TGIF :: Awareness #8 (of 8): The Power of Service
#18 || How and why we give back (or not) as part of a ClearLife journey
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu
A Level Set
This marks the conclusion of The Eight Awarenesses series. Next week, I'll recap insights from these posts before returning to our regular cadence of exploring a wider array of topics. In the meantime, here is a preliminary diagram that illustrates the cycle of this work:
The process is cyclical, not linear, as reaching the Eighth Awareness doesn't mean we’re “finished.” Rather, it often marks a new starting point where we consider other habits to break, patterns to disrupt, or changes to initiate. For example, if the first cycle of The Eight Awarenesses focused on mitigating harmful dimming habits, the next go-around might concentrate on reshaping related lifestyle habits or our relationships with ourselves and others. It prompts us to ask: What further “clearing” or “tuning: is necessary to genuinely serve others? And so, we start anew.
🙏🏼 Co-Creating with the ClearLife Community ❤️
Weekly topics sit with throughout the week, rumbling around in my consciousness during quiet moments, while tending to various household tasks, and even in my dreams.
This is an inside job, though I often delve into the themes in conversations with others. The topics for the last two weeks—how we spend our time and how we may be of service—are no exceptions. I’ve cherished the learning process with many of you over the years. Yet, this recent period of co-creation—through countless digital messages, heartfelt face-to-face conversations over meals, tea, or while climbing fog-graced hillsides—and even through exchanged voice memos or phone calls (though I admit, I'm not the best with phone conversations)—has been especially profound.
These exchanges not only enrich my weekly endeavors but also imbue my overall ClearLife project with a greater sense of purpose. So, thank you for co-creating with me as I engage myself and others in these questions:
What is most needed?
What would be the most helpful?
What did I need six years ago (so that I can find a way to offer that to others now)?
What did my mother need twenty six years ago (so that perhaps we can build what would have helped her, could help others now)?
Is it time to emerge from behind my digital writing veil and do more in person, video, podcast, or other work?
How should I spend my creative, discretionary time?
How can I best be of service?
These considerations have undoubtedly influenced this week's post, enriching the ongoing exploration.
🙏🏼 🙏🏼 🙏🏼
The Eighth Awareness
The Eighth Awareness encourages us to seek ways to support others, particularly in times of abundance. Regardless of our life circumstances, we can nearly always find ways to support someone or something outside of ourselves. Serving others, even in seemingly minor ways, infuses our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, and so much more.
My old yoga teacher used to say “service is the cure to suffering.” —Rachel, 6/6/2023
This awareness is fundamental on a ClearLife path. Doing the work to get clear and live with more intention and presence means being self-absorbed at times. Self inquiries such as: Why do I use my dimmer(s) of choice? Could I pause if I wanted to? What does my intuition say? What age or stage of life was I in when this pattern started? Am I carrying some suppressed pain around that is informing my dimming behavior? Such introspection is necessary, but the Eighth Awareness provides a counterbalance. It allows us to redirect our focus towards others, fostering a sense of usefulness, deepening connections, and broadening perspectives, which are all crucial on a journey to greater intention, presence, and overall wellbeing.
“Seva [service] connects us to others and makes them a part of us. The barriers that separate our happiness from their happiness, dissolve. Lingering moods of unhappiness or misery dissipate when our focus is on helping someone else.”
—Guru Dev, shared by a reader
The Eighth Awarenesses has some overlap with the Twelfth Step: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. However, there’s one significant difference: The Eight Awarenesses focus on personal choice and agency, thereby eliminating the call to “carry the message” to others. As spelled out in Awareness #6 (“Do You”), simply practicing the principles is enough.
Practices
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”- Anne Frank
Service looks different for everyone, yet here are a few ideas for how to weave a bit into daily life:
Reach out. A phone call, a handwritten letter—even an email or a text to someone we know would appreciate the kindness—is a beautiful and accessible act of service.
Show up for a friend, neighbor, colleague, or family member. From an anonymous reader: “Finding out what someone REALLY needs, and delivering just that—the lasagna for the friend whose mother just had a stroke, and you know she just can’t bring herself to make the family meal; the quilt for my cousin when a fire burned all of the quilts she had from our grandmother; the Big League Chew for the little kid at the snack shack who wants it BAD but hasn’t got the dollar on him.” The thoughtfulness that accompanies these kinds of gestures is typically felt, and feeling this kind of care can have a huge impact on someone who is struggling.
Volunteer your time. Whether it’s for a charity, a community center, a school, or a hospital—any organization that could benefit from extra helping hands—offering your time can be enormously fulfilling and helpful. It helps keep everything in perspective while supporting something greater than ourselves.
Share your skills: This might require more effort, but most of us have at least a few skills or hobbies that can serve others. Perhaps you have a talent for baking cookies that could be donated or sold for a local fundraiser. Maybe your editing prowess could benefit a charity by proofreading their newsletters for free. It’s possible you would be an excellent mentor to a young adult. It could be as simple as walking a neighbor's dog.
