Service to Life

Service can take many forms, but for Richard Moss the essence of our capacity to serve emanates from the degree to which we have realized our true self. For this reason the journey of awakening to self-knowledge is the purest form of service to life. Service is consciousness in action.

Once we have begun to heal the deep wounds of distrust and survival fear that we each, in varying degrees, unconsciously inherit through our families and cultural conditioning, we cease to externalize a sense of distrust of our world and each other. Richard speaks of fear as our first teacher of survival, the great god that rules our basic psychology. When we have learned to face and hold our deepest fears, and thereby cease to become victims of them, we no longer perceive and transmit a fearful reality. We begin to realize love is a far greater god and, if in the journey of awakening, a far more important teacher. We experience that we are obliged by our enlightenment to serve the enlightenment of others through our love. This does not mean that we become teachers, missionaries, or exponents of any particular creed or ideology, but rather that in our daily lives we are mindful of our power to support the greatest wellbeing possible for everyone in any situation. Consciousness is peace making. To serve life is to cease the kind of fear-based self-interest that corrupts so much of human affairs. It is the moral, ethical and behavioral manifestation of love.

In his work as a mentor, Richard encourages individuals to discover and actualize their unique expression of consciousness in action. He calls this “project self.” As Walt Whitman wrote, "The truest expression is that which finding no sphere worthy of itself, makes one." Richard helps people to recognize their unique form for manifesting their “truest expression.” He asserts that when we undertake any project that challenges and invites us to actualize our elements of our truest expression, we simultaneously further our awakening consciousness. This in turn is service to life, for what we awaken in ourselves ultimately furthers a similar potential in others. He emphasizes that service to life asks each of us to become, in our own way, a part of a larger vision: the global awakening of humanity and of stewarding the Earth for all of her creatures.

Back to The Teaching