April 9, 1992

[This session was preceded by a period of tuning and meditation.]

Q’uo

We are those known to you as Q’uo. We greet and bless each in the love and light of the one infinite Creator.

If the one known as Barbara and the one known as Aaron are sufficiently prepared, we should enjoy commencing this session of working. We would wish to express our deep enjoyment of the opportunity to share our thoughts with each of you and to work with the entities which may express through the instrument known as Barbara. As we would prefer to allow the one known as Aaron to begin the working, we would at this time content ourselves with the expression of our joy at the beauty of this circle of seeking, and for the moment leave this instrument in love and in light. We are Q’uo.

Aaron

My greetings and love to you all. I am Aaron. The energy of spirit, not just disincarnate spirit but of all spirit in this room, is very lovely to behold. Barbara is bursting with joy inside at the heightened frequency vibration she is experiencing; and experienced secondhand through her, that energy is still very brilliant. It is a great joy to speak in this way and share a conversation with my brother/sister Q’uo.

The last time we did this we were making an attempt to move back and forth with more frequency, rather than for one of us to talk at length and then the other to speak at length. And if Q’uo and Carla are willing, I would like to suggest that we do it that way—no long monologues, but a more flowing conversation between us. There will be no difficulty in this. I will know when Q’uo wishes to speak and will simply pause, and Q’uo will know when I wish to speak.

No decision has been made as to the nature of the questions or the direction of the channeling tonight, and it is not my place to direct this; but I would like to offer a suggestion that it feels relevant to me that we speak, at least to some extent, about the nature of service and the misconceptions that the incarnate being may move into about the nature of service, which create a distortion in that service and give rise to fear. I would pause here for your responses to this suggestion. That is all.

[Pause while Aaron’s suggestion is considered.]

It is not necessary that you hold to this idea of service at all. It feels to me to be something relevant to all of you, but I do not wish to impose my concept on each of you. Is there a totally different area that you would prefer to explore?

Carla

Why don’t we take this opportunity to form a group question on service? What is it that we wonder most about service? The thing I notice most frequently that people ask me is how to be of service to other people when they have not yet learned how to love themselves as human beings with faults, so that they can have compassion on themselves and therefore have compassion on other people. So, my first question about service would be, “How can people be encouraged to see themselves as people worthy to offer service to others?”

Barbara

I understand Carla’s question. I feel a different discomfort with service. I think it’s a question partly of being versus doing, but it seems more a question of the arising of fear; that as soon as I get into wanting to serve, I separate myself from that part of me which is already serving. I can’t really explain it. I wonder if you can explain it. I don’t know how to get past that. I know my question is rather vague, but there’s a sense, not of aspiring to serve but at grasping at service that gets in the way of actual service. Can you speak to that distortion and how I can move past it, how any of us can?

Q’uo

I am of Q’uo, and greet each again in love and light.

Ah, to be upon the road and To forget that the feet are walking, To become numb to the dust, To smell not the heat of the damp Of the dew upon the dust as you trudge In the morning light of young and unskillful pilgrimage; To carry your brother and your sister in your heart And think that they are upon your back; To be numb in the feet, in the heart, and To feel burdens that are not there.

This is one way to describe one who serves with every heartbeat, yet believes that one must carry a load, one must show weight and effort in order to serve. Is not every step an effort? Are those feet not dusty and sore? Is the heart not full to bursting with compassion and love and will? What is this fetish about the showing of burdens? About the suffering that is visible? Is this carrying of burdens what each thinks that service is?

Let us move back from this scene and think of the heart of each entity who desires to serve. Is this heart active, defined by action? Is it completely passive, asleep, and incapable of action? Or are both sleeping and waking, dreaming and acting, informed by an unsleeping and ever-living consciousness that merely and utterly is?

Any determination to be of service begins not with dreaming and not with acting, but with consciousness itself. And that consciousness is that which is purified by a fire of desire which tempers consciousness, cleanses it of the confusing, self-deprecating, or arrogant emotion so that one is neither consumed with unworthiness nor battened by pride, but merely is, as is the Father of all things; merely is, as is the Nurturer of all things; merely and utterly is, as is the spirit of love that is the nature of all that there is.

