How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service

by Ram Dass

Under the persistent scrutiny of the dispassionate Witness, we may observe that seeds of burnout are often sown in how we enter into the helping act and in what we bring with us—our motives, our needs, our expectations, the models we have for ourselves. On the one hand, for example, we can recognize the natural impulse of the heart as it reaches out to those who suffer, seeking to ease their pain without concern for cost. This is the recognition of kindred spirit, born of inherent compassion. How good it makes us feel, how true to ourselves. But we also observe that there is more going on in the helping act than the spontaneous generosity of the heart. In the presence of the suffering of others and their insistent needs, we observe the mind’s fear and defensiveness. We also see how uncomfortable we may be about many of the desires situations call forth—our needs to appear responsible, useful, powerful, moral, worthy, needed, and so on. We might prefer to deny these or hide them in the shadow of the unconscious, but our experiment in truth calls upon us to witness what is. So we must acknowledge the reality of a house divided against itself—the inner conflict between head and heart awakened by the helping act itself. This struggle produces toxins of fatigue and emotional confusion. Seeing this, we may be tempted either to suppress it or even to freeze. The goal, however, is to stay with the Witness, to let our reactions pass by and simply continue.