What is Selfless Service and How Does It Benefit You | Rev. John Riley

Thank you for being here. Good morning. Well, we are on this journey of creating a life worth living, creating an experience, an expression of that divine essence that is truly you, and living that, creating a life of abundance. Last week we were talking about the idea of being courageous, of taking bold steps in your life, of stepping out to experience and express life in new ways.

One of the most courageous things that we can do is understand the principle of being blessed. And so, this idea of being courageously blessed was our theme last week. That is looking at our lives and saying I am blessed. I am blessed by the breath that I take every morning. I am blessed by all the things that I have and all the people that I know and all the love in my life. And our task was to look at our life to see how we are blessed, to get us into that flow of abundance, to allow that experience to flow through us.

Be of Service

This week what we are going to do is take that a little bit further and go into the — I think it’s the eighth rule. I get so confused because rule eight is actually chapter nine in the book. Apparently my brain can’t handle that. It can’t handle that to the extent that in the email newsletter, if you got that, it had next week’s talk in there instead of this week’s talk. So, anyway, here we are at – let me get my clicker — our talk today, Be of Service.

One of the most effective ways to get into this flow of abundance, to know that never-ending stream of abundance, is to be of service. You see, what the first rule was, we are one with all life, love and wisdom. We are one with the universe and that flow is always flowing through us, always flowing from within out. Everything begins in our consciousness and then flows outward. So we are always living in the stream. The challenge is we don’t always recognize it. We are holding onto the rocks of that stream or we are trying to dam up the stream to keep it from flowing. We are always living in it. The most effective way to become a part of that experience of life is to be of service, to serve other people, and to do it in a way that is meaningful to them and to you.

Here is what Dennis Jones says in The Art of Abundance. “To serve is to extend your essence or your energy in a manner that enriches and makes others’ lives better. Your service becomes selfless when you put others first, knowing that you are doing more than exchanging one form of energy for another to benefit only yourself.” Selfless service. So let’s think about that for a little bit. Selfless service. Just take a moment to think about what it means to you. What does selfless service mean to you? If you are online I invite you to pop into the chat and just write in what selfless service means to you, and if you are here in the service I invite you to speak up and let me know, what does selfless service mean to you, but speak loudly because you all have masks on. What is selfless service, anybody? Kindness. Thank you, Martha. Kindness. Doing things for others. Volunteering at your local Unity Palo Alto Spiritual Centre. Who said that? Giving generously without expecting in return. Yeah. Loving unconditionally. Acting from the heart. Dedication. Being present with someone. What a gift. Oh my gosh, you are so good. You all get A’s. Being present with someone.

Selfless Service as a State of Consciousness

It’s really a state of consciousness isn’t it? This idea of selfless service, it’s a state of consciousness where we connect with each other heart to heart, where we give to one another heart to heart. When you give from your heart, the gift that you are giving blesses you as well. That flow of abundance, that flow of that infinite power of love, that harmonizing energy flows through you and you are enriched by it simply by giving of your heart, simply by giving that love. “The idea of selfless service is living into that constant flow of abundance, allowing it to be a part of who you are.” And the opportunities are always there.

There are so many ways in which we can do this if we can just open our thoughts a little bit about what it would look like. And I love the idea of just saying being kind to someone, smiling — oh they can’t see your smile — they can see your smile through your eyes as you are walking through the store. I remember when this first happened a year and a half ago or however long — 12 years ago, however long it’s been — that was one of the first things I said because we were talking about how a smile uplifts somebody. How can you smile if you have your mask on because everyone was pretty grumpy at that time? It’s like making eye contact and smiling anyway and knowing that you are connected.

I know, as many of you know, we have talked about my daughter was in the Nutcracker last night and today. The second performance is today. Last night she was, Friday night she was Clara. Clara is one of the major roles in the story and it was kind of a joke because she didn’t like jazz because they made her smile so jazz was kind of off the list there. She was more into the ballet because you can be serious in ballet. How was she going to be Clara because you have to smile, you have to act? Well, she had to wear a mask so that took care of that. What a perfect year for her to be Clara. But then I realized as I watched her and I can see her eyes and she was acting. When she was afraid, I don’t know if you know the story, but when Drosselmeyer comes she is like scared. When the nutcracker gets broken she is all upset. You can see it in her body language. You can see it in her eyes from a distance. That is how we are. We know things. We can still, without seeing your mouth, we can see your expression and feel that energy. So just to be kind, to have that interaction with somebody can be of service because you don’t know what is happening in that person’s life.

