The fabric of space and time
has lent me a thread to find
It is of a Vedic weave
but of a nature
… one can not cleave
Within the lower hem
is hidden a precious gem
But search the garment down and ’round
… for riches of material greed
… is nowhere found
Yet in the search we gain
the wisdom right-as-rain
Bright as the morning sun
sparkling dewy glean
Clinging upon the blossom
of this embroidered scene
Determination pierces the hollow reluctance of the devotee, knowing that the Master’s teachings are pointed in their delivery – the needle of the morphine filled syringe.
Beckoned by a word; allowing the turtle – looking into the pool from his hollow log – to know his reflection as “truth corrupted.”
The jab is painless for the landscape of scars across the forearm. Mesmerized through simultaneously viewing desolation across the killing fields and the envious corpuscles veining to a purposeful community of organs governing our sensationalized clinging to materialistic values.
The escape is such a contemptible euphoria that heavenly bliss reclines upon the pillowed sofa in such an angelic fashion so as to claim the definition of everything worth living. The company I keep – the Messiah – has healed my every illness.
On Service
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being causal. A server knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping are very personal; they are very particular, concrete and specific. We fix and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are always serving the same thing. Everyone who has ever served through the history of time serves the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery in life.
The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can help without serving. And we can serve without fixing or helping. I think I would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you’re watching from the outside, but the inner experience is different. The outcome is often different, too.
Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens us. Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting. Over time we burn out. Service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will sustain us.
Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing. In 40 years of chronic illness I have been helped by many people and fixed by a great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and helping left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways. Only service heals.
— Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen on Service, adapted from a talk published in the Noetic Sciences Review
Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbours came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.
“Maybe,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbours exclaimed.
“Maybe,” replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.
“Maybe,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.
“Maybe,” said the farmer.
–Zen Parable
(with annotations by Mary Baker Eddy)
Our Father which art in heaven,
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Adorable One.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Enable us to know – as in heaven, so on earth – God is omnipotent, supreme.
Give us this day our daily bread;
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections;
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And Love is reflected in love;
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Oh you, breathing life in all,
origin of the gleaming sound,
You shine in us and around us,
even the darkness glows when we remember.
Help us to draw a holy breath,
in which we feel only you and your sound ring in us and purify us.
May your counsel rule our lives and make our intentions clear for the common creation.
May the burning wish of your heart unify heaven and earth through our harmony.
Grant us daily the bread and insight that we need:
What is necessary for the call of growing life.
Release the cords of the errors that bind us,
as we let go of that which binds us to the faults of others.
Do not let superficial things lead us astray,
but instead free us from that which holds us back.
From you come the all-effective will,
the living strength to act,
and the song that beautifies everything and which renews itself form age to age.
True vitality to these testimonies!
May they be the ground out of which all my actions grow.
Sealed in trust and faith.
– Amen
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.