THE ART OF RENDERING SERVICE

 
One of the most difficult things to learn is to render service without bossing, without making a fuss about it, and without any consciousness of high and low. In the world of spirituality, humility counts at least as much as utility.

When the Master serves others, he does so not because he is attached to the work but in order to help, and also to set his disciples an example of selfless service. While serving others, he sees himself in them and thus experiences having served himself.

In his unwaning blissful feeling of oneness, the Perfect Master knows himself to be at once the master of all and the servant of all. He therefore exemplifies the ideal of service in which there is no enslavement, either of the one who receives service or of the one who renders it. The aspirant can speedily realize the ideal of true service if he has before him the example of a Master.

However, the spiritual preparation of the aspirant can never be termed complete unless he has learned the art of rendering service that gives not boredom but joy, that brings not enslavement but freedom, that does not set claims and counterclaims but springs from the spontaneity of free give-and-take, that is free from the burden of personal want, and that is sustained by the sense of ever-renewed fulfillment.