Our Life's Contribution: To Comfort, Understand and Love

Ego deflation at depth as a result of spiritual awakening, the "dying to self" of our Eleventh Step prayer, is a rebirth of who we are in our essence, a point made clear in the following excerpt from "As Bill Sees It" (via The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions):

Our New Employer

We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed his work well.

Established on such a footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life.

As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear or today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn.

But just how do we determine what we can contribute to, rather than take from life? Again, the answer is in the Eleventh Step prayer, where we seek "to comfort, rather than be comforted; to understand, rather than to be understood; (and) to love, rather than to be loved." And, like so many of the other paradoxes we find in living a spiritual life, we find that in practicing such principles, we too find that we are comforted, understood and loved. Who would have guessed?