Dear Friends,We hope that you are well and enjoying the beautiful season of autumn wherever you are. Last week we gave a satsang at Ananda Village about the spiritual practice of seeing everything we do as service. The community members here said they enjoyed and benefited from it, so we’d like to share our thoughts with you as well.
What’s the difference between work and service? Swami Kriyananda said: “We should view whatever gainful employment we seek as a service, never merely as work. The mere thought of hard work, indeed, often drains a person’s energies, whereas joyful, willing service opens inner floodgates to a boundless supply of energy.”
Here are three keys to help you transform your attitude about your work into “joyful, willing service”:
- Do everything you do with the consciousness of inner peace. If you find yourself getting tense, nervous, or upset at work, take a break, breathe, or meditate for a few minutes — whatever helps you to return to a balance point of inner peace and centeredness. Consciously try to bring peace and calmness into every activity. You’ll find you get a lot more done, too, and at the end of the day, you’ll feel refreshed and uplifted.
- Be intensely aware of what you are doing, not with strain or tension, but with quiet absorption. Serving with concentration also draws intuitive guidance and creative solutions to deal with the task at hand. A concentrated mind, as opposed to a scattered one, is automatically filled with upliftment and peace.
- Offer everything you do to God. Whatever your job may be — important or humble — offer it joyfully and freely to God. Remember, all work is His work – we are merely His channels in this world. No work is important or unimportant in God’s eyes, but serving in a spirit of self-offering draws His blessings.
At the conclusion of our community satsang we shared this list: “101 Ways We Serve at Ananda.” We hope that you can find something in this list that you do, too, and join us in your service to God.
In divine friendship,
Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi
101 Ways We Serve at Ananda
- Raise cows, goats, and chickens
- Run an online radio station that plays Ananda music 24/7
- Grow vegetables and fruits
- Build and maintain water systems
- Do property management overseeing infrastructure and roads
- Develop new property
- Run a talk-of-the month club with Swami Kriyananda’s archived lectures
- Build and maintain homes
- Do community planning and master plans
- Compile phone lists, birthday lists and The Villager weekly newsletter
- Oversee membership process
- Teach children and run schools
- Start colleges and teach classes
- Run clinics as doctors, nurses, clerical support
- Raise children and build marriages
- Train and counsel new members
- Run markets, stock shelves, cook lunches
- Run a phone system
- Operate a blacksmith shop
- Design beautiful gardens and plant tulips
- Maintain Crystal Hermitage and keep the systems working
- Pray for others and run a Healing Prayer Councils
- Teach people Kriya and support their practice
- Train choirs and perform music every week of the year
- Sell gems and make jewelry
- Design and publish books and market them globally
- Ship out Ananda books and products
- Develop websites
- Make meditation benches and cushions
- Develop online businesses and boutiques
- Make sandwiches, hummus, and cookies for market
- Offer online classes and webinars
- Commute or telecommute to jobs in tech industry
- Do art and crafts
- Publish an online magazine
- Dry tomatoes
- Teach yoga and train teachers
- Work with community finances and pay bills
- Write pay checks
- Do financial and investment consulting
- Put mail in boxes and label packages
- Raise funds to keep things going
- Start new foundations to expand Ananda
- Attract the devas
- Make altars and sacred spaces beautiful
- Keep computers and computer systems running
- Teach a friend to use their iPhone or Kindle
- Teach people to meditate and train teachers
- Cook meals for family and friends
- Take people to hospital and pray during their surgery
- Run The Expanding Light
- Organize workdays
- Maintain The Expanding Light buildings and gardens
- Write books
- Create yearly calendars for The Expanding Light’s classes
- Answer emails
- Design flyers and brochures
- Give massages
- Give haircuts
- Take photos and make videos
- Support and visit meditation groups
- Pick figs for friends
- Run boutiques and shrines
- Operate costume shops
- Care for our parents
- Do fire-clearing
- Start new centers and communities
- Smile at a stranger
- Help people sell things on eBay
- Start endowment funds for the future
- Donate and tithe
- Direct and perform plays
- Raise bees and gather honey
- Join the local fire department
- Develop a Spanish Ministry and teach Spanish-speaking people in South America and Spain
- Cook three meals a day 365 days a year at The Expanding Light
- Bring meals to people who are ill
- Lead sadhanas
- Sew curtains
- Fix cars
- Use big equipment to keep property open and beautiful
- Proofread new manuscripts
- Baby-sit
- Tell someone, “You can do it!”