Now, selfless service is a hard one. It’s like unconditional love. “I love you unconditionally but I don’t really like you right now”. Wait a minute. Unconditional love is that eternal energy that flows within us. That is the divine energy. That is unconditional love. That is always there, always present. God loves you unconditionally if you want to anthropomorphize it. That energy is always flowing. You don’t need to earn it, it’s just there. That love is just there. That peace is there for you when you sink into that knowing. So, self — what was the word? — selfless service is similar to that, when we are just giving for the sake of giving.

The Belief in “Not Enough”

Now, there are some challenges with this. We bump up against some things as human beings as we are going into life to experience life and to express life. We go into it and we bump up against ideas like — what is my first idea? — the belief in lack. The belief in “not enough”, the not enough-ness religion. We have all grown up with this. We have all been taught this from little kids on. Even if you earn an allowance, “This is all you are going to get. You better save it because this is it.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. Saving is a good thing. There is a practice in that but if you are looking at it from the perspective of there is not going to be anymore, that is when we start to get into the belief in not enough, this belief in not enough in the outside world. There is not enough food. There is not enough money. There’s not enough jobs. There is not enough opportunity. There is not enough justice. There is not enough sense of sacred worth in other people. Whatever the not enough-ness is that is out there, that’s a creation of our own consciousness.

In her book The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist, the author, talks about the idea that if you actually look at the resources of the world there is enough for the entire planet. It’s just the will for us to move forward and change the way we do things. So, there is enough. But when we come from the idea of not enough, we are living in that victim/victor mentality, that dual consciousness. We are not in that consciousness of knowing our oneness with the allness of life, knowing our oneness with creation and that spiritual energy. So, we need to shift our consciousness out of the idea of not enough, that there is enough and there is opportunity. There will be times today when you go out to be of service so look for them. Look for the small ways and see if you can find them.

The Value of Service

The second challenge that we have is the idea of putting value on our service. This is a big one in relationships. “I do all this for you”. Certainly, we understand the idea of a one-way relationship where somebody is pouring out and pouring out. The other person is taking and taking and there is no return. Sometimes that happens. But the idea of selfless giving in a relationship could be, “Well, I am going to give without an expectation of receiving”.

A great example of this is when I was in college, I was driving down to UC Santa Barbara to visit my girlfriend at the time and I was driving somebody who was visiting his girlfriend at the time and they were friends and we got to talking about in the middle of the night, we got to talking about spirituality and stuff. I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but it came around to this idea of selfless service and he said, “I don’t understand karma. I am giving, when my friends need a ride or something, I am there to help them, when they need something, I am there to help them but when I need something, nobody was there. When my car was broken down, nobody helped me”. So, I asked him, when your car was broken how did you get home? “Well, some stranger came along and pulled over and drove me”. But we put conditions on it. “I am going to help you as long as you are available to help me at 2:00 in the morning when I am down in Santa Barbara and my car is broken down. You are going to come and get me right. Dang it.”

But the universe is always there to provide when we are open to receive. At the end of the conversation he goes, “I don’t know, I guess I don’t know how this karma thing works, how the universe works”. I said “Well, join the club. I don’t think any of us really do but I’m pretty sure the universe helped you out in that idea”.

So, putting value on what we are giving, if we are putting value on what we are giving to somebody and expecting that same value in return then it’s not selfless, is it. Now it’s not to say that you shouldn’t be asking for what you’re worth. If you have a special talent and you are providing that as a service and somebody is paying you for it, you can say this is what my value is. But it’s all upfront, isn’t it. It is all transparent. We talk about it. “Here is what I am going to do. Here is what you are going to pay me.” We agree. There is an agreement there.

But a lot of time in our relationships whether they are personal relationships or career relationships we all have this underlying hidden value and we are not telling each other about it. So, we’re hiding that and yet we are using that as “Here, I am giving you this”. Even if they give back it’s like, “Well, you didn’t meet my mark. It wasn’t quite enough”. So, it’s when we have and put value on this service it’s not selfless. It’s more selfish. If we are open to creating an agreement, then that is a mutually beneficial agreement. We are both agreeing that it is of benefit to us, to each other.

