How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service

by Ram Dass

So perhaps we might go on to witness ways in which our ego’s agenda colors our working relations with others, perhaps even preselecting those we choose or are willing to work with. If we need to be seen as wise, we might be drawn to someone who likes to ask us questions. We might avoid someone else, needier but prouder, who might challenge us or force us to face our confusion. “Sure I’d like to help. I’d like to help that one, help her—the one who needs my guidance.” Called upon to spend time with people who don’t gratify our needs, we watch ourselves tune out, lose patience, and get bored. Or we may notice how often, in the guise of service, we try to impose our values on another. Perhaps we give them a little sermonette—“Don’t you see, you’re really God’s child, my dear?”—when what they really need, if we’d bother to listen, is just a little empathy—“Yeah, I feel lousy too. Let’s take a walk and feel lousy together.” When they resist our wise words and don’t buy what we’re selling, we turn them off: “Well, Lord knows I tried. If they’d only just listen …” Looking more closely still, we might notice how we tend to manipulate people towards the fulfillment of our own motives and needs—and perhaps go on to justify this in the name of good intentions or “what’s right for others.” We feel we know better. Simply observed, stripped of its justifications, all this often looks as if we just want things our own way. The Witness notes how others sense this, feel coerced, and back o...