Acts of service happen all the time, whether we watch them on social media, we help someone or receive them ourselves. What is the relationship between service and a happy life?
In this Satsang excerpt, Vishrant talks about why service to others is essential to happiness.
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Video transcript –
Vishrant:
It’s going back now like 30 odd years ago, that I chose to serve the heart instead of serve my mind and in service of heart, you serve others. You serve the planet, you serve the dogs, the cats, the animals. You don’t serve yourself anymore.
And as less of you appears, less of you is there because of the diminishing that occurs. In service to others, the happier you actually become and the higher your consciousness goes because it is in service to ourselves, that our consciousness stays down so low.
So, selfless service or The Way of the Heart is a pathway to higher consciousness, is a pathway to enlightenment. And you can combine that with the discipline of meditation. So, you can use the Yani path of discipline and meditation, and the Bhakti path of devotion and service together as a way towards higher consciousness, if you want to.
And that’s actually what I teach because that’s what works, that’s what happened for me. I’m not sure about trying just the discipline way without service because I don’t meet too many people who want to sit in a cave for 20 years. Most people want to be in the marketplace. And for me, I had a family, I had a young family that I had to support, and I was putting myself and my partner through school and I had to be in the world.
So, I practiced selfless service and I practiced the disciplines of meditation and self-inquiry. And that was my business, so I did it, but I did it diligently and slowly and slowly and slowly there was less and less of my story in the world because I didn’t want it, I wasn’t interested in my story anymore. If you’re not interested in your story anymore, it atrophies and you become humble and you become more real.
But it is a spiritual path and it does take practice. It’s not something you can get by understanding it. Which is what most of us just want to do, we just want to get it, you know. And so, there’s people offering fast ways to higher consciousness out there, particularly the Advaita Vedanta crowd, and it doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work.
You can have a glimpse of who you truly are but that’s only a glimpse that’s not worth anything. It’s over. It has to be here now. Otherwise, it’s not real.
