Sometimes on a Saturday, I marvel at the traffic jams and overflowing parking lots of shopping centers in my city, as my neighbors flock to buy patio furniture and cell phones and new shoes and gourmet burritos and whatever else we use to fill the nagging sense of emptiness that is part of the human condition. 

I always think, ‘Man, if all this money and determination could be turned toward giving instead of getting…’ Then I slide my own car into a parking slot and head in to wait in line for my own burrito.

“Americans,” says Marianne Williamson, “are not starving for what they don’t have, but rather for what they won’t give.” Never were more true words spoken.

Of course, many New Agers are already out there, working hard to bring change to one issue or another, and in some years, this has described me.  But many New Agers are not out there working for change, and in far too many years, this has also described me. 

The stereotype of the narcissistic self-absorbed New Ager is embarrassingly accurate, as any publisher of New Age books can attest.  In 2006, Publisher’s Weekly reported that even with the recent urgency of the environmental crisis, New Age publishers were having a hard time finding buyers for books which urge readers toward activism.

“Not all readers are interested in books that nudge them to look beyond their own problems,” the magazine reported.  Instead, the biggest New Age book of last year, make that the entire decade, was The Secret, a book that promised to tell us how to manipulate the universe into granting one’s every desire. 

Don't wait for the urge

It can take a lot of trial and error to learn that personal growth that does not lead us to see our unity with others is no growth at all.  And even if we do get an inkling, we may assume that until we feel absolutely driven to get active in the world, we’re not “there” yet, and had best hunker down and keep on working on ourselves.  Many of us dabble in this spiritual practice or that, exploring little but our own heads year after year, waiting for the urge to serve, an urge that somehow never becomes urgent enough to get us out the door.

We wait to grow in order to serve, but the irony is, we need to serve in order to grow.  Martin Luther King Jr. linked “qualitative change in our souls” with “quantitative change in our lives.“  Spiritual growth depends on service to others perhaps even more than it depends on contemplation.  The ego is a very tough customer, thick and strong.  We can, and should, work on dissolving it from the inside, but we will get the job done much faster if we also work on dismantling it from the outside. 

“The road to holiness must pass through the world of action,“ said Dag Hammarskjold.  With that first step outside ourselves, the ego immediately begins to soften.  So if you are not yet at the stage in your spiritual development -- the integral stage -- where you feel the urgent obligation toward service, then it's time to “fake it ‘til you make it.”  Just get out there, start cultivating the habit of putting others before yourself, and with your action, you help break down the hard barrier of ego that keeps you trapped within yourself and separate from spirit.

Yes, it is hard, so very hard to climb over the walls of ego-apathy that keep us confined to the duties of our own lives.   Heaven knows there is plenty to keep me busy at home.  Especially when my children were young, I already felt self-sacrificing to point of having nothing left to give.  And I know that even if I get out there, I am only going to be flinging myself against the walls of others’ apathy.

And yet, to go too long doing nothing, there is ultimately no peace in that.  The problems don’t go away when I close my eyes.  And if I am any kind of idealist at all, I can only avoid for so long the creeping knowledge that unless I am doing something, I am part of the problem.  That burden becomes quite crushing eventually.  I recall going to see “The Inconvenient Truth,” and I was barely able to move to rise from my seat afterward, so heavy was the sense of responsibility in knowing I have done so little to help address the problem, things that are so easy to do.

Haul yourself over that wall of apathy, find the issue that most weighs on you.   But don’t just peek at their Web site, or support them in theory.  Join the group, donate some money, volunteer some time.  The habit of “I can’t afford it” sneaks in, but unless you’re living in your car or getting “Final Notice” before your electricity is shut off, that‘s usually just ego’s way of refusing responsibility. 

The issue of responsibility lies at the heart of all idealism.  We are all unavoidably interconnected, which means we are all responsible for each other.  No matter the issue, it is my job to solve it, too.  And I have learned, again and again from my own intermittent forays into service that Anne Lamott is right when she says, “Love and service decrease the fear, and even sometimes change it to joy.”

What a surprise to discover that even as you are steeling yourself to endure a dreaded obligation, you stumble upon a source of great happiness.  Becoming active in service is about becoming “fully alive,” says John Graham in Stick Your Neck Out.  Its about “the meaning and passion you can add to your own life by getting involved.”  Even when confronting the biggest of challenges,  Graham adds, one often feels “an energy, a sense of excitement, a deep satisfaction of being in the right place at the right time.” 

That is, of course, exactly how one feels when freed from the overtight confines of the ego.  So do your soul a favor, do your world a favor.  Volunteer, donate, get involved.

To find the best place for your donation dollars, visit:

Charity Navigator --   http://www.charitynavigator.org/.

Global Giving -- http://www.globalgiving.com/

Netwoork for Good -- http://www.networkforgood.org/

You can find plenty of volunteering opportunities through a church group, or by joining a service club such a Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions.   Or, by visiting non-profit directories on Web sites such as:

Change --  www.change.org

Points of Light -- www.pointsoflight.org

Volunteer Match --  www.volunteermatch.org

When it comes to “getting involved” in the world around you, that usually means one thing:  It’s time to get political.

Go to New Age Politics.