SO YOU WANNA DO SOME GOOD?

We do get "too soon old and too late smart". 

He awoke one day to the need to pay attention to his spiritual life. It seemed that this not only meant saving his own soul, but the souls of others. Saving the world really. Laudable notion. Just, how to go about it?

After much and many efforts and lots of blind alleys the grace came from One who had completed the spiritual journey admonishing that to save the world first to clear up your own mess, purify your own heart really. Otherwise, the Knowing One said, you are just making things worse.

So he reset his trajectory and went about clearing up his neuroses, freeing himself from burdensome conditioning, training his mind to rest in the ineffable stillness at the heart of things.

You eventually get it about how until you have helped your own self you really can't help others. Going about such things half-baked only makes things worse. 

Then — GEEZ — when you start to get a glimmer of the truth and power of that advice, after all the years' of sadhana, you eventually realize nothing necessarily needs be done. At all.

Of course, it's not a position to take. This doing nothing. Always. That's wrong too. Remember That Buddha ... The Middle Way?

Be comforted that what presents itself to be done you will do it. But only now, with clear eyes and an open heart.