It is our motive, our intention that determines what our response is to be for what life brings before us. It is motive that steers the power of the mind. That we may be unaware of our motive for a particular action makes no difference. The physical manifestation of that motive is what will appear.
If we believe ourselves to be acting out of love and service when our real intention is to look good, or to get something out of it, then that is what the recipient of our action will see. That various people can get away with this subterfuge is due to the fact that so many people have their own agenda, so they make themselves believe, because they wish to, or they are so unaware that the observed intentions of a person is hidden somewhere in the their unconscious. I am referring here to televangelists and their believers, but it is also true with the people you meet on the street or people who are your friends. The intention or motive can easily be seen by those to whom it is directed, if they take the effort to look, but it is not so easy for the one with the motive. If you wish to follow the discipline of observing your motives in order to find out what it is that you are all about, you must never take the first motive found. Dig a little deeper. And you must look for the motive just before you commit the act. After the act you will see that the motive you thought you had was not the one you really had.
The mind is an extremely powerful tool. It creates our eyeballs from lettuce leaves and bits of cow. It creates our experience of life, of the world. It consists of our imagination, our intellect, our memory, and for most of us, we, ourselves (ego). It gives us the power of speech, of mobility, of sight, of hearing, and of instructive and prophetic dreams. It creates all that we know of the physical world.
If we imagine that we are looking at ourselves from a corner of a room (say) for a long enough period of time, there will come a brief experience when we will see ourselves from a short distance away, as if we were over "there", looking over "here". Our individual mind is a magical thing. It is an impossibility. And it belongs to us. What then, must we be, to own such a miracle?
The mind is powerful, but it is mindless. It has no sense, so we have to be careful with what direction or instruction we give it. We give it direction by the focus of our awareness, by our attention. We must be aware of what we are thinking in order to be aware of what instructions we are giving the mind. If we think a lot about our particular fears, for instance, the mind will obey and bring those realized fears to us. "Just like you ordered, sir". If we ponder upon the erasure of those fears, it will bring to us the solution. If you show an interest in remembering your dreams, you will begin to remember your dreams. The mind is yours to use.
We can use the mind to create anything we wish, subject to our ability to believe. There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that this ability to create extends to the manipulation and transformation of time, space, and physical objects. And the mind does do this in our dreams, so the suggestion is there that this manipulation and transformation is not beyond the power of the mind. But whether or not this is possible, the mind definitely creates our experience of time, space and physical objects. And what else do we have except our experience of these things?
Consciously using the mind's creative powers is an art that must be learned by practice. Motive, attention, is the steering wheel with which we direct mind. Desire, emotion, will, is the power locked in the engine. Physical action, acting "as if", is the clutch which connects the power of the engine with the wheels of realization, of creation.
Motive is something we HAVE. It is not adjustable. The steering wheel on our vehicle is always locked, although it gets locked into different positions. We just have to be very careful of which direction the mind is headed before we let out the clutch. We must look deep into our motive before we take any action. A warning. Any motive we have will be a selfish one. It's the only kind we have. Even the motive to become a better person is for our own interests, as is the motive to save the whales or drop a quarter into a beggar's cup. Don't imagine that you are an altruistic person. That is one of ego's most successful lies.
We are totally responsible for the condition of our lives. Who or what else can be blamed? And what good would that do, to blame someone or something other than we? So long as we believe circumstances or persons are responsible for where we find ourselves at this moment, that long will we continue to be at the mercy of an environment beyond our control. The sooner we understand that we alone are responsible for our lives, the sooner we can begin to look at the thoughts, beliefs and actions that put us where we are, and the sooner we do that, the sooner we can begin to have circumstances express our desires instead of our weaknesses.
Service = Love Whatever I have to say about service and its relationship to love has already been said in greater detail, with greater clarity, and more poetically in Meher Baba's books, so I won't even make the attempt here. I will give you a bit of the philosophy behind it, and end with a quote, and that'll be all I'll have to say about it.
The philosophy behind love and service is that the mind cannot stand contradictions, so if one forces oneself to serve a person or group that is hated or disliked, the mind will force the server to love the person or group served.
The quote is from Meher Baba's book, "Life At Its Best"
"If a gift is to be real, then both the giver and the receiver of the gift must forget the transaction completely. To forget completely would mean that the giver should not feel that he has given, and the receiver should not know that he has received. If the giver does not forget, then he has obligated the receiver; and if the receiver does not forget, he experiences a sense of obligation towards the giver."
Al fin - Conclusion