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The Selfless Help Guide
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How to find peace and save the planet at the same time
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This is part of a "work in progress" by Richard Lawrence. It is made available here for inspiring thoughts and wisdom. We hope you like it
Self-help is like cooking a meal for yourself - selfless help is like cooking for others. We all know which is more rewarding when it goes right. Seeing others enjoy the results of your culinary efforts is just a more satisfying feeling, and it lasts longer. And yet the book shelves are heaving with personal development books focused entirely on yourself. After a while they can become self-defeating, because the most debilitating thing you can do is to concentrate exclusively on your own problems and the most fulfilling is to make a difference in the lives of others.
"You are what you eat!" claims one expert; "You are what you think!" another; and "You are what you feel!" yet another. But the truth is "You are what you do!" What you eat, think and feel is only fully expressed when you act. Even the Hindu Upanishads, the undisputed ancient Bible of meditation and inner reflection, are unequivocal on the importance of what you do in the world. As The Isha Upanishad puts it:
In dark night live those
For whom the world without alone is real;
In night darker still, for whom the world within
Alone is real. The first leads to a life
Of action, the second of meditation.
But those who combine action with meditation
Go across the sea of death through action
And enter into immortality
Even to these yogis, who thousands of years ago devoted themselves to the deepest states of inner reflection with a discipline that would be rejected out of hand by most of us today, what was done in the world was still absolutely crucial.
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