You’ve to remember the end. If the end is remembered, practically anything can be a means to that end. If the end is remembered, no means is important. Only that particular means is important that leads to the end at any particular moment. And, you don’t need to stick to any particular means. Because, life changes, so means have to change. The end alone is changeless, the end alone is endless. Everything else must come to an end, except the end itself.
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Questioner: I have somehow discovered that being a little altruistic, being a little selfless does make me feel that I’m elevating my consciousness. That is what works for me. And, there is this one problem associated with this kind of nature is, the problem of violation of boundaries.
So, suppose that, I want to help this person and I may put an effort to help this person, this is inherently linked with a kind of guilt at some point of time if I choose not to help that person, right? This leads me to violate my own interest at times. This makes me feel guilty when I want to say no. This makes me not call out people who have mistreated me or in such scenarios. So, how do we deal with this, how do we define that boundary, that up to this boundary, I’m ready to extra commit, extra but when this boundary is crossed, this is it. How do we define that?
Acharya Prashant: See, altruistic behavior or helpfulness, these are not ends in themselves. However, they are often recommended or taught because mostly, they go hand in hand with an elevated state of consciousness. Mostly, but not always. You’ve to remember what is the end and what is just a medium. Helpfulness is a medium, not an end in itself. You’ve to ask, “Is the helpfulness really delivering what anything is supposed to deliver, what anything must deliver to be of any worth?” If helpfulness is delivering that, only then what you are doing can be called as help in the real sense of the word. Otherwise, it’s not a help.
