Service Motivated by Love

This is a reflection submitted by a third-year teacher who gets “it.” If you understand his musings, you will “get it” too.

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“Teaching As A Selfless Service.. A student was detained last Friday for mild defiance. Student would always appear unmotivated, and cared less about class expectations and policies.

During what was meant to be a 15 minutes detention, student ended up speaking with adult for about two hours. It was as if she has never been listened to before. She wanted to talk about everything. And the details came out of her mind and soul effortlessly.

According to student, she lives with 39 people in a 9 bedroom house owned by her grandmother (Not sure if that’s true or possible). The 39 people included aunties, uncles, siblings and strangers who help pay the mortgage to the house. Clothes and dishes are washed outside.

Student has been living in that condition since she was three years old. She dislikes the condition and the step father her mother is married to. Because of all that, student prefers hanging outside with “hommies”. Student has been cited many times by the police for ditching school; has been exposed to drugs and attempted suicide three weeks ago.

Student is now in some intervention program and being counseled weekly; and given medication to alleviate the urge for taking drugs. Student unconsciously uses street language a lot and shows some attitude that may be off-putting to adults in school. After listening for about 2 hours, adult concluded that student had a lot of strength in her character for showing up every day to school.

Student was positively re-enforced and a min-contract was drawn so she could check in with adult whenever she needed to. Both adult and student were touched in a different way after that encounter. After listening to this story, I did some reflection on teaching, service, material quest and life. I did ask myself; “What will be the best possible way to render meaningful help as quickly as possible to such individual?

I ended up acquiring the except below; Some would say that service should be given without any spiritual beliefs, that it is only possible to help others through material contributions of various kinds: food, medicine, housing and so on.

Some politicians, who believe this, want religious spokesmen restricted to the area of personal morality alone. But the true morality in these days is not so much how you lead your private life, although that is important, but rather, how much you are contributing to the benefit of the world as a whole.

Material contributions are essential but they do not get to the root of the problem, and so they do not bring lasting change. You can feed a person through money but you cannot get rid of greed with money and so you cannot get rid of poverty. You can, if you are financially powerful enough, even influence the outcome of a particular war, but you cannot remove hate and so wars will recur.

Only one force will remove and transmute these negative energies and emotions, and that is SERVICE MOTIVATED BY LOVE. Then, will you send the spiritual energy that is needed at the root of the problem. If you wish to help a sick person who is dying of a heart condition, but refuses to give up smoking, follows an unhealthy diet and completely refuse to take any physical exercise, you can give him the most expensive treatment on earth, but he will sooner or later deteriorate again.

If you however inspire that person to change their lifestyle; to have a more positive approach to themselves and their condition, and to be so concerned about others that they want to become fitter and more active, then you may help them to remove the sickness permanently and completely. In a sense humanity is like that sick person.

Material help is essential in war-torn, disease-ridden, poverty-stricken areas, but ultimately, the whole problem will be solved when the consciousness of humanity changes. Even the prophesies will be changed for the better. The only lasting way to change that consciousness is to transmute the greed, hate and selfishness with an outpouring of spiritual energy conditioned by love.

Teachers, this is exactly what you do every day; getting to the root of problems by giving the right kind of knowledge timely and wisely. May the Divine Creative Principle continue to guide, strengthen, and inspire you. And by the way, may your formal observations be smooth and hassle free.

Thank you,

Titus Ume-ezeoke