The Ways of Acceptance (alternative reading of 'STO')

[Shin'Ar]

I think the term 'Service to Others' has a great potential for being mis-understood. This is because our cultural heritage has legacied to us various christian notions of service and self-sacrifice. Most prominent among these are:

* doing charitable deeds (visible service)
* donating money/time (pouring one's personal resources into an organisation)
* martyrdom ('sacrifice' of the self, for the perceived benefit of the other).

Ra uses the term STO primarily, but Don also asked about other definitions or understandings of polarity.

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my own understanding/practice of the 'positive path' has come down to this:

The Ways of Acceptance. The Ra material offers much advice on self-balancing, and these are keyed around the notion of 'acceptance'. Now, some might say this is putting too much emphasis on the technique, but Ra offers us Archetype 22 as the 'choice'; which is a unifying concept. What more unifying concept is there than making a choice of accepting something, or rejecting it?

this further expands on the notion of the spiritual path as one of BEING, rather than DOING. The Doing, of course, arises when an opportunity presents itself, and when there is a calling; but the emphasis is on the cultivation of an attitude which is kindly and accepting, and embracing.

I don't know how the Ra teachings will hold with my thinking but in my mind if one is not seeking to gratify their self at the expense of others, than the automatic opposite is service to others.

I do not see STO as charity or efforts to serve others or to subject one's self to sacrifice for the sake of others. I see STO as the natural opposite to one who would sacrifice others for his own sake or that would care only for their own well being without any thought or compassion for anyone else.

I say this because if one is of this sort of character, than by the nature of that character they are being of service to humanity as a whole out of nothing more than the compassion and sensitivity they express.

This is why I have always had a problem with the two being expressed as polarity or choice of individual experiencing. I think that they are simply the natural result of the character of those who walk those paths and live those lifestyles.