We came here to serve but most of us have no idea how we are to be serving.

[rva_jeremy]

You are teachers and healers, you do have a mission on earth. But to truly fulfill it, you – paradoxically – need to let go of that dire need to change things, because your eagerness to do so has an edge of pain to it, the pain of not feeling at home on earth as it is now.

The entire excerpt is wonderful, but this strikes home particularly.  It's definitely something I've felt in activism, for instance: that there's so much pain embedded in the work for change that a mere sense of urgency and justice can easily carry a charge of anger and pain that dilutes the potential to call the best out from within each.  We often don't seem to have any concept in activism of actually healing --instead, we can only address our pain through large-scale politics, which of course is hardly going to deliver personal transformation.

If one can really internalize this, one can start to form mental models about how what you're doing, Glow, contributes in a tangible--or at least tangible enough--way to the larger service needed.  Helping our brothers and sisters heal themselves in those small, intimate, unpredictable moments is really the unsung work of activism; it cannot be worn on your sleeve, it does not contribute to a policy outcome, it does not put more food in anybody's bellies.

Sorry to view all of this through the lens of politics, but sometimes I feel like social work and changing the system are the only things that really look like "service" to me, so I struggle with this myself.  I suspect there's something in the non-ego-gratifying nature of this kind of entity-to-entity love that trains us to pay attention to another kind of gratification more centered in unity.  Or perhaps it is conditioning for service without any gratification at all.  Both would be powerful ways to wield love, indeed.