The most spiritual thing we can do

I think there is a great danger on the spiritual path of underestimating service.

Even if we think service is important, even if we think that service is the most important thing we can do, there is still a temptation to think of it as a chore. As the grunt work. As something we have to do because it is compassionate and good, but not the real top stuff, not the really profound stuff, not the great heights of spirituality really – but more just a means to an end.

A few years ago, but already after many years on the spiritual path, I began to realize how wrong this was.

Service is not just something we have to do – service is not even just the most spiritual thing we can do – it is also the most profound, the most mystical, the most deeply linked to our Divine nature.

We see a glimpse of this in these amazing words from Mars Sector 6 in the Third of The Nine Freedoms – ‘Service’:

Serve and be great! Nay – be Everlasting.

This is the kind of thing you hear, and you let it just wash over you. You get the basic idea of how wonderful service is and that’s it.

But let’s look at what is actually said.

“Serve and be great” – well that’s easy enough to grasp, on a basic level, at least, but what about Mars Sector 6 taking it up a notch – in fact up a very large notch – from “great” to “everlasting”.

This really does brilliantly take it out of the realms of the mundane. How overused is the word “great” in English?

For example – “one of the great actors of our generation” – when this absurd hyperbole applies to nothing more than some clown who is reasonably good at pretending to be someone else for our entertainment.

This is not greatness by any stretch of the imagination.

Or what about: “Fancy a sandwich?” “Yeah – that’d be great.”

We probably all do it – I certainly do – but when we stop and think about it we can see how silly it is.

So Mars Sector 6 here is taking service out of any conceivable danger of being underestimated, by rescuing it, as it were, from the word “great”, which, in our general conversational use of the word, we have demeaned and debased until it is almost worthless.

And he has done this by putting it on a level that is truly and unambiguously free of association with the ordinary, with the basic, with the everyday petty nonsense of the foolish lives of many of us much of the time.

What is everlasting? Actors are not everlasting. Sandwiches are not everlasting. Not even planets, solar systems or galaxies are everlasting.

So what is everlasting?

Only one thing.

Only one thing is everlasting.

And that is God – the Divine – the Creator – the One Source.

This and this alone is everlasting.

So if service makes us everlasting – then service makes us God.

God is all. Therefore we are already God. So, to be precise, service does not make us God, but service enables us to become conscious of being God. This is the meaning of Enlightenment – which is the next of The Nine Freedoms.

Service is God’s nature. To contemplate service is to contemplate the psychology of God. Why is service the greatest thing in creation? Why did God make manifestation in that way? Why did God express itself – as us – with this – with service – as the path back to knowledge of its own true self?

Here’s a quick thought – not necessarily a fact, just an idea – if God is all, then there is nothing outside of itself to serve.

Service is, as it were, the one thing it cannot do. How can you be of service if you are complete – perfection – with nothing outside of yourself that needs your help?

And so, God, by wrapping itself up in matter – as individual beings – be it a plant, an ant, a human or planet – is then able to serve other individual beings. It is as if God’s creation of the universe is, as it were, inspired by its desire to serve – which it can only do by limiting itself as individualized beings. It is by creating individualized selves, that it is able to express its selflessness – for it is only then, that there is anyone to be of service to.

This post is based on Mark Bennett’s contribution to the Spiritual Freedom Show with Richard Lawrence. This episode was released on October 28th, 2022, and is entitled ‘The most spiritual thing we can do’. Subscribe to ‘The Spiritual Freedom Show‘.

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About the author

Mark Bennett is the co-author of two books, both of which he wrote with international bestselling author Richard Lawrence, namely Prayer Energy and Gods, Guides and Guardian Angels, which was voted “best book on spirituality 2007” by readers of Kindred Spirit magazine. He is the youngest International Director of The Aetherius Society, whose teachings he chose as his spiritual path at an early age.