We are always in service to something.
Sometimes, it’s beliefs, identifications, and unquestioned/unloved fears.
Sometimes, it’s love, life, and reality.
And often, it’s a combination.
It will also change over time. In my late teens and twenties, I lived a life of service to community and ecosystems. My circle of concern was my community, all life, and Earth as a whole. Then, during the dark night phase, my circle of concern got much smaller. I lived in service of this one life, mostly just trying to survive from day to day. This was a period of quite serious health problems, and a great deal of unprocessed material surfacing, so it made sense to focus on myself during this phase. (Not that I really had a choice.) Now, my circle is gradually expanding again, while including myself more than I did in my twenties.
Not surprisingly, for me too there has been – and is – a mix of being in service to life and identifications.
Being in service to life can look many different ways. Sometimes, it means caring for myself and those close to me. Other times, it means focusing on the wider social and ecological circles.
Even being in service to identifications is, in a way, being in service to life. It’s love. Worried love, in service to life in the way it best knows how. It’s how service to life looks when filtered through unquestioned and unloved fears and identifications.
As I become more aware of this, service to life can include meeting these fears and identifications with presence, love, and curiosity.
However we live, we live in service of life, since it’s life living itself. And we can live more consciously and intentionally in service of life. We can meet our own fears, beliefs and identifications with love and curiosity. We can, as best as we can, live a life that’s in support of the wider social and ecological systems, and future generations.
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– always in service to something
– beliefs, identifications, fears
– love, life, reality
– often a combination