Every breath you take provides the opportunity to grow in love and service. No one in this world has a right to live in this world unless they render service. If you are too tired to render service, you are too tired to live.
If you cannot physically go out and do some service, does that mean you cannot serve your fellow beings? O no! You can sit in your room, in a chair or on the floor, and start serving the world. To begin that process, ask, "What does the world need?" (Don't ask, "What's wrong with the world?") You will be amazed at how you will be made aware of what the world needs, and then you render service by using consciousness to help provide what the world needs.
Perhaps the world needs love. Can you not send love to the world? Can you not send love to all who come to your attention? To all who are in pain, mentally, emotionally, physically? Can you not do that six minutes out of an hour?
And next time you ask what the world needs, the message may be that the world needs peace. But you cannot give peace unless you first contact the peace within your own being. So first you tune in to God as Peace, and then you send that peace out into the world.
In ways such as this, you can render service to the world no matter how confined you may be, no matter if you are living on a remote island miles from the nearest person.
Spiritual Guidelines
Spiritual growth has four focal points:
(1) The first focal point is to use pain as a means to grow. But this way can perpetuate using pain as a means to grow, and thus perpetuate pain itself. Pain has value if it awakens in us the desire to grow. But we need to focus on the solution, not dwell on the pain. We observe the pain, enter the desire to move beyond it, and then move beyond it as fast as we can.
(2) Another avenue of growth is joy. The moment I say, if I'm suffering, "I choose to find ways to live in joy," that desire opens the door to see greater and greater joy. Joy is the individualized expression of bliss. Bliss is infinite; joy is an expression of that infinite bliss within the individual. The body cannot contain bliss itself. In fact, I cannot experience bliss because I am bliss!
(3) Wisdom is the third focus for growth. We can grow by applying discrimination to every experience. Spiritual discernment, or wisdom, means that I only focus on things that uplift me. Such a focus needs to be an ongoing practice with every decision. For example, ask yourself, "Am I making a decision based on my discernment, or on what I think will be pleasing to someone else?"
(4) The fourth focus for growth is love. The moment we choose love as a means to grow, true growth must and does occur. Intentions such as these will be helpful:
I choose to bring love into every moment of my awareness and into every experience.
I choose to approach all life with as much love as is possible for me to express at this moment.
I choose to grow through love in action-by putting love into every action.
There is nothing more fulfilling than doing everything with love. Do you regard the work you do as a joy or a chore? Where do you focus? Do you choose to focus on love or on resistance? Any time you do any action without love, it's selfish. Whatever you do with love is unselfish.
