Selfless-Service

What is real selfless service?

Sri Chinmoy: Real selfless service is that which does not expect a favourable result. Selfless service is only for the sake of self-giving; the result will come naturally. If there is an action, there will be a reaction. But the action will be performed not to please ourselves in our own way, but to please God in His own way. We shall act when we are inspired from within. We shall work soulfully and consciously. For seven hours, eight hours, ten hours we shall be inspired from within. If we work without inspiration, then we are working mechanically, like workers in a factory who do not want to be there. We have become another machine. Selfless service is not like that. It is cheerful, soulful, conscious and constant. First it is soulful service; then it is selfless; and finally, when it becomes unconditional and uncaring for the result, then it becomes perfect selfless service.

In our path, selfless service plays a considerable role. Meditation and selfless service are both of paramount importance. Aspiration includes both meditation and selfless service. We cannot separate selfless service from meditation. When we meditate, we go high, very high. We enter into a higher plane of consciousness which we then try to manifest. If we don't manifest it, Mother Earth does not get any benefit from us. If we climb up the tree and pluck mangoes, we are feeding ourselves, but this does not help humanity at all. But if we come down and share with others who do not know how to climb, then they will get the strength to also climb up the tree. This kind of selfless service benefits humanity tremendously.

Each time we do selfless service we increase our capacity. God is omnipresent. He is the universal Consciousness. When we do selfless service, we feel oneness with the rest of mankind and become one with this universal Consciousness. Each moment we do something selflessly we enlarge our consciousness from the one to the many. First oneness starts with our spiritual brothers and sisters and then it spreads to the rest of the world. Here it is an expansion, a discovery of one's own reality which is fulfilled in self-expansion.

But we have to feel that this selfless service is not an act of sacrifice: It is an act of discovery. If we take it as sacrifice, then we will develop a kind of ego. "I am sacrificing everything for others, and they are all useless fellows. They do not give me anything in return. I am the only one who is giving and the others are only receiving." If we take it in that way, then we will only develop our subtle ego, which is the real thief in us.

But if we take our selfless service as an act of discovery, we find we are only enlarging our consciousness. Our hand is making us feel that our leg is also part of our being. Without our hand we cannot be perfect; without our leg we cannot be perfect; without the eye or nose we cannot be perfect. Each limb of our body is equally important.

The surest way of doing selfless service selflessly is to cry not for success, not even for progress, but only for a continuous expansion of receptivity and for a continuous unfoldment of your soul's beauty-manifesting, selfless duty.

Selfless service
Is immediate progress.
Instead of working for our little self,
We serve our large Self,
The Supreme.
Selfless service helps us come out of
Our limited body-dimension
And our limited mind-boundary.

Poem 9116 from Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 92

Human nature
Does not change
And cannot change
Without selfless service.

Poem 1848 from Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 19

How to make your inner life strong?
Through selfless service.
If you can help others,
This will expedite the reawakening
Of your own highest consciousness.

Poem 10190 Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, Part 102