Service
Excerpt from Joseph S. Benner - Sun Paper 60 - December, 1933
We wish to talk with you about service, in order, if possible, to inspire in your minds a new and much higher ideal than perhaps you now have of what is real service.
We can do this now, because many of you are able to enter the Christ Consciousness and know for yourselves. For in that Consciousness only can true service be rendered, because self never has any part in such service, as you will learn from what follows.
What do we mean by saying that self never has any part in true service? The kind of service meant always springs from above—or rather, from within— from the Christ of you; from a Love so far “above” and “beyond” self’s interest and concern, that it comes from another world—it actually comes from the Kingdom of God’s Consciousness, where all is that kind of Love.
Let us see if we can make it clearer. Try to imagine yourself living in a world where perfect Love reigns, where It is the actual sustaining life and motive power of everyone there. Of course It is God’s Love that is thus the life and power of everyone in this world, which you may know as God’s Kingdom; because everyone there has left self outside—or rather, it is no more, all of its forces and powers having been lifted up, transmuted, merged into their original Source—God’s Love.
Therefore, God’s Love, which always carries with It His Consciousness, His Life, His Power, His Nature, His Self, is the Self of everyone in this marvellous world. In other words, there all are ONE in Christ—as is called this Love, which includes all of God’s Consciousness, Life, Power, Nature, Self—all that God IS and HAS. Christ Jesus, God’s supreme expression of His Love on earth, clearly showed us this by His life, His example, His deeds, and by His saying,
“All that the Father is, I am,” and “All that the Father hath, is Mine.” “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father except by me.”
You who have been able to enter that Consciousness, to feel that great Love pouring through you, know that with It comes an intense yearning to lift every one of your brothers out of the darkness in which they are wandering into the glorious Light of that Love; for you also know that until they have found and bathed in Its Light they will never know real harmony, peace, freedom and happiness.
This yearning then becomes the predominant part of one’s nature, influencing all one’s thoughts, words and acts, and thereby is the motive power which automatically makes service the expressed life of everyone in the Kingdom.
Can you grasp what that means? When anyone, anywhere, in great need turns to God in sincere prayer for help, someone in the Kingdom always hears—usually someone nearest—and the human mind of that one in the Kingdom is directed to respond and give the help needed. That is why, when one truly dedicates one’s self to Christ, and thus opens one’s self wide to the Great Love, that It not only so cleanses the outer consciousness that the Light of the Soul can shine through and attract other Souls; but It is able to use the outer mind of such a one as a pure and open channel for the blessing and helping of all It directs to such.
Naturally then, as one thoroughly acquaints one’s mind through meditation and definite instruction from the Christ Consciousness, it gradually turns trustingly to You within, waits upon You, listens constantly for Your guidance, and is concerned only that it is pleasing You. For it has learned that You are the Voice and the Channel of that Love, that yearning that must be obeyed. And so in time the complete surrender of self to that Love is accomplished, and then begins the real life of service on earth, even as it is in the Kingdom.
…
In the Kingdom there is no money or use for money, but nevertheless there is something there in use that takes the place of money. What is that mysterious, invisible medium of exchange, which, even more surely than paying out a dollar gives one a dollar’s worth of something one needs, will automatically and according to exact law bring one everything one needs—and without one’s ever asking for it, or even feeling the need? The answer is given by this other friend as follows:
“It is the power and the practice of universal, impersonal, loving service, in immediate response to an expressed or unexpressed need.”
See if you can grasp the wonderful significance of these words and of the truth they hide.