One serves because one is of a certain nature. If that nature be impure, the service shall be impure. If that nature is undisciplined and unguided, the service will be undisciplined and unguided. If this consciousness chooses negative ways of distorting itself, its service will express itself in manipulation and control of others. And if the purified consciousness has been purified towards love without any hindrance, let, or stint, then the service of such a one will be beyond description. Whatever the action, the essence of the service will remain within the beingness that informs the service.

No one can keep from serving, no entity whatsoever. Thinking upon this may begin to take the emphasis off wanting to serve, for that desire is after the fact. We would transfer this energy to the one known as Aaron at this time. We are known to you as Q’uo.

Aaron

This is Aaron. Q’uo spoke about unworthiness and pride. These are both manifestations of ego. I would suggest the usefulness of beginning to regard service in a different way, not as a strained giving or even as an eager giving but as a gift. There is no joy that I know so deep as that of serving, and a part of the joy inherent in service is the emptiness of self that one comes to when one truly moves out of oneself in order to serve.

So much of your pain comes from the illusion of a solid self. Without that illusion, neither ego nor pride can exist. There is no unworthiness. There is no grasping. Service is truly your path beyond ego, because as you walk that path of service you see constantly how that illusory self arises, see the seeming solidity of ego as you become bound in fear.

What you see is a magnification of what exists. We have talked about this at length, and I believe we spoke about it a bit last year when we were here. If you offer something 99% percent purely and 1% percent with the impurity of ego, you are aware not of the 99% percent but of the 1%, and you condemn yourself for that. You forget so quickly that this service is offered by a human. The spirit is unlimited, but the human does have its limits. Thus, you tend to become lost in that small percentage of the service that is guided by ego, rather than the much greater percentage that is guided by true aspiration to serve God and the deep love for all that to which the servant feels itself connected.

As you move into that minute distortion of fear, you start to feel yourself unworthy; or in an effort to override the fear, you move to pride—the latter more rare than the former for those of you who serve in the ways that you in this room do. You are more prone to unworthiness than pride. When you can remind yourself that the path of service is a gift wherein a reflective mirror shows where ego still exists, it gives you a very different perspective on that ego.

At that point you may turn with compassion to this human being that is doing its best to serve despite the occasional arisings of fear, and use the path of service as a constant reflection of the arising of ego so that you may allow that illusion to dissolve. If you were not given this catalyst of service in the way that those in this room ask themselves to serve, you would not have the strong promptings that you each have to purify yourselves. Yes, you are here to serve others; but the wonderful gift of that service is that in the course of it, this aspect of the one that you identify as self must be allowed continually to dissolve and dissolve more fully until all illusion of separation is eradicated.

I would like to relate this thought to Barbara’s question. Barbara spoke of the arising of fear and the distortion created by the desire to serve, by grasping at service. Can you see that the grasping is a manifestation of unworthiness? When you know that you serve simply by being, there is no longer need for grasping.

Last month K shared a very beautiful poem with us, a poem she was taught as a child by her grandmother. I do not know if I have it completely accurate, but as I recall it, the words were:

This is truly the essence of it: relaxed and free, not willing, not planning, just being and trusting that you will be placed where you need to be to serve as you are asked to serve. You do not need to set up such situations of service so much as to allow them to happen. You allow them to happen by purifying your own energy, by constant work on yourselves, by prayer, by your constant offer to be of service without grasping at that service, and by deep awareness that when you say, “I need to serve,” that is a manifestation of unworthiness and of ego—“I need to serve so I can feel better about myself.” Well, fine, but first feel better about yourself and then all the service you want will pour through you. It really is as simple as that.

I believe the important thing here is to become aware each time that “I need to” arises, that there is a sense of unworthiness behind it, a sense of fear. The first step, then, is mindfulness, deep awareness, each time that sense of fear arises. The second step is acceptance of this human who sometimes feels fear; just a smile and a, “Here is fear again. Come in fear, I have been expecting you.” Give yourself a hug and return to the act of loving, of worship of God, of extending your loving energy in whatever ways you can, not just to others but to yourself. With the acceptance of that small arising of fear, it will not grow into distortion.