Do nothing. Yes, that’s right. A new entrepreneur-friend commented this week that his inner work (primarily meditation) is equipping him to be of the greatest service to all beings. Maybe doing less and being more as a way to tend to our own self care is the greatest offering we can extend to others at certain times. Something to consider.
The Potential Shadows of Service
There is a potential shadow associated with acts of service. As we explore this Eighth Awareness, it's important to be mindful of the following:
Motivation: Helping others can sometimes be a coping mechanism or a means of evasion. This Psychology Today article outlines how to discern whether our giving tendencies arise from unhealthy martyrdom, a mask for low self-esteem, or score-keeping giving. It's always a good idea to assess the motivations behind our actions (or those of others when we are on the receiving end) to ensure that acts of service aren't just feeding an ego or lacking authenticity. How would I feel if this act isn’t acknowledged? Does it matter if my gestures are not reciprocated? Does my feeling about this offering change if no one ever knows about it? These are good questions to ask in examining motivation.
Helping too much: So many people seem to be struggling with this right now. In a nutshell, we need to put our ‘oxygen masks’ on first, ensuring we are sufficiently stable and secure before getting over-extended in helping others. For many on a ClearLife path, the notion of ‘self care’ might be uncomfortable or altogether foreign, so we need balance attention to our needs with our capacity to help others to protect against counterproductive exhaustion and resentment.
Codependency: This one is sensitive, particularly for those of us who have experienced addiction personally or within our families. “Codependent relationships . . . are one-sided, casting one person in the role of constant caregiver. By being caring, highly functional, and helpful, that person is said to support, perpetuate, or ‘enable’ a loved one’s irresponsible or destructive behavior” (also from Psychology Today). The challenge lies in discerning between healthy empathy and care versus codependency, which is both unhealthy and unsustainable. For more on this, the longstanding go-to resource to understand these dynamics is Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More.
My Story
“I would come back as a bug.”
The 25-year old version of me, still drowsy after and early morning rise and hasty walk to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s humble residence in Dharamsala India, was dumbfounded. During a semi-private audience among fellow graduate students, I posed a question to him—a question I had been considering for weeks, hoping I might have a chance to meet him in person. I’d settled on: If you could reincarnate without being recognized as The Dalai Lama, who and where would you choose to be?
After a deep belly laugh and brief moment to confer with his translator, he tells me he would come back as . . . a bug.
“Pardon me?” I asked, in a whisper.
After more laughing and chatting with his translator, he elaborated: “I have a garden I keep. There are many bugs living here. I watch them sometimes. I would come back in a very simple life. If I came back I would come back as a bug, to maybe make the life of another bug a bit easier—moving an obstacle out of it’s path, for example.”
This took place in 1999. It took me years to deeply grok and appreciate his message: A life of simple service to other beings is a good life—a spectacular one even. I’ve lost touch with this awareness from time to time, but it keeps roaring back: One of the most important things we can do—maybe the most important thing we can do—is help others.
ClearLife & Service
This feels particularly relevant as I consider what is next with ClearLife. What can I contribute? What is genuinely needed, rather than what’s just convenient, enjoyable, or ego-boosting? I don’t think it’s Instagram posts, more newsletters, or even publishing at least one book. There’s something more and I’m deep in my own journey to of figuring out exactly what that is, without any preconceived notions—whether it’s removing obstacles for others or offering something more substantial like retreats, weekly Zoom sessions, or a podcast.
While I evaluate these possibilities, I’m also self-reflecting: Is my motivation grounded, aligned, and genuine? Is my driving force a sincere desire to serve, or something else? When I feel uncertain on this path, I remind myself of the profound impact of knowing that what I provide has helped even a single person in some way. Truly. This recollection keeps me oriented and focused on purpose, not grandiose gestures or achievements.
Taking My Own Medicine
And just as I thought I’d come to the conclusion of The Eight Awarenesses reflection and offering—relying heavily on stories from the last six years—I realize I need to “take my own medicine.” As I shift my focus to supporting others, I discover that I have a whole new cycle of The Eight Awarenesses to work through myself to achieve the clarity and service-orientation I aspire to. There are new relational patterns to shift, fears of failure (and success…) to overcome, and a call to deeply trust myself in ways I’m still growing accustomed to. It is a cycle, not a list, after all.
Onward. ❤️
Miscellaneous…
Speaking of service… I am using a Google form to assess interest in (1) zoom gatherings, (2) in person gatherings (in Mill Valley, CA, to start), and (3) being a guest on a podcast to help me prioritize upcoming efforts. If you’ve previously submitted answers, no need to do so again (and thank you for your patience).
I had a big fat reminder this week about mindset…. It matters! I’ve been fearful about taking medication prescribed by my oncologist to cut my recurrence rate in half and then decided in the last week to turn that drama around: How lucky am I that I get to take a single daily pill that has been tested for 50+ years to dramatically improve my chances of never dealing with cancer again? Lucky. Gratitude. I can already feel the difference in how my body is responding. Onward already.
Non-toxic windshield wiper fluid? My 12 year old and his buddy are making and selling it. If you are in the Bay Area and want to buy some, it’s $10 a gallon (in eco bags too). Reach me for details! I love supporting kid-entrepreneurs. ❤️