=kit017.txt

KIT 17 - Service

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan once said.  "The Murshid is there for
the mureed." (The teacher is there to serve the pupil.) One might
add, the mureed is there for the public.  That is the meaning of
service.  The demand produces the supply. 

[ Footnote (sa) kit017_1 ]


The ordeal of the fire triggers off the heroism in the fireman. 
The suffering of the patient calls for the compassion of the nurse
and the skill of the doctor.  The agony of the dying in the
streets of Calcutta produces a Mother Teresa.  The budding genius
of the child calls for the teacher to facilitate it.  The
helplessness of the destitute calls for foodbanks and night
shelters. The despair of the broken psyche calls for the dedicated
priest or the psychotherapist.  One species may call to be
serviced by another as the trees dying in the rain forests tax the
skill of the ecologist to service them or the endangered species
call for the ecologist to perpetuate their presence on the planet. 
This is the meaning of service.

The whole planet calls out to be served and serviced; instead.  it
is being more exploited than served.  There was a time when we
humans took it for granted that it was our prerogative to control
the planet.  Leadership is not controlling but releasing
potentialities, facilitating them and coordinating them.  The
reward is accessory.  When the reward becomes the objective, there
is exploitation.

The trouble is that we feel our generosity runs counter to what we
believe to be our most dire needs, or more so. those of our
families. Moreover, we rightly are afraid that once we get
ourselves involved in helping others, we shall be drawn further
and further into sacrificing our needs since the demands appear to
be much greater than we had at first suspected. In order to help
others, one needs to hoist oneself in a position where one can
help but one needs to tithe some of one's gain into lending a
helping hand to those who cannot fend for themselves. In Ajmer and
Rishikesh, one may find that as soon as one metes out a few rupies
or chapaties, one is harassed by a solicitous crowd who may even
tear one's clothes to pieces to grab what they can, so great is
their hunger. Consequently, many prefer not starting this in the
first place. Some even argue that one is simply perpetuating their
misery by giving a pittance which could never answer their needs.
Nature has a way of stemming the population explosion by pruning
it at the cost of starvation.

Then there is the burnout of overstressing oneself by sheer zeal.
The danger lurks in self pity that might very well brook
unconscious resentment for the person one is helping, which one
refuses to admit to one's conscious mind but may cause ponderous
soul searchings and internal conflicts. Therefore, the cutting off
point between stress and overstress must be clearly evaluated to
avoid being self defeating and counterproductive. This is where
Murshid's wisdom regarding balance in life proves to be a saving
grace.

One should be wary of the personal satisfaction of helping as
witnessed in a number of do-gooders and philanthropists. It
escalates patronization. People feel indebted to one's generosity
as if strings are attached to one's beneficence and it culminates
in sheer crass egotism. St. Vincent de Paul, who created hospitals
for the poor in France, once said that those whom you have
benefitted nurture an unconscious resentment against you for the
dependence in which you have placed them. Is the answer in
anonymous, impersonal service? Institutional welfare with all its
positive side has proven its inadequacy in dealing with the roots
of human problems by merely providing palliatives.

Jemaluddin Bolling, who is one of the U.S. pioneers in foodbanks
and has provided shelters for numberless people, said that the
problem is deeper than just providing food and shelter to the
homeless. Behind their inability to cope is a broken self-image,
low self-esteem and abysmal loneliness and ejection. The real
issue is helping people to convince themselves that they can do
something useful by giving them a chance to find an activity that
is not too challenging, yet moderately rewarding. The public
services do not know how to meet that problem nor can this be
institutionalized. The trouble with an impersonal system is first,
that it lends itself to terrible abuses and second, it tends to
take away personal incentive and effort by making people rely on
the system rather than explore their resourcefulness.

It is only under stress that one's latent resourcefulness is
discovered and actuated. We are living at a time when an
increasing section of the public is pushed out of the active
sector because of their inability to cope with the increased
demands for technological skills. They do not stand a chance
competing with a growing number of highly skilled people. The
dejected ones are the victims of our relentless progress into
automation and eventually, computing robotology. In additional,
our trade union laws chase the unskilled out of the feasible
brackets where unemployment is elicited.

Our affluence has created a demand; in turn, that demand is
creating a supply. More and more people are sensitive to this call
and are willing to help. In fact, if most people were aware of the
extent of the despair of other people, they would do something
about it. Unfortunately, most people do not quite know which is
the beset way to make use of their services and there has been, up
to the present, very little coordination between the supply and
the demand. The momentous proliferation of personal computers in
our time open up a whole new scope to deal with just this; to form
a clearing station where people wishing to volunteer help may be
brought into contact with those who need help and find out which
is the most effective way of helping. This was the purpose of the
Rescue Network Operation. As you know, it never really took off,
except in the case of welfare, the Hope Project in Delhi and the
Food bank in Atlanta, plus the efforts of quite a number of
members working locally to help people unassumingly. But we never
came across those who, having the skills, where able to give their
time setting up a computer network.

We are living a second chapter in the unfoldment of our Sufi work
where we find that quite a number of mureeds have graduated in our
school to the point where they feel a need to the second step,
which is to put the spiritual teaching to practice and service is
the way to do it. This was the meaning of the Brotherhood activity
of the Sufi Movement created by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, which
so far, has never gotten off the ground completely, except in my
Inter-Religious Congress, Omega Institute, and any welfare
project, but here is much more that one can do. I would suggest
calling it the Brother/Sisterhood activity and I suggest that
Centers organize meetings in which members share ideas about
creative ways of service and then spring into action.

It is not fulfilling to simply pursue one's personal advantage in
life. Most evolved people need to serve a purpose beyond their own
personal one in which the potentialities in their being attain
fruition.	

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

[ Footnote kit017_1 ]

Sharif Graham once said, at a Zenith lecture, a Guide will do
anything for his students.

Which reminds me again of the famous Sarita Brown story -- this
dude if slipping out at a camp, and they ask PVK what to do, so
PVK takes a few minutes to go up 7th heaven -- or more likely just
the Upper Mezzanie, that would be level 2B -- upper astral, with
all those nice genies's playing games, not those ugly demons --
anyhow, wherever guru's go when they need an answer quick -- and
so he recommends 3 things -- I don't recall what Sarita said the
first two were, , but I would guess, from other times PVK
commented on such problems, that it would have been a nice slice
of steak tartare, and a few weeks working in the garden or on the
farm or whatever --  and then Sarita says PVK said, "and --- oh
yes --- sex --- "

Most folks in this world nowadays won't give you the time of day
without an appointment -- 

Once I'm flipping out in the USA, and I ask my Guide, can I stay
in their communal house for a while, and the answer comes back
that the comrades said, No, may they all go back to grad school
and have to write dissertations on R.D. Laing -- 

So I went to Israel instead, as_it_is_said, "And if he be mad
there, no notice, for there all are mad" ( Shakespeare, Hamlet,
more or less )  

But I digress.
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