Institute for the Advancement of Service
Welcome to the Self-Study Website of the
Institute for the Advancement of Service!
Have you wondered how you can help others and be of service at this time when our world seems to be spiraling out of control? Are you overwhelmed and exhausted by what’s happening and seeking a way to care for yourself and others? Maybe you’re even asking the question, “Why am I here?” The courses, practices, and teachings on this website invite you to explore these questions through the lens of your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health and wellbeing
Characterized by universal teachings and practical applications, the Institute’s website shows another way to live and to serve at this unique and challenging time on Planet Earth. We invite you to learn, through the plentiful offerings on this site, how to transform your understanding of what happens in your life and in the world into learning, healing, and service.
Over the course of its 45-year lifespan as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (1980-2025), the Institute for the Advancement of Service served thousands of people by offering in-person and faculty-led courses, workshops, trainings, programs, and special events. The foundational teachings of the Institute are contained in the books of its Co-Founder and Executive Director, Susan Trout. These books and their teachings awaken our inner knowing and guide us in applying that knowing in the world through action. Although the Institute closed its physical doors on March 1, 2025, its books, teachings, and practices remain available through this self-study website.
The Institute developed a curriculum of four primary areas of concentration – soul development, service, leadership, and group life. Through this curriculum, represented throughout this site, you are invited to:
- engage with your soul as it moves through a series of cycles or stages on its journey to full expression,
- explore the relationship between your motives for serving and the quality of your service,
- understand leadership as a classroom of the soul – where you can discover what qualities and competencies each of your leadership challenges offers to you, and
- partake of a new model of leadership and how to work with groups as humanity experiences a cosmic shift into a new way of being.
The Institute has drawn upon the disciplines of spirituality, psychology, neuropsychology, metaphysics, physical and mental health, leadership, and group consciousness, to explore such questions as:
- Why do I feel disconnected from my soul and how can I reconnect?
- How can I stop being judgmental and be kinder to myself and others?
- How can I have more integrity in my choices and behaviors?
- Why do I feel no joy in my leadershop?
- Why do certain elements of my leadership challenge me more than others.
- Why is it so difficult to work in groups?
- How can I help my group – my family, my friends, my community, my organization - work better together?
- What is the bigger picture of what is happening right now on our planet?
This website is here to support you to shift your thoughts, actions, and words to look within rather than without for wholeness. We invite you to join us as we answer the call to deepen our collective understanding of what wants to emerge in the world, taking a step through the Aquarian doorway as we move out of the personal into the collective and out of duality into wholeness.
Personal tools
