In my years at our Ananda Pune ashram, we followed each day’s group meditation and breakfast with a morning circle. My wife and I, with our staff and guests, would discuss the day’s projects and assignments, and then we would all affirm together, loudly at first and then more inwardly, “I will do my work thinking of Thee, Lord. I offer to Thee the very best that is in me.”
Imagine if governments and corporations did something like that. We wouldn’t need millions of laws and thousands of agencies to enforce them. The Golden Rule would preside, because in offering to God the best that is in us, it becomes our nature to serve our neighbors in that same spirit.
The real work of living well is not about building or fixing things, it’s about building and fixing ourselves. Attitudes, relationships, and commitments are the greater construction projects involved in creating a successful community, which creates a more successful you and me. A house is not a home if it is just a structure, even if it is a palace. You have to fill it with love and joy, otherwise it is a place of bare shelter only.
Likewise, a body is not a home if the person inside is unhappy, lazy, angry, greedy, or selfish. When that is the case, there is work to be done, and who of us can be called a finished product? We sometimes refer to ourselves as “works in progress.” What we need to keep in mind is that a work in progress implies that we are investing actual work in making the changes necessary for progress to occur!
Building a spiritual community, as we were endeavoring to do in Pune, is a gradual, ongoing process too. But in truth the idea of community does not require an actual community to exist. You can have it in spirit wherever you are. Community is serving and supporting each other for the welfare of all. It is doing the noble work of clearing away our egoic motivations. It is offering the best that is in us.
But what about those days when working with the right attitude seems like the most resistant work of all? Sometimes work gets in the way of how we would rather be spending our time, and we don’t exactly give it the best that is in us.
Years ago, Edgar Bergen was a popular on-stage ventriloquist, whose sidekick was a little wise cracker called Charlie McCarthy. Charlie was like the voice of the ego that chatters inside our head. As part of their comedy routine, Bergen was always making appeals to Charlie’s better nature, usually to no avail. Once, in urging Charlie to do a particular job, he said, “Charlie, a little work never killed anyone.” Charlie replied, “Yeah, but why take a chance!”
This life is a playing field on which we are opposed by our lesser nature. Working to overcome it is not only the way to reach our highest potential, it is also the way to a happier life. Good work drives out our pettiness, our moodiness, our worries.
I am reminded often of a quote from Thomas Jefferson, who was asked if he believed in luck. He replied that yes, he did. He said he had studied the law that luck obeys and attuned himself to it, with this pleasing result: “The more good work I do, the more good luck I have.”
We know of this life on earth that it’s been designed, not by accident, as a test of will, a test of courage, a test of attitude and behavior. Every day arrives with a new set of challenges, although most of them are simply repackaged versions of ones we have faced many time before, yet to be put behind us.
Does doing our best mean we’re bound to get what we work for? If that were true, we would be seduced – as many are – into thinking that lasting happiness is possible on earth. God’s intent in thwarting our ambitions from time to time is to lead us from that delusion to the realization that our ultimate freedom and contentment lie in seeking Him above all.
“I will do my work thinking of Thee, Lord. I offer to Thee the very best that is in me,” because in that noble effort lies inner peace, joy and freedom’s way, and in nothing else will we find this to be true.
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