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    Types, kinds of  Selfless Service (Seva)

2. Mind- Emotional

      Seva through the mental faculties (man) lies in contributing one's talents - creative, communicative, managerial, etc. - to the corporate welfare of the community and the planet in general. It also lies in sharing the pain of others. Response to the pain of others is a sine qua non of the membership of the brotherhood of man.

       Sharing soothing or comforting words is an act of sharing at the emotional mind level as an act of selfless service.  When some one is suffering an emotional loss, the act of  sharing positive emotions or even listening to the grief itself a great selfless service. 

      Selfless service of protecting the environment, act of caring for nature and not polluting air, water and earth,  helping all other forms of life,  stems from the feeling of gratitude. When one identifies one self with nature and live a life in tune with nature is also a selfless service of gratitude.

Two levels of  Seva: Internal and external

           Helping others by one's mind strength is seva at external level and when one expresses  that gratitude  by inner maturity is at the internal level.

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Types, kinds of  Selfless Service (Seva)

1. Body-physical

       Individuals do various selfless service on the level of their inner identification. The basic and fundamental service is the sharing at the body or physical level. One can share one's body or physical strength with others which become the act of selfless service as seen in numerous activities of helping others in hours of need, like example, rendering help to an area struck with a natural disaster.

     Seva through material means (dhan) or philanthropy (daan) is the sharing at the outer physical level. Sharing our material objects with the needy nurtures our inner growth. Fund raising campaign and doing donations all fall into this category.  Personal philanthropy can be debasing for the receiver and ego-enhancing for the giver, but self-effacing community service is ennobling. This is why always doing service as a group is good but care should be taken not to restrict again the seva to groups of personal choices. The seva should be  rendered irrespective of caste, creed and nationality.

 Two levels of  Seva: Internal and external

           Helping others by sharing one's body strength is seva at external level and when one shares the physical wealth by inner maturity is at the internal level.

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               Seva or Selfless Service

Selfless service is the inner expansion of the outer ritualistic worship

       Spiritual traditions emphasize on doing selfless service because it is the inner expansion of the outer ritualistic worship. In ritualistic worship an individual focuses or identifies the un-limited or unconditional Pure Consciousness in the limited conditioned form of an object, like an idol or a symbolic image. This is the basic logic of idol worship.

         Next stage of inner evolution occurs when the individual identifies the same un-limited or unconditional Pure Consciousness in all the  limited conditioned forms that appears as insentient objects,  microbes, plants, animals, birds and fellow human beings. In ritualistic worship an individual expresses "Love" towards one object, which expands to all other objects that he encounters. Without this expansion one's inner growth gets retarded.

         Without Seva or selfless service an individual remains  stuck with the outer ritualistic worship. For example, if some one gives fruits or milk that was meant for a ritualistic worship,  to a hungry person, is a sign of seeing pure Consciousness or God in another individual. Not seeing the same Consciousness in any thing other us is immaturity.

       Vedic culture especially is ingrained with the concept of respecting or identifying equally all sentient and insentient beings. When some one feet accidentally happens to step on or hit a living object or even any non-living being does the gesture of touching the object  and place the hand on head or chest. This act is a symbolic gesture of treating every thing as once own self.

        Core of Selfless service is the sharing attitude because one does not differentiate oneself from other. Seeing oneself in others is the sign of inner growth that is the basic principle of Selfless service. This expansion of seeing oneself with others occurs first at the body level, then at the mind level, the intellect level and finally at the awareness level. This give rises to different types or kinds of selfless service that we see around.

Unconditional Love is Eternal happiness, Ananda.

Happiness in most of our life is temporary because of the very conditional in nature.  Loving everyone without any selfish expectations brings Eternal happiness.

Living a life of unconditional love, helps us to realize our own true potential and experience it as Peace or Eternal Happiness. In Spiritual language this state is referred to as Self and religious language as "Divine God" and Science yet to connect it to Consciousness, the mystery still unsolved.  

We join hands with everyone to share this unconditional love, through community service or Selfless work. There are several ways to express this unconditional Love.  We welcome you all to work together for this mission, because We are all Cells in One Cosmic Body.

 Not doing selfess work is cancerous: The way we feel ourselves changes according to the Individual. If we pay attention for a few seconds and think who we are, we understand that we are just a group of 50 to 70 trillion cells, working in a coordinated manner, sharing all resources and work. Understand that when one cell feels that it does not want to share any resources with others and also work, then it becomes cancerous and destroys the whole body. 

We dislike one single cell of ours to behave as a cancer cell in our body, but we are beaving as cancer cell to this Cosmic body. This is why throughout mankind there was is emphasis on selfess work. For many years this was ignored as a philosophical thought, untill recently now scientific are thinking as a scientific reality (click the latest article).

We speak about Selfless work at all levels, because the advantage of it goes beyond the scientific intelligence to Awareness. Selfless attitude increases our own Self-Awareness energy, the energy fuel to make our life happy. Even doing selfless action with a selfish motive in the begining later blossoms into Un-conditional love to experience the unconditional nature of our own Self, the realm of no-suffering but only peace and unconditional happiness. This is not a state that is attained after death,  but begins right while we are living. 

There are five levels of doing charity or Selfless work.

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          Seva or Selfless Service

       We have understood that Worship Rituals leads us to the Awareness state, the core of our being.  The action of doing rituals, helps to transcend into this Awareness state. Without rituals, we are in Ego state of body and mind. This is the very purpose of rituals. Without knowing , rituals becomes meaningless action wasting time and energy.

      There are many rituals and one among the most powerful is the Seva or Self-less service. In most spiritual traditions including the Vedic culture, the ritualistic worship has to mature into Selfless service or Seva. Without this growth in worship an individual does not progress in the Spiritual evolution.

       Doing Selfless Seva is the most powerful way to transcend to the Awareness state. But Seva ritual also has been misunderstood and the whole purpose of doing is lost. In the next few pages we are discussing details of Seva, the different types of Seva and how it helps us to evolve spiritually.

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