Question: What is the attitude that one should have while helping others?

Sri Chinmoy: While helping others you have to feel that the help that you are giving is not coming from you. It is not you who is helping, guiding or moulding a particular person: it is your Inner Pilot. You have to become a mere channel. While touching someone or while talking to someone, feel that you are just the channel.

Suppose that you don't know what the truth is, but you have aspiration and sincere concern for someone. You want to help him, but you do not know what you are going to say. At that time, do not form any idea of how to help him, or what you will tell him or how you are going to approach the truth. Make your mind an empty vessel. Then let the vessel be filled with God's Light and Wisdom, and just share it with him. How can you do this? You can do it only through your constant surrender.

The word 'surrender' is most difficult to understand, but once you actually begin to surrender you will see that it is very simple. You surrender yourself to the Highest, to that part of yourself which still remains hidden to you. Surrender does not mean that you are surrendering to a third person, to someone who is foreign to you and who will utilise you in his own way. No! It is you who are entering into your own highest and deepest, and once you do this, you can let the highest and the deepest flow through you in order to help the other person.

You can and should help people, but while helping people feel that you are only an instrument — a channel — and not a doer. If you take the attitude of a doer, if you feel that you are helping, then regardless of how spiritually advanced you may be, your help will be of no avail. But when you feel that you are an instrument, then at any time you are authorised to help. At the same time, one has to know whether or not he truly has something to offer. Some people have big egos and with their egos they want to help. There are other people who just have a spontaneous feeling that they have to help people. It is not due to their ego, but they also are making a mistake, because they are not acting as conscious instruments of the Supreme. Then there is a third category of people: those who have the capacity and who are constantly being guided by the Divine, the Supreme. They are helping and serving people because it is the Divine who wants them to help.

In your case, you should continue helping people, but only with the idea that you will always remain faithful to your perennial Source, your inner Source. Please always be faithful to your inner cause and inner capacity. Know how far you can lead a person and how far you can take responsibility for a person. Also, when you are helping someone, please try to see the ultimate end. Otherwise, today's relief will be transformed into greater and more difficult problems tomorrow.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Service-boat and love-boatman, part 1, Agni Press, 1974
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