Community service

I would like to know what everyone's views are on community service. I, for one, feel it is important but yet I am happy for other people to do it. It is nicer to feel you can agree and applaud on the sidelines when someone else is doing it. I forget about it. Until a friend of yours drag you to one, with a smile of course. I mean who wants to give up, either a public holiday or weekend, to help those we deem less fortunate than us.

I see people beg and give them a tenner. It used to sooth my conscious or I used to judge them with what they going to do with the money, but when one grows spiritually you realise you are but the custodian of money and possessions. You get faced on a daily basis how you distribute not only money, but time, items in your home that you truly do not use and insights, or shall I rather say, your advise. We know how that can go when you think yourself blessed with more braincells than the person next to you.

Program for the day.

I was tasked by my friend to prep for a talk at a shelter for abused women. Teaching them things that is very near and dear to my heart. Things like your energy, self-talk, the creator that you are and your lens that you view life through. My friend gives me a program for the day and it goes like this.

1. Meditation for everyone to settle in and arrive back in their bodies. We get so busy and all we do is fret about yesterday. Worry about tomorrow and never enjoy the present.
2. Motivational talk. Deliver talk with theme of hope, resilience and empowerment.
3. Breathing exercise. Now this is a good one for relieving stress and cheaper than medication and therapy.

Well nothing went according to plan. The air was electrifying or I was just nervous as hell! My self-talk starts and my brain is going a thousand revs a minutes. So Yolanda? What do you have to say to these women as your trauma is nothing in comparison to theirs? You are going to make a fool of yourself. They are going to fall asleep or fidget. Get restless as your words will mean nothing and they will think you come here all high and mighty to want to show them how they can overcome their trauma. What do you even know about what they need?

I stood there overcome by emotions and all my higher self is telling me that it is okay to be vulnerable. Don't hold back. So I cried. I told them my story and that is what connected us. I showed them my humanness and how scared I am and that I will mess up but my intentions are pure. It did make me more relaxed.

With my nerves I forgot to only do the meditation and pulled in the breathwork as well. I did it more for myself and I was short of breath and tried to calm myself more than teaching them. At the end it helped a lot of them. Not all but so what. We reached those who needed it and we will try again tomorrow. Or the day after.

The shocker is that I think I needed it more than the women. It really brings things back into perspective and make me reevaluate all the things I should be grateful for.

One question that someone was brave enough to ask is how can she silence the noise of others that stays negative when she wants to heal. My answer was to never expect others to change their way of being to please you. Like you, they are all trying to heal and find themselves again. She did not like the answer as we tend to think we become holier than thou as we are trying to fix what is broken.

You can never expect others to change in order for you to have a safer and better place to be in. Accept where you are and use that as part of your journey. Try and take as many along but with pure intentions, and not for your benefit, but always to serve. There is healing in that.

Allowing others their space to grow is such a super power. So go out there and change the world with kindness and compassion.