LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU
Serving others, serving life
One of the most sure fire ways to have a disappointing, unfulfilling and neutral/boring life experience is to make your life about you. As soon as we develop awareness of self we begin to claim me, me, me. It is all about our needs, wants and preferences and we have little awareness of others. We see this in young children. As part of our developmental journey we must learn to recognize and include others and see that life is not about getting what we want, however many people have been stunted along this developmental progression. Many people, actually I’d venture to say most people, have as the focus of their life getting everything they want. While not all have emotional outbursts about not getting what they want, the general aim of their life is about achieving their desires for themselves even if its masked underneath the appearance of serving others.
As a caveat I will say that as adults it is fundamental that you have all your basic security, health and well-being needs met. This is a baseline must. Without this baseline stability in yourself of knowing your capacity to be well and take care or yourself, your survival mechanism will take precedence and your life will be about keeping this physical vehicle alive and well. This baseline is likely a lot less extensive then you may initially think. We really need very little in order to have all of our basic needs met. Making sure this is in check for you is not making your life about you, but rather ensuring that you have the physical ability to make life not about you.
One of the most important self-inquiry explorations you can do for yourself is to see where you are attempting to get something from others. Whether its love, affection, attention, money, security, safety, approval, kindness, words of affirmation, someone “getting” you, being there for you or meeting you, its all about you. Also notice where you might be giving to others in order to get these things. That can be a sneaky way where it looks like we are serving, but really we are wanting to make sure we are safe, seen and supported. Seeing these areas in yourself is the fertile ground for where you need to go to work on yourself. As long as you are attempting to get anything from anyone you cannot be of service to them because you have agenda. Even if your agenda feels innocent, justified or something you need because you are “human”, it is still agenda and distorts the purity of what is to be of true service, which is giving to life rather than taking from it.
DEDICATING YOUR LIFE TO SERVING OTHERS
Generating flow & energy
You may ask why you would want to dedicate your life to serving others and giving to life. At some point, in this lifetime or one of your next ones, you will realize that there is nothing to gain in the getting. It is a dead end. The energy gets absorbed by you and stops. There is a near constant replenishment that you must always be focused on in order to sustain you. While there are temporary highs there is no sustainability in your presence, your energy or your state of being. This is what its like for your life to be about you.
In contrast when we give to life, when we serve life and others, we generate flow and energy. Energy exchange is the name of the game of life. You cannot develop past a certain point until you get this fundamental working of the universe. Giving is receiving and receiving is giving, but not until you stop trying to get through either your giving or receiving. What I find that most people truly desire is to simply be themselves. When we are being just as we are without agenda, we radiate, we give naturally. Sometimes people have the perception that to serve or give to life or others is exhausting and depleting. That they have to go outside themselves to give “over there” endlessly. This is not the case. If you are depleting yourself in your giving you are out of balance, which indicates that there is still some agenda in your giving. When your giving is pure it should be energizing for you.
The reward if you will, of dedicating your life to serving, is the constant influx and flow of energy. It’s not that serving others makes you a better person or that it is the right thing to do. Please don’t “do it” for that reason. Instead it is a way of honoring, energizing, including, evolving and giving to all of life. Only choose service to others if you really want to and if it resonates for you. Going back to our early development again, when we are just developing self-awareness our world is small with just ourselves and our few primary caretakers. However the world is much larger than our nuclear family and the way to include more of it inside of our own developmental process is by serving others.
Serving others stretches the boxes and containers of our zone of impact and increases the power that we have to create in and through love. It opens our hearts into more as we begin to see beyond ourselves and our individual needs, wants and preferences. We can let go of not getting what we want and instead focus on giving what we want. We start to see one family rather than multiple, separate, individual families. Other begins to seem more and more like self. All of these realizations are aspects that wake you up more and more to the true unified nature.
I invite you to start each and every day this week with the simple questions of asking yourself, who is it that I want to be today? How do I want to show up? How do I want to serve? How do I want to give to others and life? You don’t have to have the answers, just ask the questions and let it be revealed to you. Allow the intention to guide your each and every thought and action.
Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, CO