COPYRIGHT JO LEEDS 2006

Participant Views of Sacred Service

The work of the Sacred Service Course is at once straightforward and practical, at the same time that it is subtle and deep. It is not just an individual, but is a group work, where a bond of community isformed between the participants. The work does not end with the end of the course. For myself, this course has opened doors on many levels of my life. The learnings keep evolving around and within my understanding of life and the world.

Jo Leeds, Ph.D., Greensboro, NC

Heart softer,

Senses more alive,

Silence a holy friend.

The world within the world without,

Ever mingling ever mirroring

Outside my window one leaf trembles

On stark branches against the dawn –

And I am bowed to the ground,

With tears of a thousand hearts across the oceans

Oh how the rosy light streaks through,

Relentless on the storms that blow below.

Nancy MacMillan, Canada

I am a graduate of the first class that started in 2001....When I enrolled I was ill physically.....breast cancer and very ill and depleted at a soul level and spiritually.  This class saved my life physically, emotionally and spiritually.  It began with an awareness of the Christ and spirit in me, my family, my work, my friends in all aspects of my life.  I started a wonderful journey....that I am still enjoying with the living today....plus those souls that have passed on.  The gifts that I received thru this class I use each day and feel deep gratitude.  Gratitude in 2001 was not a word in my vocabulary.....

It was destiny that I came to North Carolina......a 1"x1" ad in the Detroit Free Press offered an introduction to "soul work" at a Waldorf school.....As I sit here and write you and tears roll my face.......gratitude that I rearranged my life to attend that introduction work shop that changed my life and brought new friends that I will always cherish and a introduced a new way of life for which I am deeply grateful.

Marie Lyzen, Detroit

Aided by the care-filled guidance of two very dedicated teachers my 2-year Sacred Service course introduced me to deeper and more heartfelt ways I might serve my home community. Carefully crafted and deepening meditations, communal gatherings, individual sharing, quiet contemplation and journalling served as an exquisite framework to a rich and deeply rewarding experience. The teaching lives on in me, as the work continues to be transformative in my life.

Brenda Hollweger, Maryland

Robert and Cheryl Sardello run a brilliant course, Sacred Service, that will help you discover your purpose and meaning in life, and open up your heart in ways that will transform everything you do - without anything looking different. I believe in lifelong learning and I have studied with them for 3 years, for a duration of about 3 weeks a year. They have transformed the impact of my speaking. As I said, not much looks different, but the stories of results from delegates are profound! Robert has authored many books – some of which are The Power of The Soul and Freeing the Soul from Fear... both brilliant.

Amanda Gore, Dallas, Tx.

Through Sacred Service one changes how he lives in and with the world.  Like a player of music who becomes a musician, he one day perceives the eternal source of tonal images.  He hears and understands the difference between dissonance and lack of harmony.  And in the breathing silent spaces between and in the earthly sounds, he joins the creative weaving of higher beings.

Patricia Sankewitsch

West Chester, Pa.

The class in Sacred Service provides an environment where one can form anew a living relationship with one's own heart, first, so that one can begin to develop a living relationship with the hearts of others.  Through authentic experience, one discovers that the spirit of wisdom and love resides in the heart of each one us.  Attending to the sacred aspects of the heart of man and nature is the beginning of healing as a living process in the world.

Mary Jane Taylor, Atlanta, Ga.

Learning to face the world with an open heart that is ready to serve in each moment, and feeling the throb of wonder between my head and my heart, that is the most palpable gift I received from classes at the School of Spiritual Psychology. In practicing what I learned, I walked straight into my life’s work.

Sheridan Hill, biographer/videographer, Black Mountain, NC USA

Statements of Pariticapants from the Course Evaluations

"Most of my educational experience fed content. This experience was enlivening. It brought us more into spiritual life than learning about spiritual life."

"I’ve come to know that one truly serves when one does what one does with full presence of being and an open heart. One doesn’t have to be serving a cause—Life is the cause; life in all its aspects."

"I now consider everything I do to be my serving work. Whether preparing a meal; talking with the person at the cash register of the grocery store, or listening to the stories of a person who is dying, I am practicing sacred service."

"I know now that my work is in relation to the spoken word that arises from the silence of the heart out of relating to another. I will be working with children, adults (and their families) who are dying, as well as with imprisoned individuals."

"I am able to ‘know’ my destiny now. I am becoming conscious of callings from the future. I have learned how to discern what is calling from the future and what is coming from my past and my complexes."

