Day Shift — The Power of Being of Service

“I'm always serving something, and it's important for me to ask myself what that is."

Sep 01, 2024

Today, I'd like to reference James Hollis, who's a Jungian, and his book Swamplands of the Soul was really important for me back in my 40s when life looked even harder than it was looking in my 30s. I heard him speak on the Huberman Lab podcast last week, and he said some really brilliant things.
He said, "There is a bliss of aliveness that includes pain." And he says, "I feel lucky to be alive to feel heartbreak."
James Hollis has been on the planet for quite a while, and he's learned that life does include discomfort, life does include pain, and that the gift of being alive is the gift of feeling every bit of it. I've heard it said that, in the East, the Vedas says that even the devas are jealous of mankind for its ability to feel everything—grief, pain, sorrow, shame, joy, all of it. The way that Hollis is able to start his day like that, and move through his day like that, is described in another thing he said in the same podcast, which is:

"I've often said to people, this is not about curing you, because you're not a disease. This is about making your life more interesting, where you realize every morning you get up, you have something profound to address today: Why am I here? And in service to what? Because if you don't ask that question, you're going to be in service to your adaptive postures from childhood.”

That is such a perfect descriptor of me anytime I'm having a problem. I don't go to a new set of coping skills, I go to the same coping skills I learned when I was four years old. And just imagine being four years old. You're helpless, you're a victim of everyone and everything - they can do anything to you they want, and you can't stop it, and you need to please them in order to get food, in order not to be thrown out of the house. I mean, it's sheer survival without a set of rules, or tools, that are even remotely useful in later life.
Another way of saying what Hollis said there is that I'm always serving something, and it's important for me to ask myself what that is. The way I say it is if that I don't choose to be of service in the world, I will then step out into the world being of service to the ego. And the ego is always trying to get, and being of service is always trying to offer, trying to give. What is it that I want to give? I want to give what it is that I believe life is always trying to give to itself. And what life is always trying to give to itself—what consciousness is always offering to itself—is a way to be more uplifted, a way to be more hopeful, a way to expand into more and more of the truth of what we are, and offer this truth to everyone we see, everyone we meet, everyone we come into contact with, and to offer this truth to ourselves by offering it to the world (and to my dog who just came into the room).
I'm always in service to something.
What I want to be in service to is that thing that's actually happening here, that movement in the world of life loving itself, and uplifting itself, and offering to itself.
And I can do that simply by saying the truth of me is not my neediness.
The truth of me is my ability to be of service. How can I be of service here? And then discover what that is in this next situation.
Thanks for listening. Have a beautiful day.

Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and co-authored the book Art That Pays.