(01-20-2013, 01:45 PM)Oceania Wrote: the self is included in everyone. so to serve everyone does not mean leave someone out just because they are you.I agree. I struggled a lot with the concept of STO since even the attempt to service others is usually of an egotistical nature and thus indeed STS. At least I could not find ANY situation where this would not be true. Any and all action (if you think it through) can and will always trace back to an impulse to serve ones Self. And this can't be otherwise because the impulse or wish to serve another arises in us. Thus, following it, satisfying it, would be STS.
In my opinion the concepts of STS and STO are deeply rooted in dualistic thinking. They have served us to a point but they might now perhaps be a bit outdated. Some of us begin to understand now that the Self cannot be seen apart from the Other (if you don't feel this directly, you may want to listen to philosopher Alan Watts, who explains this pretty well so that you can grasp it intellectually). "It is all One" - we all know this phrase. And thus, service to Self is service to other and vice versa. The problem is only that most of us don't really understand what service to Self means. It is not about greed or about outperforming anyone to get faster up the ladder than anyone else. This is NOT service to Self. True service to self is about love. And love serves all. This includes self and all else.
I believe Ankh mentioned the same:
(01-21-2013, 12:58 PM)Ankh Wrote: Ra didn't necessarily urge everyone to follow STO path to my knowledge. They refrained from judging polarities and said that serving the self is to serve all, that it is a dual method of saying the same thing, and that the Law of One sees the one who seeks to serve the self in a precisely the same way as the one who seeks to serve others.