truth and know the solutions.

Marianne Williamson said, "When love is our guiding light, we can break through barriers to be of loving service to the world. Gaining the courage and confidence to stand up for what you believe in is not always easy, but it's fully within your reach."

A person engaged in personal development is endeavoring to live a happier and more fulfilling life through exercising free choice, seeing objective truth, being in touch with their inner knowing and authentic values, and realizing the highest degree of purpose.

It’s a matter of breaking free from the cultural trance, the conditioning that tells us life is a fight, a struggle for survival against others, and replacing this with heart-centered motivation, driven by love, because we recognize we’re all in this together, we share so much and it is in our mutual interest to help each other. This was Jesus' message and the reason why he was crucified - it crossed vested interests. He was a threat to the status quo. But this can’t continue longer; it’s long overdue for each of us to wake up and do the right thing.

We each have the power to choose, to respond, to change.

When we set an intention to change and grow, we begin a journey in which we move from coping, to learning, and finally to the mastery of living. Along the way we develop our values - based on what we are taught or conditioned to believe and on what we have determined for ourselves. Often that means rejecting what were taught or conditioned, what is popularly believed, what the groups we are part of expect us to conform to. And that is awakening.

Our inner knowing includes conscience, our sense of right and wrong, which is based on our inherent loving nature. The mind often has other ideas, so it's best to silence the mind when looking for inner guidance, to be with oneself and just know.

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." ~ Abraham Lincoln

You do what you feel in your heart is right, and you are content. Justifiably so.

Your values are who you are even when no one is watching. And as Joe Batten says, "Our value is the sum of our values."

Our behavior is based on what we value most... truthfulness, love, compassion, generosity, kindness, respect, service, freedom of choice, integrity, friendship, gratefulness, and so on. If we do our best to live with such values, and teach them to our children by example, anything is possible for this world.

Make sure your values - what you believe in - are your own. Then you can live a life of integrity, instead of somebody else's life. When your values are clear, making decisions, knowing what's best to do, comes readily. You do what is right, not what is easy. Where there is love there is no sin.

But if you don't care about personal growth, about taking responsibility for having a better life, for yourself, your family and your community, that's OK. You might be quite happy, relatively speaking, and you will stay that way, until something happens that you don't have the resources and wisdom to handle - then you may go downhill. Or you may get old and wonder where your life went, since you’d been living in a safe but limiting cocoon. Or you might be pretending you're quite happy, because you don't want to face that actually you are living someone else's life rather than what you want to be doing, and that you spend considerable effort avoiding things you don't want to confront. Or you might consider that painful emotions are just a part of life that is inevitable, and you can continue to live with this suffering.

Fact is, most people do nothing, and so human nature continues to create all the problems that we see in the world, on a personal, familial and social/political scale. But it is possible to 'find ourselves' through releasing the limitations we impose on ourselves as a result of our upbringing and negative learning experiences. Only such a person can fully and freely love - without judgment - their fellow man. This is a Christ consciousness we're talking about, and it's what the world needs - without all the false dogma and political manipulation we see with established religions and cults. The second coming is not the physical return of Jesus, it is the return of his message and his teachings through a global effort of love and service.