You do not have to get rid of fear. You only have to recognize that it is there. The fear does not interfere with your being a clear channel, for example, but your relationship with fear interferes with it. If you wish to serve others in any way—serving food in a soup kitchen, working in a homeless shelter, counseling others or whatever ways you may choose to serve—you need not eradicate fear but recognize it and find mercy for this human who sometimes feels fear, and in that way change your relationship to fear.

Until you change your own relationship to the fear that sometimes moves through you, you cannot clearly serve another because you will always be in some amount of judgment of his or her fear and the distortions that fear creates in another. There will also always be “he who serves” and “he who is served” as long as you are not friends with the fear in you. But when you can make friends with that and thereby befriend fear and all its distorted manifestations in another, you remove the separation of self and other. And then there is no longer “servant” and “served.” Both are servant and both are served.

Do you think that when you serve another by offering them food, that does not serve you? Here is the distortion of pride: “I am the servant.” And again it creates separation, and such separation cannot serve anyone. When I offer you food and you offer me the opportunity to offer you food, I thank you for that. You give me a gift, truly.

I offer you my thoughts right now, and I cannot express the deep gratitude in my heart for the opportunity to speak to you all and the ways that you serve me by giving me your listening and your open-hearted attention to my thoughts, because when you listen to me, it makes me be more responsible for the purity of those thoughts and thus stretches me and aids me to grow.

So, I ask you to remove the duality in your mind between served and serve and to look closely at your discomfort with the arising of fear and see it more clearly for what it is. Truly begin to understand that the fear does not create the distortion in your service, but your relationship with the fear creates that distortion.

I feel that Q’uo would like to speak at this point. There is more I would like to say but I would prefer to turn this over to my brother/sister for comment, and allow us to move back and forth. That is all.

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo. We greet each again in love and light and apologize for the brief pause, but we were conferring with our friend, Aaron.

We hope that each has listened to these words concerning desire, for desire purified does not partake of fear, is not separate and does not create separation. Remember two things which this wise entity has said: The path of service is a gift. The path of service is a reflection.

Let us look from a slightly different perspective; from a slightly different set of opinions, at these statements. These statements can be pondered over and over.

The path of service is a gift. What is the path? Is it something you walk, or is it you? Are you the path and the gift? And are you by your very nature serving and served? For if you are of love, and if you have consciousness aware of itself, is this not the only undistorted transaction of which you are capable: the giving and the receiving of that great service which is loving?

Can you conceive of yourself as a gift; perfect, immutable, whole and complete, yet transitive—the self as a verb? Only those selves who see that they are not only on holy ground, but they are holy ground, can move from being a “he”; a “she”; an “it”; a noun, into being a verb—a transitive, acting verb that connects love with love; that acts as catalyst between subject and object, because it knows that subject and object are one. Subject is love/object is love if the subject is self and the object, other self.

One who is the path and one who knows itself as holy knows that self and other self and all that there is exist in a ground of love; and love speaks to love, serving and served, loving and loved. And as distortions are released; as fear becomes less necessary; as this process gradually takes place, the self becomes the path, the gift and that servant which is finally transparent to love flowing through it, never from it, flowing to it but never remaining, for love flows as endlessly as the sea.

The path of service is a reflection. This is simply the same statement turned backwards so that one may see that one is served as one serves. We would not belabor this point but only wish each to ponder it. You are a reflection to others, just as others reflect you to yourself. What, my friends, shall you reflect to others? Is your mirror transparent? Are you love? Can you allow love to flow through you and allow the images that you show to others by reflection to be clear and lucid and shining with the light of a truth that is beyond you but can only flow through you?

We ask you to ponder this second statement as a corollary of the first, for it does deepen and aid understanding and grasping of the nature of the self as a servant of love; and thus, in serving, served; and thus, when served, serving.

We would at this time again move to the one known as Aaron and the one known as Barbara that we may have the pleasure of listening and learning and enjoying Aaron’s opinions.

As always, we ask each to know that these are opinions that we offer. We have no authority over you. Know that we are your friends and perhaps your teachers, but not those who ask any to refrain from discrimination. For you know that which is the truth. And if you hear it not through these instruments, we ask you to put it down and walk on without a second thought, for we would not be a stumbling block before you.

We leave this instrument. We are those of Q’uo.