Our Hidden Agenda

Jones goes into quite a bit about this third item. It’s called our hidden agenda. When we move into a position or an experience or a relationship or something, some situation and we have a hidden agenda, we have something that we want to accomplish, some mind that we want to change, something that we want someone to do differently. So, we come in all sweet and sappy and trying to convince them to move in another direction. Anybody experience that in your work, in your career, in your life, in your relationships? Sometimes there is some hidden agendas that come up. When you have a hidden agenda, again, it’s like that transaction. It’s not open. It’s not obvious that this is what I am looking for in this experience. So, we are not giving and we are not serving each other. We are undermining each other.

The challenge with hidden agendas is a lot of times they are hidden from ourselves. They are hidden from ourselves. We go back to that talk about be passionate and all the passion that you have in the world and all the things that you are very passionate about. Well, if you are not aware of that passion, sometimes that passion can turn into your unconscious bias. If anybody is acting against or saying something against your passion instead of saying “Well, let me think about this. Let me see what this has to do. Let me see what lesson this is about. Maybe there is something I am missing.” Instead of being curious, that unconscious behaviour is pushing someone away. It’s driving our behaviour underneath it. We are not being of service, again, because it’s hidden underneath. It’s trying to change somebody, trying to make them different, make them believe what you believe. “Of course, everyone believes me, right?”

The Belief of “Not Good Enough”

Then, I think the most important one is the belief of not good enough. Sorry, the belief of not enough. It’s not about out there, it’s about in here. “I am not enough”, that belief. That belief gets in the way of our serving with an open heart. That belief gets in the way of us giving unconditionally because we are hoping for that something in return. Even that thank you, even that phrase to lift us up because we are looking for our own sense of enough from out there instead of from within here, from your own heart, from that infinite flow of God within you. When we put our trust in that inner light, when we put our trust in that inner experience, that inner wisdom, what Unity calls the Christ consciousness, that point of God that is within you, that divine spark, that higher consciousness. When you allow that trust to flow into you and you put your trust in that, even if you don’t understand it, then you can give without needing to receive. You can give without expecting someone to give back to you, being of selfless service.

Jones says, “The question of what constitutes selfless service and what doesn’t is an appropriate …” Sorry, let me start over. “The question of what constitutes selfless service and what doesn’t is an appropriate question to ponder.” It’s important to ponder because it’s like unconditional love. Like really, what is it and how do those different layers show up within us? “Because, depending on one’s perspective, the same act of service could be interpreted from several different ways which is why clarity of intention is important.” So, as we are looking at how we are going to serve or how we are showing up, focus on your intention and then put your attention on expressing that.

Everyone knows what makes the value of real estate, right? What’s the three most important things of the value of real estate? Anybody? Location, location, location. Value of your own self-consciousness, your own spiritual consciousness is self-awareness, self-awareness, self-awareness. When we become aware of our intentions or those underlying, or those hidden agendas, when we become aware of how we are showing up, that’s when we have the opportunity to change and to serve and to be in the flow of life, love and wisdom. That is when coming from that space of self-awareness gives us inner peace, that peace that passes all understanding. Coming from that space of self-awareness and knowing our oneness with each other, knowing our oneness with spirit, that divine energy. Coming from that space allows us to give and to shine our light and then everything we do is in service to that light, is in service to God, is in service to that expression of Spirit.

Expressing Your Light

We are allowing Spirit to move us when we come from that idea. And that is really what being of service is all about. It’s simply expressing your light. Now how many ways can you express it? By being kind, by having a smile, by being receptive to someone, by listening, by knowing where you stand, knowing where your boundaries are. “Sorry, you just crossed my boundary. Here’s what I agree. I don’t agree with you but I am willing to listen to you. Something for me to consider”, but at least being open and receptive to it.

Jones says, “We begin to serve others — when we begin to serve others mindfully with an understanding that we are doing more than simply exchanging the form of energy …” Oh no –did I read that one already? No – “When we begin to serve others mindfully …”. Mindfully, with intention. It’s going out and saying how am I serving today? How am I giving to the world today? How am I sharing my light with the world today? “… with an understanding that we are doing more than simply exchanging one form of energy for another, just for compensation or benefit to ourselves, something profound happens. Our perception of what matters shifts, and our service becomes selfless”. It’s just how we begin to show up. It can show up in many things. The little things in life — cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, all those little chores that we get under our skin. “Oh God I’ve got to do this again. I’ve got to sweep up the leaves”.

