This activity is based on an exercise from the Joyful Living program created by Sharon Porter and Kaye Cooper. Soaking your whole body is comforting and therapeutic. Let’s see what happens when you imagine yourself soaking in a bath of comfortably warm water infused with the concentrated salt of loving service. This salt of service will infuse you with the comfort and satisfaction which comes from being of assistance to others.
Service is the raw material for forming friendships and community. Service is the giving of your effort, assets or influence for the benefit of others unselfishly. It is done to give, not to get. It does not create obligation. When recognized, it is appreciated by its recipients and observers.
Imagine you are in a private, well lighted and warm bath chamber. There is a large bathtub filled with warm water in the room. You are in your bathing attire. On a shelf in front of you is a large jar of Service Salts. Pour out a double hand full of the salt and spread it in the water. Stir it with your hand. Feel how soothing and warm the water is.
Now step into the tub. Feel the heat of the water and the soothing calm of the salts on your feet and legs. Sit down and notice the slight tingle in your body. Imagine this is your response to the love energy of service in the salts. Ease yourself down until the water covers your whole body. The salts begin to provide you with thoughts and feelings of serving and being served.
Feel how wonderful it is when someone does something for you that you want done. Remember the feeling of receiving a massage or of having someone come to your assistance in lifting a heavy load or of having someone help you care for an ailing parent. Recall that special feeling you get when you realize someone has done something specifically to benefit you. Let this feeling expand. Feel the friendliness, the attractiveness of this. Feel your appreciation for this gift of service and for the person giving it.
[Pause 10 sec.]
Now shift your imagination to feel what it is like to serve and to have your service appreciated. This giving side of service is a wonderful, magical experience too. The experience of service is a joy to both the giver and the receiver.
Smell the fragrance of service. What is it like?. Is it sweet, fresh, clean?. Taste a drop of the water. What does it taste like?. Does it taste salty or is it sweet like fruit? Soak in the smell, the taste, the warmth, and the pleasure. Soak up the pleasure of serving and being served. Feel the urge to serve others arise in you and gently release any hesitation you may feel.
[Pause 10 sec.]
Now shift your thinking again to imagine being service – not the server or the one served – but service itself. As service, you effectively link people together in friendship for one another and in gratitude. Soak for a while, feeling the magical power of service to cause people to be connected and appreciative of each other.
Allow the service motivation to soak into you. Fill all the spaces within and around the atoms of your body with the desire to serve and with gratitude for being served. Now soak.
[Pause 30 sec.]
Thank you. That is an experience of soaking in the value “service”, a Joyful Living exercise, and I hope you will choose to continue to soak in service, as well as other values, for the remainder of eternity.
