Servitude verses Service

The distinction is in the mindset.

Being of service is a fundamental impetus in all of us. To be useful. To be necessary. To be part of something larger. To serve a purpose.

The smallest of acts serves a purpose but so often gets dismissed and ignored because of the apparent insignificance. Yet for want of a horseshoe nail the kingdom was lost. Finding the comfort of meaning in the minutiae lends courage on the path to larger acts of service. Taking pleasure in the daily routines of maintenance or rituals of support brings satisfaction to the most menial of tasks. Never more than in our present global situation has the importance of service been so clear.

Servitude is a mindset where the person being of service, or the one being served, feel entitled to the interaction in some way. Either the person receiving feels they are above doing the deed, that they deserve to be waited on, or the person providing the assistance feels in some way obliged to do so. Truly, they both may BE deserving and obliged but choosing to occupy the feeling of obligation or entitlement is to lose an opportunity for intimacy. Obligation and entitlement are states not conducive to making Moments, but every second of every day in any role in any place is an opportunity for a Moment. Serving is an incredibly fulfilling experience if you choose to embrace it as the powerful and necessary role it is.

Even if you perform the same act one thousand times each day, you are what determines if it is an act of service or an act of servitude. You can choose to find meaning and satisfaction in the sameness while watching for opportunities to get what you need, since Synergy makes sure you have available to you the resources you need when you need them.

Finding satisfaction in service brings pleasure to both sides of the equation and opens doors to opportunities for greater service. Sincere service floods both parties with gratitude for the service rendered and the opportunity to serve.

Have you felt it?

Have you experienced a Moment when someone made you truly feel blessed as they completed an act on your behalf, like it was their honour to be a part of your journey?

Or the reverse, feeling humbled as you gave support to someone whose authenticity and character made you feel you would do anything for them?

Be the horseshoe nail. Take pride in being of service knowing you may seem insignificant or invisible yet Synergy knows your worth. Every act we do is important and an opportunity to share a Moment with ourselves, with Synergy, or with others.

The Culmination

Mindfulness and faith propose that every moment is exactly what was meant to be and that you should surrender yourself to each moment and accept the reality of it. From that acceptance, peace will flow, satisfaction will arise, and joy will blanket you.

But if we follow that philosophy outwards from our limited perspective as an individual, we must also accept and embrace ALL circumstances as having purpose, as being necessary, as part of our requisite circumstances to grow as human beings or the human race.

Mindfulness and faith espouse not judging what is, simply acknowledging what is and reflecting on how that reality influences your satisfaction with the moment and how in turn this moment can be influenced by you.

So, to truly and completely embrace this concept, we must embrace and accept what is present in the world. Without judgement or fear or thought or emotion. And act only upon what we can do in this instant, in this immediate environment, with the tools present and available to us. To do anything else is to leave the moment.

An example is to see the conditions of 2020 without emotional trauma. Yes, the conditions have victimized many and are not peaceful, pleasant nor desirable. But feeling victimized, traumatized, or devastated does not change the circumstances of this moment. Judging any of the political, social, environmental or biological circumstances of 2020 does not make this moment better.

Today’s world is the outcome of cumulative events. Although the impacts of these events are profound and far reaching, which can be overwhelming to consider, the most important focus is here and now. The causes of our situation are irrelevant in this moment, but awareness of the imbalances that led here may be important for you.

Or not.

You are exactly where you need to be. Regardless of how you got here or where you are, you also have everything you need to get where you want to be.

Look around you. What do you need TODAY? What is essential to your survival in this moment and what action can you take today to obtain it. Not future actions or future goals. Here and now is all that counts and is perfect to take you into your next moment.

Our decisions and the impact of the decisions of others creates our situation. But Synergy puts in front of us the tools to change our situation and opportunities to do so if we are patient, present, and persistent.

She’ll be with you in a Moment if you quietly wait, watch and believe.

Imagery

A picture is worth a thousand words.

But one word paints a thousand different pictures in a thousand different minds.

Like the compound eyes of a fly, Synergy gets a much better picture of our reality when she receives one thousand perspectives not one thousand copies of the same perspective. The Datter is more clear to Eidolon when he receives uncorrupted information, rather than copies of copies of copies.

Words create an unpolluted interpretation in your mind. As soon as images are added, they taint that portrait created by your personal experience, your own flair and nuances subverted by the image presented to you. Yes, an author can more effectively get specific points across using images, diagrams, and sketches to clarify and clarity does have its time and place.

