Seva
By Lissa Farrell
Seva is most commonly defined as selfless service. My understanding & experience of seva at this time in my existence is a sacred exchange of beauty and love, a circular pattern of giving and receiving and one whose impacts are often unspoken and not understood from the start, rather they are discovered by the sevite through the rich experience of giving and inevitably receiving. Seva is a quiet offering of divine love, a practice of worship, with no strings attached, no expectation of what you will receive in reward and this is the beauty of it – this is the freedom in it.
Seva is a rich and vast pond of something sweet.
Seva feels delicate to me because our human minds tend to complicate matters and thus I share with you a few important considerations in offering seva:
- The attitude with which you offer seva
- Asking yourself, with complete honesty, what is the intention behind your seva?
- What are the expectations of the fruit of your service?
- How are you willing to offer your service without reward?
- Looking closely at the way you go about performing your seva
Where can one go from here? Offer your purest, no strings attached self, in love, with no expectation of what you’ll receive and see what happens – see what you feel and what you experience, see where it takes you.
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This sharing comes as as we more officially move to create more seva opportunitues at Lakshmi Living Arts. I, Lissa Farrell, am helping with this process and wanted to share my above thoughts on seva as well as these thoughts below. We’ll be following up with more details on ways to offer seva at Lakshmi and know that many of you are already offering seva. Please feel welcome to share your experience of that offering by replying to this email.
In closing it feels important to name a few things that seva is not given the tendency of our western minds to define things through the experiences we have already had or with words we already understand. Seva is not volunteering as we know it. We associate volunteering most often as something we do for a defined exchange or as something we do to to help another. If you currently volunteer for something you can challenge yourself to treat it as seva and see if the experience changes. On another note your experience is not seva if you feel like “I’ve given enough” or “I can’t keep giving to this,” something is off if that is the experience as “seva creates a pond of nectar.”
This by Hafiz eloquently sums it up.
Even after all this time
The Sun never says to the Earth
‘You owe me’
Look what happens with a love like that
It lights up the whole sky
Stay tuned for more information about offering seva at Lakshmi Living Arts!
Lissa Farrell is an Anusara Elements Yoga teacher and student at Lakshmi Living Arts. She currently coordinates programming at Lakshmi and seva opportunities with those who wish to help Lakshmi grow into a center for spiritual development and creating a beautiful earth.