“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

― Tagore

The Wizard’s Reflection

Flexing the Empathic Muscles

Empathy is the cornerstone of good relations and communications. But it is not for the meek. With empathy, we can feel into another being or group of beings and know for ourselves how they are hurting. Such knowledge can be threatening; to feel another’s pain in this way is to feel it as though it were our own. Only an empowered warrior’s spirit has the strength to stay vulnerable enough to feel another’s pain and the endurance to discern how to do something useful, something intelligent, with that knowledge.

True service is an offering of self-sacrifice, but not in the typical self-denying way we think of it. True service arises in a twofold manner, in that it simultaneously serves both the giver and the receiver. The real sacrifice made is our rigid insistence that things can only be one way or another, that I can either serve myself or others, but not both. True service sees that, with maturity, we can feed others by how we feed ourselves.

Suggested Divination Meanings

Can I discern between my feelings and someone else’s feelings?

Can I clarify my needs from those of others?

Am I tending to my own needs so that I can show up fully (fulfilled)?

Am I using the notion of “me first” to avoid a deeper integration with my community?

Am I putting others before myself to the point where I am suffering for it?

Where do my needs meet with the needs of others?

What solutions can I find that draw on my strengths, nurtures my well-being and simultaneously brings assistance to others?

What limiting beliefs do I hold that are keeping me from mutually beneficial outcomes?

Am I holding an ideology that would serve me to sacrifice to live more happily integrated with others?

Where is the balance point between nurturing myself and offering nurturance to others?