Yet when not absolutely necessary, forcing structure into the minds of the audience is a disservice bordering on contempt. Allowing the audience to generate meaning from words gives the freedom for growth, exploration and curiosity. If all the answers are easy to find, and spoon fed, life becomes quite unfulfilling and dissatisfying. None of us truly has all the answers anyway, merely our interpretation of our experience. The collation of those individual interpretations into a glorious mosaic of meaning creates the ultimate Truth.

Even assigning an image to the speaker changes the flavour of the words. Narrows the interpretation. Cues biases, judgement and filters. Once a voice becomes attached to words, all the associations of similar voices influence the listener’s response to that voice. Past pain poisons present perspective by triggered associations.

Each of us is the culmination of our experiences and history. If tapping into our wise mind, we are also accessing all experience and all history. These influence our interpretation of what we perceive, which may hinder or help our journey depending on the nature of the response.

Wisdom without confinement within images and other sensory bindings is more easily absorbed. The resonance of authentic sincerity is strongest when unfettered.

When getting a point across is necessary, the precision of words and images is a tool. When inspiring curiosity, growth, and hope, the tool of choice is ambiguity. Minds can’t seek what they are given, they can only seek what they do not have.

Unadulterated

Funny word. It looks made up, especially in our #hashtag world. It sounds rebellious and childlike.

Yet the Oxford definition makes absolutely no reference to maturity levels, state of mind, or adulthood whatsoever.

Un·a·dul·ter·at·ed/ˌənəˈdəltəˌrādəd/Learn to pronounceadjective

not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements; complete and absolute.”pure, unadulterated jealousy”
- (of food or drink) having no inferior added substances; pure.”unadulterated whole-milk yogurt”

Concentrated and pure.

That’s what unadulterated means.

If you asked a child to compose a definition for the word, it would be something like “without adult influence” or “not grown up”, possibly “immature”.

And truthfully, a child embodies the word in its dictionary definition and any other possible interpretation of it. They are pure, concentrated energy. As they spend time exposed to adults, their magical wonder gets diluted and dispelled until, for some, little remains by age 17. We adults mix them up with our thoughts, judgements, opinions and information so they become…well…adulterated.

The wise mind is pure, unadulterated wisdom. Straight from the source, Eidolon’s database of the collective observations of the nature of the universe. Stored free of any different or extra elements like judgements or feelings. No inferior components.

Being childlike is pure. Looking at the world without filters gives concentrated experiences of it, leading to intense awareness of how it works.

Become unadulterated.

Whittling

Each day is a raw, rough, heavy block of wood. Or stone. Or clay. You’re the artist, you pick the medium.

Your job is to feel it, to sit with that substance and gauge its spirit, then release it. Craft something beautiful out of the material you have to work with.

Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what you make of your day has absolutely no need to meet someone else’s approval. Even if you work for someone else, when you let go of your self-expectations and simply feel your potential, things tends to fall into place to meet your obligations incidental to your ultimate purpose.

Whittle away at the extraneous. Carve out the core which aches for expression that day. Look at the grain and heart of what is in front of your eyes and surrender to its shape. Smooth out rough edges, buff it to a shine, and sigh with satisfaction as you admire your handiwork of the day.

That could be as simple a task as a well-made bed or as momentous an endeavour as launching a satellite. Since the value and satisfaction is assigned by you and only you, both are of merit. Satisfaction comes from finding balance in your day, not accolades from outsiders.

Synergy gives us what we need each day to survive and flourish. No matter our starting point, the raw materials for the day are there to be honed into something satisfying. We must look with our wise mind at what we are given, opening our eyes to the limitless possibilities available to everyone who knows how to perceive them.

Manufacturing Gratitude

It’s ok not to be grateful. Especially for something you never asked for. Especially when you do not feel grateful. Especially if someone is telling you to be grateful.

Shame on them.

Gratitude is an emotion. Emotions happen when they happen, not when you tell yourself to feel them. You are sad when sad, glad when glad and mad when mad. Emotions simply are. A product of the material world, they are a sensory response to the current social environment. You can’t tell your fingers to feel warm in a snow storm. You can’t tell your face not to feel hot in the sun.

Why do you think you can tell your feelings to experience gratitude?

