To those intellectually examining the definition on spiritual orientation, and the rule that moving into one or the other camp requires many lifetimes of trial and error to grasp what living in that orientation means, the matter is anything but clear. We have stated that those in the Service-to-Other orientation are thinking of others at least as often as they are thinking of themselves, 50%, and that those in the Service-to-Self manage a fleeting thought about others only 5% of the time. What times are those? If a banker considers the starving in his community, giving a percentage of his profits directly to food purchases for them, a charity, does this have the same weight as if this banker gave this percentage of his profits to small businesses in order to hire the unemployed, thus reducing starvation perhaps for less but for a longer time? One must examine his motives. The first move would seem purely humanitarian, yet if his motive is to increase business at his bank by getting publicity for his move, his motive is selfish, Service-to-Self. The second move would seem to be shrewd, to increase business activity in the community from which he might profit, but if his motive is truly to reduce starvation and despair in his community in the most effective way possible, the best use of his dollar, then this move is driven by Service-to-Other motives. From an intellectual standpoint, it is a quagmire.
In the simple words of Jesus, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha, Star Children all who came to leave a gift of clarity for mankind, all preached the same message. Equality, where ‘the least of you’ is considered on the same level as the self. Considering ones physical needs, for food and shelter, in a manner that balances concern for what others need, what the goat about to be slaughtered might feel, what the land over grazed or tilled into a dust bowl might need. Confusing, a quagmire of intellectual decisions, if left to the intellect alone. What these great preachers left with mankind was the suggestion that the answer lies in the heart. Before you do something that will affect another, put yourself in that other’s place, and imagine the consequences of your action. This is generally known as the Golden Rule, ‘do unto others’. Driven by the heart, one will never make an errant decision from a spiritual standpoint. A man in agony over whether to share the meat from his last goat with his starving neighbors, when his own family is faint from hunger most of the time, will find his answer by placing himself in their perspective as well as his family's perspective. What sense of abandonment will his neighbors have, seeing his family feast when they are cramped and weak. What need to throw up walls against empathy for the neighbors will his family require in order to choke down the meal quickly, blinded to the neighbor's plight. He chooses sharing, seeing that damage to the soul is the greater danger, as the physical will in any case pass.