Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Feb/Mar 2019 Aspire Magazine Full Issue | Page 35

It is not uncommon to think, “Once I take care of myself and my family, then I’ll find a way to contribute to others.” It’s true that it’s a mistake to get so involved with serving the world that we neglect our family and those entrusted to our care. Yet without realizing that all life is one interconnected whole, we can spend our entire lifetime trying to provide solely for our personal needs and wants and those of our dear ones. It is endless. The step we take into serving life comes through the activity of grace itself. Life is always aiming to support us, to bring about the actualization of our innate potential. At some point, we wake up beyond our little corner of self-concern — our heart opens, and compassion begins to flow like a river. My daughter, who was our first born, broke open my heart. The love I felt for her was beyond anything I had ever experienced — tenderness, caring, and grave responsibility for this young life. Even though I was a very young and inexperienced mother, certain things are both soulful and instinctual. I wanted her to live. I wanted her to be healthy, happy, and free from suffering. I was so grateful that, when she was hungry, I could feed her. When she was sick, I could take her to a doctor. This is what happened to my heart: I took what I was experiencing here, with this tiny, beautiful little girl, and extended it there — across the nation and across the world. I THE IMMUTABLE SPIRITUAL LAW IS: INDIVIDUAL PROSPERITY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE GOOD OF ALL. SPIRITUAL LAW ALWAYS RESTS ON WHOLENESS. supply, meeting every real need on time and in abundance. The immutable spiritual law is: Individual prosperity cannot be separated from the good of all. Spiritual law always rests on wholeness. felt every mother and every child on the earth in my heart. I knew other mothers loved their children just like I did mine, and I felt what it would be like if you could not provide for them. What if I had no food for this child? What if she was suffering and I could not help her? The feeling was so clear that I knew I needed to act on it. I took a simple step and volunteered for UNICEF, the United Nations organization for supporting children worldwide. It gave me a way that I could take my heart here and apply it there. Serving others became for me the first step toward truly prospering, which has only become richer and more soul-satisfying over the years. Many of the important life and professional skills I learned during my time serving through UNICEF were what I needed for my next step, when I turned to the vocation of teaching Kriya Yoga. The initial impetus of my heart to serve parents and children over the years has blossomed, at our meditation center, into our youth spiritual education program as well as into an educational nonprofit organization to teach skills of nonviolence and mindfulness to at-risk children in schools and mothers in 35