Helping Others Helps Yourself

To make quick and lasting changes in your life, roll up your sleeves and help change the world for the better. Dreaming of living the life of a pampered prince or princess will only set your soul’s evolution back. Volunteering to bandage cuts and take temperatures of children in African villages is far more satisfying. Ministering to the elderly, dying, sick, hungry, and forsaken will stretch your heart and help fulfill your own worthwhile dreams.

Attending college to amass wealth, live in a gleaming penthouse condo, and retire to a golf course, while completely oblivious to the plight of others along the way, is a hollow dream. Studying engineering with the intent of building schools and bridges in third world countries, or cooking and serving nutritious meals at a community kitchen, enriches life. Millions are in need of your experience and counsel. Living in one of the wealthiest nations of the world is a karmically-earned privilege. To fulfill your obligation, however, you must help create a safer, kinder, and healthier existence for those less fortunate, not only in your nation but the world—that they might evolve as you have. Those living pampered lives without thought or feelings for others do not fulfill that evolutionary mandate. In their ignorance, they stand at the precipice of losing everything they’ve earned. And if a critical mass of souls of a nation perpetuates the same delusion, the nation will fail. And if that nation is the leader of the free world, all nations behind that one will fail.

A proven way to fulfill your dreams is to help others fulfill theirs. By helping others throughout your life, on the day you are laid to rest, your house of worship will fill to capacity, each in attendance holding a piece of your heart. Regardless of age, education, or intelligence, you are ultimately responsible to first heal yourself, then help heal the others. As one’s motives count for everything, your smallest offerings are tallied in your favor on the quantum field of consciousness. Helping others fulfill their purpose in life, you fulfill your own.

Ultimately, those at the end of their rope or in need of a listening ear, benefit more from your loving presence than by writing a check from the comfort of your study. Volunteering to coordinate clearing a neighborhood devastated by a storm, or transporting an elderly neighbor and her possessions to an assisted living center, connects you to the true purpose of life, which is not the same as writing a check. Offering your time and muscle strengthens your bond with others now and into the future.

Is it your wish to be a rock star or an actor with your name on a marquee to earn the respect and love of others? Do you desire to be a doctor or lawyer purely for prestige and money? If your motives are designed for the benefit of your ego, true happiness will always elude you. Unselfish motives are the lifeblood connecting humanity. And though many start out in life with high ideals and good intentions, few end up following in the footsteps of an Albert Schweitzer or a Mahatma Gandhi.

Humanity needs fewer takers and more givers. However, volunteering and then resenting your decision wastes everyone’s time—especially your own. It would be wiser to take a pass than have a negative attitude. In such a vibration, the karma incurred is worse than not volunteering at all. Until you are capable of offering your time and resources unconditionally to assist others, better to focus on healing yourself.

There’s much work to be done to bring peace to the world. But if you’re hanging on by an emotional thread, begin in simple ways. Bending down to pick up the litter along your route to the grocery store, in its own small way, brightens the world. Roll up your sleeves one day a week to assist those in greater need than yourself. Whatever you do, however insignificant, the world changes for the better as a result, while your own dreams magically unfold.