The Centering Thought for day 15 of the 21-Day Meditation Series* was “Serving Others serves me”. What an empowering thought! Most of us think of serving others like military service, volunteerism or helping a loved one who needs special care. Deepak expands this idea by sharing that we may feel that service is out of reach, that it might involve time, money, a work obligation or self-sacrifice.
We all have gifts we can share and everybody can be good at serving. Serving others does not require a college degree, years of training and experience, money or a lot of time. We can serve others by holding an elevator door open, allowing someone to go ahead of you when waiting in a line, sharing a smile when you feel it is appropriate, being there to listen to a friend in need, a hug works well also.
The message for the day included the following sentence “giving to others through service is simply recognizing what you do best in any given moment and offering that as a gift to someone else.” This an excellent way to describe serving others.
It is a good character-building practice to ask yourself every day, “How can I serve”. To serve is similar to throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples spread and widen from the middle. The pebble is your service. Each ripple represents how the power of your action to serve serves you and many others in ways you may never know. When we serve others, we contribute to the greater good of humanity.
*www.choprameditation.com