Aaron

I find it a great joy to share in this way with my brother/sister of Q’uo. I would like to look at a distortion of service that was inherent in both Barbara’s and Carla’s questions. In your human form it is so easy to lose track of what you are doing. This is natural to the human, which is not perfect and is not expected to be perfect. I am not condoning unskillful choices here, but only asking you to have mercy for this being that is sometimes unwise in its choices.

At times many of you have a fixed idea of what it means to serve, an ego attachment to one type of service or another, and you forget so quickly that, as Q’uo just explained, service is a type of being not a doing. When you fully allow yourself to be transparent, and allow light and pure energy to move through you—both into you and out of you, giving and receiving—then you are service. You are not serving, you are service.

When Barbara phrased her question, she had in mind a kind of distortion. Let me give you an example. On Wednesday evenings she has a channeling session. Her family comes home at 5:30. They are hungry. They have things to tell her and to share with her. She feels a need to get them fed and to get the kitchen cleaned up and to sit and meditate and prepare herself for the channeling session.

She is almost never short-tempered with them in actuality, but she sometimes feels impatience although she does not manifest that impatience. She feels a sense of wanting to hurry them through their dinner, wanting them to get their dishes washed, and so on. If she goes in to meditate and her youngest son comes in and shares his homework with her, she looks at her watch and is aware that “A houseful of people are going to appear here in half an hour and I need to meditate. Get out of here with your homework!”

Now, she does not say that. She sits him down on her lap and she looks at it, but she is feeling that impatience. And then she feels anger at herself and says, “Who am I serving here? Am I ignoring my family to serve others?”

She has learned that when she can let go of her fear; when she can feel compassion for this human who is feeling fear so as to allow that fear not to solidify, then it does not matter whether she is sitting in meditation or washing dishes or holding her son on her lap and admiring his homework. It is all meditation because at that point, as she washes the dishes or holds her son, she is service; she is love. What could be better preparation for channeling than holding a child on your lap and giving him love? But the voice of fear distorts that and says, “I must have silence to prepare,” and then self-criticism arises because she knows that to follow up on that impulse would be to hurt the child.

It would be well worth your while to look at the ways you manifest this in yourselves. No being of third density is immune to this. No matter how aware you are, it catches you sometimes.

What does it mean to serve? A friend shared a story in which he was leading a large workshop, and a woman who had kept talking about her family of eight or nine children all weekend and the demands they placed on her spoke up toward the end of the weekend and said, “Oh, I want to serve! How can I serve?”

Many in that group had been talking about working with the homeless or those with AIDS or another disease, and so on. And this man, S, turned to the woman and said, “You want to serve? Get up in the morning and serve your family bacon and eggs.”

What is service? It is not a doing, but a being, an attitude, a way of approaching the world and yourself with love.

Now, I know those are inspiring words, but the reality is that it is much harder to do it than to speak of it. Each time that you fall into that trap of mistaking service for a specific kind of doing and see yourselves attached to that doing, might I suggest that instead of looking critically at this human who has made that unskillful choice, you find acceptance for that human. What is behind that grasping at service in this specific way or that specific way? Can you begin to see the layer of fear under there? And as you allow loving self-acceptance to replace that fear, then you become love again and you become service, service to all beings.

We have spoken at length about negative and positive polarity as service to self and service to others. When there is not distinction between self and other, then service no longer takes on that direction. You become aware that when you serve others, you inevitably serve yourself because there is no self or other. And truly, even that entity which you think of as a negatively-polarized being in service to self, without having the intention of doing so, does serve others because there is no difference between self and other.

Thus, the difference is not in the direction of the service so much as the intention. When there is intention of service to self, it is because fear is present; and greed, needing, and grasping. The distinction, then, becomes intention to serve fear and the solidified self that grows out of fear versus intention to serve love and the deep connection that grows out of love.

Perhaps this distinction can help you clarify the direction you move your energy. When you think of it in terms of service to self and service to others, the whole direction becomes distorted, because those of you with strong positive polarity who think in terms of service to others find yourselves uncomfortable when you feel yourselves receiving from that service.

I would like to ask Q’uo to speak at this time as I hear very delightful thoughts coming from my brother/sister. That is all.

Q’uo

I am Q’uo, and we greet you again through this instrument in love and in light.

