If I really want to be helpful, the first thing to do is realize that I don’t have any power to help.
What could “help” possibly mean in a world that is perfectly balanced and whole prior to any story? To want to “help” requires a fundamental argument with reality.
To identify as “the one who helps,” I need a problem to exist. So the impulse to help brings problems into being and then goes to work trying to solve them.
Impossible.
An identity is, by definition, a separation: I am this and not that, the situation is this and not that. But if I believe that all is one, the best thing for the world would be to keep from imposing my false separation onto it (a “me” separate from a “you”).
If I really want to help, I can clear up a mind that sees me as separate from “a world in need of help” and recognize that the world is me - a “reality” of my own making.
Does this mean that I should ignore people’s needs and just be a heartless prick?
No. Quite the opposite:
If I really want to “help” without spreading problems, I can decline to bring problems into being in the first place by declining to assign myself the ego-centered role of “helper” and, instead simply recognize that “I” am “the world” and “the world” is just “me” and behave accordingly.
When my mind isn’t clouded by an ego-centered desire to “help,” I can be fully present, I can see clearly and I have nothing to fear. This allows me (when I can do it) to be totally connected with what is, and to act in perfect alignment with it, guided by my fearless, love-filled true nature.
Some might even consider that helpful.