“On this path we will stumble, fall, and often look and feel a little foolish. We are confronting long-standing patterns of thought and action. Compassion for ourselves, perspective, humor … these are our allies. With their help, we can come to see, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, that “no step is lost on this path … and even a little progress is freedom from fear.” The reward, the real grace, of conscious service, then, is the opportunity not only to help relieve suffering but to grow in wisdom, experience greater unity, and have a good time while we’re doing it.”—Ram Dass, “How Can I Help?“

“If they’d planned better, they wouldn’t have these problems.” “I didn’t ask for help—I did it by myself. They can, too.” “People just expect everyone else to take care of them. And then they complain if they don’t get everything they want.” When it came to people in need, our family mottos were “suck it up, walk it off” and then “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

My father was only 10 in Manchester, England, when Britain entered World War II. My mother was raised, also during WW II, as the first generation NOT born into a poor family farm community in the Midwest. Their views of life were undoubtedly shaped by their childhood experiences of rationing, scarcity, duty, and survival.

The great writer Nora Ephron, when pondering the cliché “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” said, “It’s not true. It could just make you bitter.” I’m with Nora on that one. We make choices every day whether to pull back or reach out. My good days are the ones when I can reach out one more time than I pulled back. We each come from different family conditioning, world events, personal experiences, and expectations. How do we break the bonds of long-standing patterns?

My parents stopped going to church shortly after my birth, so I didn’t grow up with regular exposure to the norms of spiritual community. Even if I had, there was no way on God’s green earth that our family would’ve tithed. Money was a closely guarded resource. We didn’t worship it so much as we feared it—afraid that it could abandon us at any moment. So the idea of automatically forking over 10 percent of our income to support some nebulous needs of “the Church?” Anathema. When I became Catholic in my early 20s, I fell deeply, madly in love with learning about God, faith, and habits that expand our sense of self and Spirit. I realized that money was one of my stumbling blocks. In a Lenten frame of mind one year, I decided to donate my entire tax refund to the church.

I remember the nervousness fluttering in my chest as I signed the check, my hand shaking as I dropped it in the collection—and then the flood of tears that rained down on the back of the wooden pew, as I knelt in sheer panic. You’ve heard of buyer’s remorse? I had donator’s remorse. That check was the equivalent of 1.5 months of rent. I lived by myself in a tiny studio apartment in San Francisco, about 200 miles from any family. What if my landlord raised my rent next month? What had I done?

Some people say this is how we step out of our limiting beliefs, how we stretch and grow into new patterns of giving and service. Those people are often on the church stewardship committee. But seriously, sometimes we think we need to do BIG things, act heroically, to change the world. What about how we change OUR world?

While my Lenten offering was well intended, I had acted without compassion. Compassion for myself. I’d tried to go zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds in a Model T mindset of giving. I thought bigger was better, a pure act of selflessness. Instead, I’d triggered every ounce of conditioning I’d grown up with. I became self-conscious of every penny, every bill, every outing I couldn’t afford. I morphed into miserly. I may have given a month’s worth of rent, but I’d given a year’s worth of resentment. I hadn’t grown out of long-standing patterns of penny-pinching—I had discovered how to land squarely back in their grip.

The reason is that my stumbling block wasn’t actually money. My stumbling block was—and still is, to a lesser extent—proving my “worth,” my dedication, through extreme efforts. It’s the shadow side of ego. But a life of conscious service is not the sum total of our labors; it’s not a math equation. It’s an orientation, a way of being in the world that is fueled by and focused on sustainability—for all involved. It’s a non-dual, paradoxical, “put on your own oxygen mask first before you help another” way of service.

Since then I’ve been on a journey to discover how to give and serve out of abundance. In the process, I try to not only respect but also have compassion for my own needs and limitations. And if I can’t do that, I try to find humor in my temporary fumbling. Every step counts, even when we seem to be standing still. And when we fall back into old habits, we can choose to let that experience fuel our empathy rather than judgment. When we do this, even our imperfections become conscious acts of service. Because sometimes the real heroic act lies in refusing to serve our ego that says “bigger is better.”

From the poet David Whyte’s “Start Close In” —

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.