One Apple A Day #456 - Love, and do whatever you want!
Who do I serve? Last week, during a compelling conversation with a dear friend, this question came up for me. This is not an easy question yet I feel it is a fundamental one. We all live and work in this tension between our inner purpose, needs, desire and the purpose, needs and desire of the world outside.
At the beginning I thought that I should be able to sacrifice my own needs for a greater good; to move from ego to eco. But then I realised that the answer was coming from my desire of feeling one of the good ones.
My second stage of this self-inquiry brought me back to the self. To serve others, I must serve myself first. So, through serving myself, I will be able to serve others.
Still, I wasn't satisfied. Why does it have to be either/or? What if it's an and? What if I can serve both myself and others at the same time? But how is this possible? What does it mean when my purpose and the purpose of others is different? Should I dedicate myself only to causes that are aligned with my own needs and desires?
Something was missing so I kept exploring, and then I read this sentence from Rupert Spira: "If we understand and feel that every animal, person and object is our very own self, we cannot go wrong."
If I remove the boundaries between myself and others, that tension disappear. It's no more about helping one or another. It's about serving a higher vision. One the goes beyond this tension.
But how?
Rupert Spira wrote that "love is the experience of that oneness of being."
Then the way forward is through love. Or, as Saint Augustine said:
‘Love, and do whatever you want!’