- Send out mailings
- Teach people how to have radiant health
- Clean houses
- Do landscaping and create fountains
- Make someone laugh
- Teach the AUM technique
- Stay calm in a crisis
- Host 4,000 people to see the tulips (and feed them scones)
- Share Nature with Children
- Go to book fairs, trade fairs, and new age fairs
- Teach Karma Yoga to new people
- Feed the birds
- Operate databases
- Share divine friendship
- Attune with Master
- Love God
- Do lots of other things that never make it on to lists
What ways do you serve?
40 Comments
I serve by helping to share Masters teachings and train nurses
I’m so grateful for the Ananda Sangha newsletters that help sincere devotees who live far from the Village! I look forward to reading every one, watch the videos and share them with newcomers in the Dallas community.
Thank you for all that you do for us!
Sounds like fun!
Well done.The Sangha is reaching out to many people with the motto do work unselfishly without looking for the fruits.
Learn to sing Swami’s music
Raise children in God’s light
Having so recently moved to the Ananda community in Pune, India, I launched into intense service preparing Swamiji Kriyananda’s house for his imminent arrival. Working long hours was not new for me, but having no break was, but I applied the principals that Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi outlined above, in particular number 3. The work became a joy, a way of connecting with God, and reaped the blessing of spiritual growth through selflessness.
I heartily recommend it if you want inner transformation
God bless all
AUM
Completely agree. I had similar experience during hiking.
Expressing grattidue to the parts of the body that made me hike heights took away my pain
Here are list of services which we can develop in our life’s activities. When we do such ervices we seek a way of reaching God.Swami Kriyananda has rigtly show various ways of voluntary sevices ( Seva ) that devotees can develop such services ( Seva )
My Pranam to Swami Kriyananda
I convey Happy Diwali to hom and all devotees resiting at the Ananda Ashram This is the best time of the year to convey such opinions
Truly yours
Shankerprasad S Bhatt
WEb site: worldprayers.googlepages.com
Thanks for publishing ,y comments
Pranam to Swami Kriyananda
Truly yours
Shankerprasad S Bhatt
It’s a joy just to read the list , I do many of those too…
Love
I think it is wonderful to be part of a serving community living in India and in a city community there is a creativity which gives ideas to serve Masters work in a very small way but Greater Joy then anything else in the world.
It opens the serving heart and all the chakras which Raise our energy levels in a fraction of a second.
Namaste! Beautiful and timely. God was ministering this very lesson to me this morning. Remember God is the Doer! In Divine Love
I’m a social worker at my local jail and I do notice a dramatic difference in my energy and positivity level when I remember to view my job as service instead of work. Thank you for the reminder. God bless my time at Ananda for instilling these principles within me.
I’am helping to share Master’s teachings and Swami’s teachings teaching Ananda yoga and I am so grateful to God and Guru
gave me teachers as Gyandev, Diksha, Shivani, Uma and many others expressing their devotion in their service.OM
Annamaria
Heaven on Mother Earth really..
Wish i was there to lend a helping hand..
Divine blessings to Tyagi Ashleigh, Turiya, Melody and all at Ananda for healing prayers for ‘Saint Samantha’ and for sharing those wonderful lessons..
Light the way and for sure i will follow..
Thank you all at Ananda..
Read the “101 ways”.Wonderful.
MY hearty Pranam to Swami Kriyananda
I am a 57 year old retired truck driver, father, grandfather and now a great grandfather and I have always followed Jesus and the Buddha. I first read Autobiography of a Yogi in 1979 and it has stayed with me in my heart and mind ever since. I have been very blessed to have Lord Krishna touch me and now I am dedicating my life to him. I am starting my course from the Ananda Church this week and my life has already transformed and its beautiful beyound discription. Hare Krishna dear friends.
These are just wonderful ways of connecting to serve our guruji and god.
I always thought of serving our Ananda community in big ways but today I realize it is these small ways of connecting with each other and serving our Guruji is what really counts.
Rgds
manjeri
My service project this month is to create a community oriented web site for Ananda Assisi with blogs such as this. I’ve been taking pictures of years and I’m very thankful for the willingness of all my spiritual family to allow me to capture our daily life here and and share it with the world on our websites, and in books and brochures. Their joyful participation is a great service, as the images can be a powerful and direct expression of the Ananda vibration and masters teachings.
I am also very thankful for all the people who translate into and from italian! In our multilingual community it is a constant and vital service.