In this working we have grappled long with the concepts of being of service. This, obviously, in our opinion, is one of the more misleading phrases concerning itself with serving the one infinite Creator. Therefore, let us look at what we say to ourselves and let us look at what we feel that the Creator may say to Itself.

Does the Creator say, “I should; I need; I must; I desire?” Or does the Creator say, “I create and it is good?” What is the name by which the Creator in the Judaic system of myth and culture is known in its highest form? Is it not “I Am” or “I Am that I Am”? ¹ Or perhaps, “I Am always becoming”? ²

We speak individually to each within this unified circle, for each of you has a universe peculiar and unique to yourself. It is your universe, your creation, and you are co-Creator. No one creates this universe but you. It is your creation and the creation of the Father. All that is created and realized and sensed within your creation is yours, either by being or by reflection of being. Your creation is unlike any other, and all that you feel is outside of you is actually occurring within you.

We speak of mirrors. Yet do you realize that in actuality your eyes, your ears and all those things which you use to garner information are illusions also? Do you realize that the sense impressions which are filtered through to your conscious thinking have been through so many judgmental screens that they are in fact already myth and legend before you are aware of thinking, perceiving or realizing each sense impression? The depth of the illusion which you experience is infinite. You will not know anything within this illusion. You may have our permission to stop trying. ³

You are becoming. You are creating. There is no “must.” There is no “should.” There is no “want.” There is no “desire.”

What is your true nature? If you are a creature of the one infinite Creator, then the answer to that for those who feel that the Creator is love is that you are a creature made of love. Here you are. We speak to you in a limelight all your own even though you are one with all in this group. You are love and you are becoming and you are creating. Rest in this bright light, the surest sign of beingness.

This is your incarnation. This is your experience of being; of consciousness. This is your chance to examine the nature of yourself. And as you examine that nature and you say, “I need; I should; I want,” stop and say to yourself rather, “I create. “ And then look to see if you think that the creation is good! For that which is of the Creator within you will say, “It is good.” And if you create and can say, regardless of all imperfections which are apparent in this immensely deep illusion, “It is good,” then you are upon the holy path of seeking and of service.

Are there any brief questions at this time?

[No further queries.]

Q’uo

I am Q’uo, and as we see there are no questions which those present wish to verbalize at this time, we would ask the one known as Aaron to close this session of working with our expression of profound gratitude for the delightful opportunity to share in this teaching, in this service, and, my friends, most, most deeply, in this being served by being able to blend with the vibrations of each of you the hope, the prayers and the faith of each of you. How beautiful you are and how inspiring is your steady and persistent gaze upon truth, beauty and love.

We leave this instrument now in the Creator’s love and light, and transfer this energy to the one known as Barbara and the one known as Aaron. We bid you adieu at this time. We are those of Q’uo. Adonai.

Aaron

This is Aaron. For those of you who are interested in pursuing this, I offer a bit of homework. In the coming evening and morning, watch yourself very carefully. Service is not just the big things, but the little smiling to another, washing a plate or glass, petting a cat who is seeking affection, being love.

Watch yourselves very carefully. Watch for any arising of “I should.” Begin to distinguish the movement of “I should” through the third chakra of will and determination and the “I Am” of love expressed through the open heart. ⁴ The more deeply you can move into awareness of these patterns in yourselves, the less control habitual pattern has over you.

You are so used simply to reacting, so deeply patterned in your responses, that it takes very careful attention to break those responses. It is like a habit of biting the nails, perhaps, or scratching, pulling at the hair, or whatever one may do when one is nervous. In order to change that pattern, one must begin to observe the nervousness. To change the pattern of moving from a place of “I should” into a place of the open heart, one needs to observe the arising of separation which moves one back from the open heart center to the third chakra and pushes one in the direction of “I should.”

So, just watch it, holding no judgment about it. There is nothing bad in making that move. As you bring increasing awareness to it, you find freedom from reactivity to it—simply noticing, moving back to “I should,” moving back to separation and coming back to allow the heart to open again through loving acceptance and compassion for this being who moved momentarily into fear.

I love you all and am filled with joy at the opportunity for this sharing. I thank Carla and those which is known as those of Q’uo for allowing me to participate with them in this teaching, sharing, and learning. May I suggest that we close with a moment or two of silent expression of our joy and gratitude to each other and to God for bringing us together in this way. That is all.