What is Reddit's opinion of How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service?

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Thank you for saying this. I think it comes down to whether the adult (teacher, social worker, whatever) is grounded and comfortable in their own skin, and isn't looking to feed their own ego or belief system. If you can focus on them, and not need it be about you and how you want it to turn out, you can do amazing things. Takes a lot of effort and patience though. Kudos to you.

(Also, what you said reminded me of this book, which I found really helpful for those in social work: http://www.amazon.ca/How-Can-Help-Ram-Dass/dp/0394729471)

I feel you. Lately it seems if you resolve some negativity, within or without, the cyclical Universe is arranged such that it just dumps another problem in your path. I believe the focus is not to turn away entirely from those situations and people who are generating negativity, but try to be available to help. Yet this is a delicate situation as being present to enliven 'the darkness' means that you are exposed to be taken advantage of, and pulled under by the weight of the world - a process that does not hesitate to convince you that its problems are somehow your problems. In psychotherapy this is known as transference.

Ram Dass has a book that explores some of these issues, titled "How Can I Help?"

Society is in the habit, via propaganda, of rendering the value of the person as an instrument in the betterment of the totality - and thus your soul is sold as a functional mechanism that exists to serve the broken parts of 'The Machine'. It may create a heresy out of any voice or signal that assuages our anxiety-default that something must be wrong. Politics, economics, and much of bureaucracy exists to fix problems, and its success depends on keeping people in a low-grade static of worry about the future. To truly be content in the present may as well render you an alien, as the prototypical zeitgeist is a fight against entropy ("Star Wars").

Spirituality and loving-kindness is focusing, remembering, sharing, and dreaming forward with a celebration of what is not broken, what is not dark and destructive, and what is far removed from the blemishes of time. It can feel that there is not much space for these energies except in ashrams, seminaries, temples, synagogues, or other retreat spaces... still, we can bring our love with us and radiate that kindness everywhere. Perhaps the evolution is appreciating the body as the temple, nature as the sacred, and each other as reflections of the living heart. Then the artificial walls of fear created by misbelief, distrust, and ignorance will dissolve in the presence of those higher frequencies.

Ezra Pound wrote, "THE TEMPLE IS HOLY BECAUSE IT IS NOT FOR SALE."

At this point, selling out is believing the negativity. I don't buy the circus show or parlor tricks of hate, of guilt, of shame, of violence. Instead: I remember love. I remember peace. Om shanti, shanti, shanti

Found it =)