"Opening my heart to the spiritual world in this group and doing it alongside of others with wise guides has changed my life for the future. It has given me the freedom to begin to hear the subtle unbeknown world of the spiritual soul so that I may serve the world from a place of greater consciousness."

"This Sacred Service community is a microcosm for the whole world so that the love, trust & consciousness created here can now radiate out to the world."

"By listening in the silence of my heart it allows for relationship to not be solely on the personality level but to really honor the destiny of the other. Asking: ‘how can my love free this loved one?’"

"This course has engendered a freedom to listen, honor & act on my spiritual intuitions. This is the real answer for all of the questions."

"....The meditations have helped me open my heart and be more steady in everyday life. The awareness and importance of perceiving the subtly has been very important to me."

"I am experiencing a new tolerance and acceptance of myself and my family, not to mention others I meet or work with in my home services as well as social and community."

"My relationship with one of my children has been highly affected by this work. By remaining open-hearted with him; and by loving him every minute he reflects his own struggles, I have come to a new way of being with him."

"I have learned—in a new way—that small tasks, performed in a mindful way, can have a great impact on the world...."

"I expect to serve the world for the rest of my life. That had not even been a consideration before Sacred Service. I would not have understood the concept, nor would I have learned the value of such a choice."

"I want to apologize for these answers. They do not even begin to describe how important this work has, is, and will be to me, my world, the cosmos."

"I am practicing living in my community with an open heart as I walk through the streets of my town, visit the store + the coffee shops; practicing meeting the hearts of others in a kind gaze, a courteous gesture, a warm smile."

"I have allowed more peace to exist in the space & distance between myself & my family, and love and warmth bloom between us."

"I feel more in the hands of the spiritual world. I used to feel that I had to figure my life out. I feel more free to be open to the unknown."

"It helped me to see the world and its components clearer through pehenomenological descriptions of the world’s qualities rather than definitions. The world, people no longer seem as objects or nouns but verbs, actions."

“ I have greater awareness and sensitivity. But there is also this quality of transubstantiation that results from a spiritual alchemical process, whereby as I am more receptive of others allowing them into my silent field of the heart, something of the spirit realm enters and seem to create or at least begin to reform me into the porous being that makes for silent, unknown yet understood speech which results in strengthening and developing community."

"It has strengthen my capacity of holding my clients. It has, through my struggles with institutional rigidity, helped in the purification of my heart. And through the new form of ritual, it has opened my heart more to encompass ideas, attitudes and personalities that I would have normally resisted.”

"An expansion of consciousness on all levels of life that continues. On the personal level—changes in habits and attitudes and nuances of feeling. On the social level—a vision of community wider and deeper and ever more possible than heretofore was imagined. On the spiritual level—a coming home, returning from a long journey of looking to a sense of the sacredness of life and death and the wholeness connecting them, interpreted through Mary as the prototype of Sacred Service."

"First, I felt a sense of true belonging—for the first time in my life. Then I was taught, amidst my new, expanded sense of humanity, how to discern the qualities of sympathy, antipathy, and to distinguish them from the actual being of empathy. I was given practical, spiritual tools for increased heart perception and was lovingly and expertly guided in using them. I was aided greatly in my capacity to think, to feel (to bear deep feeling), and to use my free will in service of the greater good."

"I know how to hold still for what is inside other people now, and I did not know how to do that before. Also, I have a greatly enhanced capacity to hear and follow my own sense of what is the right action in a moment, including the act of silence and of holding still. This is currently the most central change in my being. The world—and other people —are not so scary now."

"Because of Sacred Service, the practices and tools and the support of the Sacred Service community, the mentorship of Robert, and the use of spiritual psychology, I was able to put my house up for sale knowing I needed to move and not knowing where I would live next; able to wait (practicing the virtue of patience) a year for it to sell; knew to say "yes" immediately when an old acquaintance said he might sell me his mountain house and acreage; allowed the initiative to call myself a personal biographer; had the guts to say "no" to one client and accept the next; and am now in what feels like my destiny stream—exploring the making of a soul biography. My life has never felt so right."

"That I have had the opportunity to come into the possibility of service through the heart, to be able to come into fullness with Mary—the creative forces and feel the stream (albeit not always) of destiny and to touch the spiritual world—what an exquisite adventure, delight and I am humbled to be here—"

“ I am no longer afraid of being a stupid inadequate fool. My heart has opened everywhere. Every opportunity is a yes....I am truly grateful."

"Energetically restored after years of chaotic enervating family-work circumstances. My ability to attend to t he work to be done is much greater. Essentially I trust and trust, saying yes to moving in fear rather than shutting down.”