Customer Reviews

How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service

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4 star:		(2)
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As a professor I've used this book for 10 years for an intro class for counseling. I believe that it has had a powerful influence (through the true stories in the book) turning out compassionate and caring counselors. It is a GREAT book. We are not taught compassion, or how to help others. We see little examples of how to care or be helpful in the media (many examples there or how to do violence though!). This book provides true stories of the nature of compassion and helping.

I recommend it highly for anyone who wants to help others. I think it is an essential book for anyone who wants to help others

I am a social worker and an author. I have recently become involved with writing about medical as well as human rights issues. (My book BEHIND THE BURQA, which is to be published in October by John Wiley, is the memoir of two women who escaped the brutality of Afghanistan and the suffering they endured in the US.) Through my work, I have come into contact with people, such as the two subjects of my book, who have endured excruciating circumstances. HOW CAN I HELP sits on my night table so that I can read it after I've come home from interviewing someone in pain. It addresses all the issues that come up when people try to help each other, whether as "helping professionals" or simply as friends or family who are reaching out--guilt, burnout, fear, sense of helplessness--the myriad emotions that afflict those who want to make a difference in the lives of others. HOW CAN I HELP is psychologically astute, spiritually enlightening and written with great gentleness, compassion and occasional moments of humor. I feel the authors have become my mentors and friends. They accompany me to detention centers when I interview imprisoned asylum-seekers who have fled horrific tortures. They're with me when I visit people in the hospital. Their wisdom and guidance inspire me and inform my ability to remain intimately involved with people who have undergone horrible suffering. This book should be required reading in medical schools, psychology and social work programs, and any other context in which people are being trained to work with others in need.

This book is filled with insights. These insights are hidden gems of wisdom revealing our personalities desire to seek and find what we all have in common. This unity is driven by our need and desire to find peace in the midst of life's most difficult moments. As our heart goes out to those in need, our acts of service contain our soul's longing to connect with a fellow soul. Once our soul is awakened in service, a path opens and leads us into a sacred human relationship infused by the power of peace. Thanks, Ram Dass, for your guidance into the realm of spirit through the words written in this book.

I also recommend: What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living by Samuel Oliver

This is really a great book. My copy is a mess because I've thumbed through it for so many years. People in the "helping professions" (and I'm counting myself here - a psych nurse - but also psychologists, social workers, counselors, etc) tend to get bogged down in the details of particular therapies. But ultimately, that is not what is really helpful. It's more about how you connect with that person you're helping. Can you really just stop and listen authentically and love another human being enough to do whatever is really helpful at that particular time? That's why I love this book. Even though I have moments of cynicism, I can pick up this book and become inspired again. The stories are very simple and sweet. It helps me remember that I can't help everyone but the ones I do...it's magical...it's like no more "helper" and "helpee"...just this amazingly connected human experience.

An excellent book on helping ourselves which in turn act in helping others in a life of service. The awareness first must be found in ourselves before we can exercise the compassion for others. It is here we gain insight into a larger order of lawfulness we cannot understand rationally but which nevertheless resonates within. Compassion becomes an increasingly automatic response.

Ideas conveyed rest in the process of ambiguity and paradox in the realm of not knowing, resting in mystery. Living in the game of subjectivity, we always remain in touch with the silent observer, the witness self in calm abiding and when caught up in subjectivity to see the absurdity of the game and using absurd comedy to deal with it. We end up trusting in a larger pattern beyond the absurd surface world of our actions. We see the truth in uncertainty, we maintain the Zen beginner's mind. We work on ourselves as a vehicle for our higher selves. And we recognize that all of us have a flag to wave which is the folly of our human existence. We are conscious of our lack of integrity while trying to convince others, as we see ourselves from the outside as the silent witness. We see compassion and peace as the only way to make peace in everything we do and are in touch with the quiet self behind all our subjective roles, behind all the thinking, actions and experiences. We see the polarization's of differences as our habits of thinking, seeing beyond the circle of opposites knowing that our mind acts in Gestalt as it perceives and decides in categorizing what is essentially neutral information.

The way to compassion is simply to just listen, stop thinking, stop speaking and listen. be the observer. Its our reactions that determine our pains and sufferings as opposed to the happenings themselves. We acknowledge our weaknesses and refrain from blinding ourselves in subjectivity. Its our dispassionate need as the observer, the we see our own reactions from the view as an outsider watching our reactions as habitual patterns our physical and mental beings perform.

Our thoughts act as clouds that pass by and we can be aware of this if we can gain the ability to observe them as an outside consciousness, alert to when we get sucked up in subjectivity. To rest in awareness in ourselves, with company, allowing and helping others to find themselves. The sage helps the ten thousand things find their own nature. We move away from viewing the world strictly in concepts and recognize the intellect blinds intuitive awareness. We see our self image as a prison we create, roles to survive in this game of life but also a prison for us if we fail to find our higher objective observer selves. We need our roles to survive as humans and communicate with one another but in order not to get trapped in them we have to enter behind our roles out of the blindness.

"The most familiar models of who we are - father and daughter, doctor and patient, helper and helped - often turn out to be major obstacles to the expression of our caring instincts; they limit the full measure of what we have to offer one another . . they are delusions of separateness. Our task is to free our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty . . " p.20

This is a must read for anyone entering or already in a life of service--which can really mean anyone.

There are few books that can change your life. I believe that at certain points in our emotional development, influences cause us to head off in different directions. I was lucky to have discovered this book at a critical point in my life. It essentially saved me. I sometimes wonder how some people can be so cruel and ignorant - how they can be so biased. This book not only helps the reader to understand the spiritual nature of helping, but it also gently instructs the reader on the true meaning of love and respect.

The story of the guy who dressed up as a clown to cheer up the kids in the Pediatric Burn Ward was one of the toughest things I've ever read in my life. It seems almost unbelievable to me that such people actually exist. This is an inspiring book.

I was looking for inspiration and found it--and joy as well. Some of the passages elicited--and sometimes still elicit--a strong mystical experience. Might not be true for everyone, but it is for me. Also, this is about the sixth or seventh copy I've bought; I have given the other copies away as gifts.

My wife and I are both first person volunteers (Red Cross and St. Vincent de Paul Society) and we both have full time jobs. I thought that we know about helping until I read this book.

Basically, it starts with a focus on knowing and understanding yourself, tossing in a little mediation practice for good measure. If you are helping to feel better about yourself, you are not really helping.

Along the way there are, as other reviewers have said, inspirational stories that (well) inspire. It is a great balance of discussion and insight with stories about service.

When I got to the section on burn-out, I presumed that I know the answers. I have survive burnout and read several really good books on the subject. Relax, step back, etc. This book has an entirely different perspective that I think is more useful than the other books.

If you want to help people, and I presume if you are reading this book that you do, then you should consider reading this book. Thanks for helping.