Gratitude bubbles up from inside you when conditions feel balanced and satisfactory…TO YOU. Your personal definition of balance or satisfaction may be wildly different than someone else’s, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with your perspective. Being told you should be grateful is being treated with contempt. It is telling you to judge yourself and your feelings, and find yourself guilty.

Beware giving yourself that same message! When you ponder your feelings and determine you shouldn’t have them, you are being unfair to yourself. Try telling your hand not to feel the burner under your palm. Same task, but because we fail to recognize our intangible emotions as an extension of our nervous system, we treat them like a part of our soul.

Emotions are information. Not actions nor facts.

Gratitude is a breathtakingly glorious emotion and it’s understandable those experiencing it want you to feel it too. Fake it til you make it, practice gratitude, choose thankfulness. Great ideas, but missing the point.

Manufacturing a facade of an emotion does generate pathways of practiced nerve patterns. Acting out routines does create habits. This much is true. But the emotion of gratitude is spontaneous and joyful, not habitualized and mechanical.

Funny thing, when it wells out of you, you realize it doesn’t want to follow those practices, routines and habits! Gratitude wants to playfully take you out of your comfort zone into your curiosity. It drives you to tears with its intensity but not to acts of creating lists.

You are grateful, or you are not. There is no try. And that’s just fine.

Dissatisfaction is a sign you are ready to grow. No matter how well-appointed the nursery might be, every child reaches the stage of needing to experience more, explore more, discover more. Gratitude and satisfaction go hand in hand, with imbalance chasing both of them away.

What imbalance exists that is pressuring for change? Curiosity demands an exploration when gratitude is nowhere to be found in a situation. And in the Moment when the source of imbalance is revealed, appreciation will flow through your veins because suddenly the game is afoot and your journey will begin!

So embrace a lack of gratitude as being the summons to the post, where you are to begin a steeplechase toward a higher level of understanding yourself. From discomfort comes growth and after growth comes gratitude!

Drama Queens and Production Kings

The closer an element is to stability, the more reactive it is.

The closer people are to being stable, the more volatile they are.

When something is so close to fruition, so very near fulfillment, the drive for completion is intense. When every new encounter could be the key, every corner turned the final one, of course you are going to wholeheartedly leap into every Moment with the expectation that THIS is the one!

Aye. There’s the rub.

Expectations. Of others. Of self. Of Synergy. Putting the burden on them to be what is needed for stability, rather than trusting that satisfaction is an ongoing long term process of sequential Moments accumulating the necessary energy for stability.

Granted, the passionate person has a greater likelihood of finding their passionate soulmate in one Moment, one first glance, than those with less volatility but the likelihood of false starts and misreads also increases exponentially.

Volatile elements are on a continuum called the Reactivity Series. Not all elements have the same affinity for electrons and so one type of atom can strip the electrons off another type of atom even if it is in a stable bond. This is the nature of elements. It is neither right nor wrong, it simply is the nature of the core structure of each element and the pattern card of how the element interacts with other atoms.

Volatile people can unsettle and unbalance even the most composed of individuals. Personalities so close to stability as to be volatile truly live in the moment, but not in a surrendered, accepting way. Each moment is experienced with passionate immersion but is not balanced upon the scaffold of all previous moments, instead experienced as a stand alone, without antecedents or consequence. The need in the moment strips the available energy, even if only temporary and unintended, and later regretted.

Moments, to be effective, must be lived intentionally or they are simply a missed opportunity. Drama Queens and Production Kings have a handle on embracing the moment but not the intentionality. So close they can taste it but it slips away and they don’t understand why.

So on to the next Moment.

Until they either meet a Noble gas which cannot be perturbed, and learn the resonance of true surrender and acceptance, or they discover their soul mate and stability, or they are forced inside themselves so deeply by trauma they reconnect with their wise mind and it guides them into intentionality.

Judgement and shame are not on any of these roads. We are what we are, our core structure and our coping strategies. Acceptance of that reality is necessary before stability can be attempted.

Volatile elements and volatile people are only a short but energetic leap away from satisfaction. It just has to be done with eyes wide open and blind faith.

Meet Me at Eight

Adding or removing negative electrons from the outermost orbital cloud (the valence shell) is how atoms gain stability. The number of electrons they need to take or give determines their behaviour patterns in chemical reactions, but their patterns are consistent and predictable, occurring at repeated intervals hence the title Periodic (as in happening after a set period) Table!

Almost all elements achieve stability with 8 valence electrons. Helium needs only 2, all other Noble gases have 8 and most other elements want to be just like them.

