More often than not people respond with their emotions. And more often than not, responding with emotions can cause a situation to get worse not better. It might make you feel better in the short term, but in the long term it could cause more strife down the road. To be able to step away from your emotions is to separate yourself from the situation so that you can see the bigger picture.. see what really is going on and even see where the other person that you are having conflict with is coming from. Only then can you make the choices that are proper for yourself and for the betterment of the whole.

Often times, when we hear 'preservation of the self' people can take that to be a very selfish thing. But it is not. In order for you to function to your fullest ability you must preserve the self. What takes this notion determines the actions to how you become a master or a servant. Some people when they take this and is told it is a selfish thing to preserve the self can abandon it. They give this away thinking they have to give all of themselves to whatever is happening and occurring in their lives. They lose their way, always trying to please someone else and as they do so, they continue to lose a little bit more of themselves each and every day. They lose the ability to hear that little voice within themselves, not because it was taken from them but because they ignored it from being told for so long that to preserve the self was such a selfish act that they believed. They can become miserable even depressed and feel its just their lot in life to suffer. Which it isn't so. This would be a person who becomes a servant.

Those who do not lose their sense of 'preservation of the self' end up splitting into two different kinds of people. Some people take the idea of 'preservation of self' that it becomes 'service to the self'. Which means that everything they do, it is for themselves without empathy towards how their actions affect others around them. These types of people can take their 'preservation of self' so literally that their actions become 'service to the self'. Everything becomes something about themselves to prop themselves up. They place their worth on people paying attention to them or their worth is defined by what they own. Everything becomes very materially based around them where it is all about their worth as they live within a physical world. Often times these people are lost internally, because even if they were to amass lots of things, lots of money have many people underneath them they are still unhappy so they seek more things to fill that void they are feeling within and it leads to greed. This is a person who becomes a Master (in their own mind of course) but also a slave to the physical world, which they often do not see.

On the flip side of the coin, people who have not lost their 'preservation of the self' understand that to preserve the self is so that they can function best to help others. These people become in 'service to others'. They understand intricately that in order to be of worth and to help others they have to preserve the self. They cannot be of help if they are lost themselves. But 'preservation of self' is not defined by the material things of a physical world. They listen carefully to what that little voice is saying within and follow it along with their reasoning. Their worth is defined by how they feel when they interact with the world around them. These people understand the necessity to separate themselves from their own emotions to allow themselves to see the bigger picture. It's not that they ignore their feelings, they don't, since it is their clue that something must be addressed. You know when you meet these people for they always have a sense of serenity around them. They seem naturally happy even when things seemingly are not going well. They tend to put their emotions aside so they can assist others. Material things only seem to be a necessity to these types of people not something that defines who they are. So in a sense when you see this person, you find that they are both a Master and a Servant.

Most of us lie somewhere in between these three descriptions, our own paths being defined by the decisions we make at any given moment. Some of us have found ourselves in one group or another but as we realize what is happening we make decisions to change our course on our path. But it is all a journey in which I think, we all want to take even if it is not apparent initially.