In Service to YourSelf is the Only Purpose (excerpt from Conscious Living: A Guide to Showing the Hell Up!)
“If you fall in love with the noise as well as the quiet of the mind and life, maybe there will be room in your heart to love all of YOU!”
- Kelley E. Byrne
What is in service to SELF? How do I know when I am acting in service to SELF?
What is the difference between selfish, selfless and in service to SELF?
It is our fate to start our lives in service to everyone and everything other than ourselves, running from or to something in a constant state of shock, driven by a common fear. Each of us develops strategies and coping mechanisms to survive the best way we know how. Yet you cannot ever heal when you are in a state of shock!
It takes a certain amount of courage and bravery to admit to ourselves, let alone anyone else, that all of the strategies and actions you are taking are not actually working. It takes another shot of courage and bravery to do something about it. Let’s be clear – you don’t want to admit that it’s not working because you don’t have another answer and it’s exhausting to try to find one. Conscious Living Investigation (CLI) welcomes those who have arrived at this point of honesty with themselves and are ready to explore a different type of service – love-based.
There are really only two kinds of service: fear-based and love-based.
Fear-driven service always has conditions and agendas:
1. Selfish is always openly making sure your own needs are met first. Words we use to describe this are greedy, ‘me first’, mine, possessive, jealous, pushy, it’s all about me, and what about me? The score card is shamelessly on the table and everyone knows you have the most points.
2. Selfless is always secretly making sure your own needs are met first while looking like we are serving others. Words we use to describe this are martyr, ‘you first’, sharing, going last. This creates a secret debt as you sneakily give give give so you are always owed. Everyone knows it but no one is talking about.
These are both fear-driven behaviours in service to the mind that believes that ‘I am not enough’. If you believed you were enough, blaming and shaming of yourself and others would not be necessary. Everything you do comes from conscious or unconscious fear, resulting in one of these two strategies in service to the mind for safely getting your needs met.
Here’s a new idea that you may be hearing for the first time in your life.
Love-based in service to the heart:
3. In Service to SELF. This is unconditional LOVE and gratitude. This does not come from, or have anything to do with, the world outside of you. It is a state of grace that has always been inside you. There is no fear, only unconditional love for life and yourself. There is no blaming or shaming or the need to fix anything because there is no fear of danger, being wrong, or being not enough. Self with a capital ’S’ means your Universal Self. This Self does not know fear, only unconditional love.
In Service to Self is effortless! Imagine life from this place inside where you embrace all things as they are. The only way this will ever truly happen is when you can first love yourself unconditionally! The very nature of the concept of in service to SELF is no fear, attachment, judgement, control or agenda. It is naturally and effortlessly inspired activity in the flow of your destiny in an unfolding universe.
Imagine what these activities look like if they are done from the mind in service to fear or from the heart in service to Love:
• Physical practices like exercise
• Mindfulness practice
• Rest
• Community
• Nurturing with food
• Play/recreation
• Show the hell up
• CLI process
• BodyTalk Access
• MindScape
• Awareness sessions like BodyTalk
Take BodyTalk Cortices for example. I can do this activity because I am afraid of disease, suffering and pain, which is the mind in service to fear and the position of ‘I am not enough’. Or I can do Cortices simply because it allows me to be more present with myself, which is heart-based in service to love.
What about food and eating? How much fear really drives your food choices? Why don’t you eat out every day? Why don’t you just eat whatever you wish all the time? You have tons of reasons: because you are afraid to gain weight or raise your cholesterol or get a rash or << insert your personal food fear here>>. What if eating was just eating as part of the human experience, to taste and absorb the essence of a food? What would it look like to eat with no agenda?
“If you fall in love with the noise as well as the quiet of the mind and life, maybe there will be room in your heart to love all of YOU!”
- Kelley E. Byrne
What is in service to SELF? How do I know when I am acting in service to SELF?
What is the difference between selfish, selfless and in service to SELF?
It is our fate to start our lives in service to everyone and everything other than ourselves, running from or to something in a constant state of shock, driven by a common fear. Each of us develops strategies and coping mechanisms to survive the best way we know how. Yet you cannot ever heal when you are in a state of shock!
It takes a certain amount of courage and bravery to admit to ourselves, let alone anyone else, that all of the strategies and actions you are taking are not actually working. It takes another shot of courage and bravery to do something about it. Let’s be clear – you don’t want to admit that it’s not working because you don’t have another answer and it’s exhausting to try to find one. Conscious Living Investigation (CLI) welcomes those who have arrived at this point of honesty with themselves and are ready to explore a different type of service – love-based.
There are really only two kinds of service: fear-based and love-based.
Fear-driven service always has conditions and agendas:
1. Selfish is always openly making sure your own needs are met first. Words we use to describe this are greedy, ‘me first’, mine, possessive, jealous, pushy, it’s all about me, and what about me? The score card is shamelessly on the table and everyone knows you have the most points.
2. Selfless is always secretly making sure your own needs are met first while looking like we are serving others. Words we use to describe this are martyr, ‘you first’, sharing, going last. This creates a secret debt as you sneakily give give give so you are always owed. Everyone knows it but no one is talking about.
These are both fear-driven behaviours in service to the mind that believes that ‘I am not enough’. If you believed you were enough, blaming and shaming of yourself and others would not be necessary. Everything you do comes from conscious or unconscious fear, resulting in one of these two strategies in service to the mind for safely getting your needs met.
Here’s a new idea that you may be hearing for the first time in your life.
Love-based in service to the heart:
3. In Service to SELF. This is unconditional LOVE and gratitude. This does not come from, or have anything to do with, the world outside of you. It is a state of grace that has always been inside you. There is no fear, only unconditional love for life and yourself. There is no blaming or shaming or the need to fix anything because there is no fear of danger, being wrong, or being not enough. Self with a capital ’S’ means your Universal Self. This Self does not know fear, only unconditional love.
In Service to Self is effortless! Imagine life from this place inside where you embrace all things as they are. The only way this will ever truly happen is when you can first love yourself unconditionally! The very nature of the concept of in service to SELF is no fear, attachment, judgement, control or agenda. It is naturally and effortlessly inspired activity in the flow of your destiny in an unfolding universe.
Imagine what these activities look like if they are done from the mind in service to fear or from the heart in service to Love:
• Physical practices like exercise
• Mindfulness practice
• Rest
• Community
• Nurturing with food
• Play/recreation
• Show the hell up
• CLI process
• BodyTalk Access
• MindScape
• Awareness sessions like BodyTalk
Take BodyTalk Cortices for example. I can do this activity because I am afraid of disease, suffering and pain, which is the mind in service to fear and the position of ‘I am not enough’. Or I can do Cortices simply because it allows me to be more present with myself, which is heart-based in service to love.
What about food and eating? How much fear really drives your food choices? Why don’t you eat out every day? Why don’t you just eat whatever you wish all the time? You have tons of reasons: because you are afraid to gain weight or raise your cholesterol or get a rash or << insert your personal food fear here>>. What if eating was just eating as part of the human experience, to taste and absorb the essence of a food? What would it look like to eat with no agenda?