Please Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask Before Helping Others

OK, so we’re not on an airplane, but we are on a journey.  I’m using this analogy to demonstrate that we need to make sure we do our own work as well as helping others.  We need to be taking care of ourselves, our own needs and our own journey otherwise how are we going to have anything to give to another? 

Imagine the oxygen mask as being your connection to soul.  We need to make that connection within ourselves, and then move from that point outwards to meet others on a soul-to-soul equal level.  From this place we can act from a place of compassion and detachment rather than sympathy and attachment.  This helps lift another out of the space they are in, rather than meeting them down in the hole and helping to keep them there.

I love this quote by Alan Cohen:  “You can be helping many people, but if you are not helping yourself, you have missed the one person you were born to heal”.

It is more appealing to many people to be helping others.  Don’t get me wrong, helping others is a good thing, we are designed to be here in loving service to others.  However, helping others shouldn’t be a replacement or a distraction from doing our own work.  That is our main mission here.  We need to be focusing on our own issues and lessons and sorting them out and then move on to helping others with their problems.  This is what loving service is. 

Another well-used saying is “physician heal thyself”.  How can you help another if your battery is drained so flat that there is no charge to help jump-start another person?  If you keep neglecting yourself and helping person after person, soon you will have nothing left in you to be able to help yourself or them.  So, close your eyes, take a slow, deep, centring breath, and connect to your soul.  See the line of light coming down from the plane of the soul and entering through your crown and anchoring in your heart centre.  Feel that still, quiet space within.  Just look, see what it is that you need to be working on for you right now.  That is your oxygen mask.  Please put it on before helping others....