Often I talk about service. Being servants unto one another is not a bad mindset from which to bring forth happiness. People like to be cared for; we like to be helpful.
The form service takes matters less than simply being open-minded about it. We think we're serving when we volunteer at the soup kitchen, but not when we drive down the highway. It goes deeper than that. We are always servants, but the form our service takes changes according to our need.
In other words, the form service takes always arises from our perception of need, which arises in how we think. Need is always a projection of the separated self; we see in the other what lies in us untended. Indeed, we see it in them because we don’t want to tend it in our self.
When we are aware that we are projecting a need, responding in the posture of a servant usually becomes easier because it's more intuitive. We can sense the most helpful form of service in the given moment. It's exactly as clear as the need. And it's "us" at both ends. There are no mysteries, no secrets.
This is why service can take the form of a hug or a long talk or a spontaneous check-in or even just giving somebody space to work with their own thoughts. Sometimes it even takes the form of letting others serve us.
But I’d like to suggest a more radical form of service: not projecting need at all. That is, allowing our brothers and sisters to live - even for a few moments - without the constant barrage of "me, myself and I" with which we mentally splatter the canvas of the world.
For a few moments, can we stop making it all about us?
Need and want are different. Want is the desire for something; need is closer to requirement. I want chocolate cake; I need oxygen.
That's clear because it's overtly about the body, but it blurs when we look at relationship. I want attention; do I need it? I mean, it's nice to have people recognize us, right? Nice blog post, nice haircut, nice point about universal basic income . . .
But A Course in Miracles suggests that needs only arise when we actively deprive our own self of something (T-1.VI.1:8).
Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in. Until the "separation," which is the meaning of the "fall," nothing was lacking. There were no needs at all (T-I.VI.1:5-7).
Thus, believing we are separate from both Creator and Creation, and therefore confused about what we are in truth, we "act according to the particular order of needs" we establish (T-I.VI.1:9). And we take - or try to take - everybody along for the ride.
A perception of lack within inevitably turns us into seekers - we want the right lover, right diet, right body, right job, right spiritual path, right house, right friends, right hobbies, right everything. There's got to be something out there to fill the emptiness in here.
And if it's not an object, then it's an abstraction. I need you to reinforce my ideal of justice or mercy. I need you to love me in the specific ways that I define love.
That is not relationship premised on love, which always gives because it knows that giving is life. It is a one-sided transaction premised on fear and hate, which insists that taking is only way we can survive.
This belief system can be very subtle and tricky to root out, but it's there in all of us, and rooting it out is integral to peace and happiness.
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that . . . It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition (T-21.In.1:1-2, 5).
So the "other" - i.e., you to me and me to you, right this very moment - becomes a site upon which projection lands. What can you do for me? What can I get from you? Praise? Sex? Money? A meal? What?
Projection is painful to us because we are dissociating our own self. It is painful to others because we are trying to force them to be something they are not. It never succeeds in bringing forth peace and happiness for anyone. It's exhausting and discouraging for everyone.
Therefore, the suggestion is that a radical form of service is to not project need. This means we become responsible for our inner lives and stop asking questions to which the answer is always some form of "out there." We give attention to our brothers and sisters as they are and not how we would have them be.
A Course in Miracles indicates that this form of service does not provide temporary or one-way respite from suffering but is the key to salvation itself.
You are your brother's savior. He is yours . . . This gracious plan was given love by Love . . . Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give your brother, and learn with him what has been given both of you (T-21.VII.9:1-2, 4, 7).
When we stop projecting need, we end up facing the need where it is - in our self, our own thinking, our own experience. It is the so-called other who shows this to us; thus, our service unto them becomes their service unto us. We learn that "[t]o give is no more blessed than to receive" (T-21.VII.9:8).
And in that realization we can actually relax a little. We can breathe. For we have reached the heart of the problem and seen clearly the answer. We have at last recognized that "the problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved" (W-pI.79.1:4).
Who else but our brothers and sisters could teach us this? How else can we remember it?
This is why I am grateful to you for your patience with me, and hope that in my wordiness you find reason for gratitude of your own. Our togetherness in remembering salvation is salvation. What else can I say but thank you?
Sean