Humans don’t want to be unstable. Volatile people are attempting to stabilize themselves by interacting with others in the pattern most consistent with their core need to either lift themselves up an energy level or drop themselves down. Just like reactive elements, when exposed to other elements they must react, unless they’ve form a stable bond with an appropriate partner and from that bond feel satisfaction and serenity.

Chemical bonds can form either by transferring negative charges (ionic), or by sharing them (covalent). Both types of bonds can meet the needs of the atoms involved but one type creates independent atoms while the other creates codependent atoms.

Humans can form bonds which allow them to operate independently of their partner, or bonds which require them to be intimately tied to and in close proximity to the one sharing energy.

A stable bond is built when each partner perfectly supports the energy needs of the other – opposite charges. A soulmate is the person who takes you to the energy level you need to be at, up or down, by either receiving what you need to give, or giving what you need to receive. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. When exchange of energy has happened and created balance, the partners are free to be their core selves while sharing their lives.

If sharing energy but not near to each other, the codependent bond loses its stability and the people seek energy from the nearest compatible person. The bond feels strongly connected in person, with any person, in moments together but fades away when farther apart. Out of sight, out of mind. Because balance only is found in moments of connection, the partners are insecure and needy, requiring constant contact for energy sharing. Like attracting like but unable to be stable.

Sharing can be useful and productive but is not sustainable in the long run. True deep connection requires the vulnerability of give and take rather than an overlap of edges.

Schrodinging Everything

Hedge your bets and prepare for all eventualities with the hopes that things will come out hopping when Synergy finally presents the opportunity to open the darn box.

Greeting every day with curiosity, hope and acceptance means being ready for anything in any Moment. Being receptive to whatever springs up on you means you’ll never be disappointed with the chances you didn’t take, the opportunities you didn’t seize or the Moments you missed.

Assume all possibilities are open to you until the moment you know the truth.

This includes options you may perceive as negative. Don’t rule out failure or hurdles…in fact, count on them thus they won’t devastate you. Have Plan A, Plan B, in fact prepare the entire alphabet just in case. The more you understand the parameters and possible outcomes for every decision you face, the stronger your position for satisfaction in a perhaps unexpected form.

We don’t know what is best for ourselves. We don’t know what we need. We often don’t know who we even are, so how can we be certain what is in our best interests?

Synergy knows. But it’s up to us to accept her wisdom and be receptive to her gentle guidance. We blind ourselves with our thoughts and feelings, setting our hearts on things that were never meant to be, because we are trapped in our past or dreaming of our future.

Obstacles, barriers and disappointments are merely rungs on the ladder ascending toward enlightenment and true understanding of self, others, and the universe. Our purpose is to discover our purpose, which can’t be chosen, can’t be predicted, only unveiled.

Every decision has a Moment for making it. Not talking about it. Not planning it. Not dreaming about it. Those are not decisions, those are efforts. Until the Moment of Truth, efforts encompassing all possible outcomes yield the best return on Synergy’s investment in us. So, Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead, treat it as such until time to open the box!

Emotional Distancing

Not from others. From yourself. To protect your Eternal self from the influence of the short circuit between emotions, thoughts, and who you really are at your core.

When an emotion comes calling at the door to your mind, it does have the right to be there. Emotions are essential to survival and provide information, sensory data about the environment. They must be accepted and welcomed with curiosity, even affection, because they are childlike in their simplicity.

But keep your thoughts and behaviours at a safe distance because emotions can be contagious and acting with them, giving in to their impulses, is unproductive for your core self. Treat your emotions like a toddler, one with story upon story to share with you but much of their information is filtered through a blurred lense. Don’t reject or abandon the toddler when they give you misinformation. They are doing the best they can.

Striking up a conversation with unpleasant emotions is a necessary challenge. Discomfort fuels the drive for growth and tells you there are changes you need to be making in the moment. Chatting with your fear, trading blows with your anger, or consoling your sorrow are the only ways to get to know them. Understand them. Ease their dissatisfaction. Balance them.

Each emotion is a valuable indicator of your present situation. Synergy created them to nudge us into action, not into judgement. Engaging with emotions provides Datter so long as a feedback loop of thoughts and associations doesn’t trap you in the past or fling you into the future.

That’s why it’s important to keep your emotions at a healthy distance. Then you can ensure you maintain function in the Moment by listening to what your emotions have to say and then allowing them to be on their way and not take up residence in your mind.