We have beautiful, I think Japanese Maple, giant trees in our front yard and all along our street. The wonderful thing about it is I would say — let’s see 12-3 is 9 — 9 months out of the year they are beautiful. 3 months out of the year they shed these little tiny leaves and these little tiny seed pods that are so sticky, they wind up everywhere throughout your house. I don’t know how they get there, but they are in my underwear drawer. It’s beyond me. So, every year it’s like, “Oh here they come again”. You sweep them up and there they fall again. The same, you are done, you turn around the whole place is covered again. So, I wait until this time of year when they are pretty much done. But even that can be a gift of service. Certainly, my neighbours think it’s a gift when I am sweeping up and cleaning my own front yard. My family thinks it’s a gift when we are out ready to decorate. We have a clean slate.

Everything that we do can be turned into an act of love, an act of service, by being mindful about your giving. “It means that regardless of what you are doing we approach others with respect, reverence, kindness, compassion, patience, tolerance, generosity, joy and love with no strings attached. The sole intention of selfless service is to be the conduit through which life is made better for all concerned.” It’s about being a beneficial presence to the world. It’s about being that beautiful light that you are. Just allowing it to shine and to give.

One last story. One of the brightest expressions of this that I have seen was this last month or month and a half when my wife, Tiffany, was volunteering for Dance Connection. That is the company that Meghan goes to and they are in the middle of their performance, The Nutcracker performance. What she does, in the last couple years, they had a seamstress that was there for twenty years and always was very gruff with the girls and boys and said here’s your costume. Figure it out. Parents figure it out. And she left leaving a hole so Tiffany said well, I will step into that hole and I will try and fill it. She is not a seamstress, but she has heart.

So, she, for the last couple years and this year, she was there helping to alter all of the dresses, all of the costumes, making sure all the costumes fit. These aren’t brand new costumes. They, for some reason, they don’t allow you when you are done with the performance to take the sugar plum fairy costume with you to go to school in or go to work in or go to the gym in. I don’t know why, but you are not allowed to take them. So, over the years they begin to fall apart. Well, this year was one of those years when a lot of them began to fall apart. They redid all of the snowflake costumes, just sewing on just a little glitter along the top of the leotard and they were redoing, she made a complete new bodice for the Mouse Queen. The Mouse Queen is the main nemesis in the ballet. It was a really cool leather looking with zippers and stripes and she just made it all by hand and the girl who was the Mouse Queen was just in love with it.

But that is not the part of selfless service. That is not the biggest gift that she gave. All of those hours which go up really until the performance starts. And for the first time, because Meghan was Clara she said, they all said go away. Normally she is behind the stage backstage, but she sat down and got to watch the entire performance. That is not the biggest selfless piece of service. Can you hand me that water? I’m all choked up. The biggest piece of service in this is that she wants every kid to feel heard. She wants to have every girl from the five-year-old angel to the boy playing Fritz to the boy playing the Nutcracker to the girl dancing in the sugar plum fairy costume, all of the flower girls, to feel empowered, to feel that their voice matters.

“Are they happy with the costume? Does it not fit? How would you like me to change it?” It’s a big shift. If you think about it, these kids are given direction year after year after year, time after time, day after day. “Here is how you dance. Here is how you do it”. Here’s an opportunity for them to speak up and say this is what matters to me and to have her just give them that gift. That is her intention for volunteering, so that these young kids can feel that sense of empowerment. That is the type of selfless service that we can all accomplish simply by having the self-awareness and an intention to give, to serve each other, to know our oneness with each other, and to give from that sense of love.

Our affirmation is on the screen. I’m going to read it once and then invite you to affirm it with me. So, as I read it, just allow it to sink in. Allow it to permeate your being and really absorb it before you affirm it.

Sharing my gifts with others, I AM a conscious, open, and willing conduit through which good flows.

Would you affirm that with me? Together:

Sharing my gifts with others, I AM a conscious, open, and willing conduit through which good flows.

Prayer for Protection

And with that, I invite you all to stand as we say our Prayer for Protection. Together:

The Light of God surrounds us;
The Love of God enfolds us;
The Power of God protects us;
The Presence of God watches over us;
Wherever we are God is!
And all is well.

Thank you so much for being here today. Love and Blessings. Namaste.