We begin to understand service precisely and objectively. To serve is not a matter of serving a person or creature. It is not a matter of serving a community, even humanity. All that is, all forms and sentient beings, exist for the absolute to behold its creative display. All beings are instruments toward this end. Because that is their true and objective function, their true happiness and complete fulfillment rests in totally fulfilling their function, in completely being themselves. For beings to completely be themselves is to serve their source, which is actually their innermost identity. To be happy is to do what they are designed to do, which is to be instruments for the absolute truth. There is no distinction between being authentically oneself and serving absolute truth. The two are absolutely identical. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, ch. 23
One of the requirements of serving the objective truth, of serving God, of serving the Absolute, is to be fit for that service so that we won’t be living our selfish needs. We live our selfish needs when we serve our belief in having a separate existence. There isn’t a separate existence. We aren’t solitary souls bobbing around the universe. We are, as I’ve said many times, like God’s finger. We are an extension, a protrusion, of the truth. And if we don’t live that way, we won’t live according to the truth that is our nature, that is the nature of existence, that is how things are—the natural law. So one of the ways we can approach experience is through the realization that we’re working on developing ourselves spiritually, emotionally, and physically in order to be fit and worthy servants for the master that is truth. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch. 12
The more deeply we see our inner nature, the more we love it and the more we want to do nothing else but serve it. We begin to wish and pray to become a slave to the truth. In time, the soul recognizes that that’s what it wants in its own heart. Servitude is not imposed from above. Neither is it a decision we make. We have to go deeply into the heart of the soul and see what that heart wants. What makes that heart peaceful and happy? What is its highest aim?
If we look at it that way, we see that the work on the passions is indispensable. We need to discover the realm of virtues: serenity, humility, truthfulness, detachment, equanimity, sobriety. We need to learn not to consume our experiences. That’s the attitude of the inner glutton, who doesn’t want to feel his empty stomach. With sobriety, we are awake with our experiences and not overtaken by our passions. We are not overrun by our unrefined nature. We are awake to ourselves and approach our experience with some kind of detachment, with some kind of humility and gratitude, with some kind of purity. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, Ch. 12