One spring several years ago, our wonderful adult Sunday school class read Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. I was intrigued by what it had to say about our inner character. Recently I’ve been thinking about how the lessons in the book apply to helping others. They reinforce two points I’ve come to believe with all my heart: As much as anything, service is a spiritual practice. And the journey—the approach you take when you help others—is every bit as important as the destination.
In my favorite chapter, Tolle writes about the social roles we take on and how tightly they constrict us, if we let them. Like it or not, our social standing largely determines how we move through the world, and how others orbit around us. “The way in which you speak to the chairman of the company might be different in subtle ways from how you speak to the janitor,” he writes. True, and I’m ashamed to admit it. Watch carefully, he writes, and you will detect this kind of performance first in others and then in yourself. Often it’s a formidable barrier to loving kindness.
But how do you not play a role? As soon as you try to be “just yourself,” Tolle notes, your mind creates a role for you, perhaps something like “wise one.”
