I am sick of the cultural definition of Selfishness. It is curated by the religion machine. The bowl-you-over cultural dogma check sheet of what is right and what is wrong. The resounding voice of how every person is to do it. Judgement with sin and punishment and hell. Jump through this hoop and this one and this one and you will get the prize. If you don’t … imagine the worst thing ever happening to you forever. I am not railing against religion. They all have Divine Wisdom at their core and in the initial intention. Religion works for some people. It is safe and black and white. It has just been corrupted.
Our culture defines selfishness as overwhelming attention to your own needs and wants. In fact, if you look up the definition, you will see a lot of interesting stuff. Here are a few:
- The quality or state of being selfish
- Exclusive regard to one’s own interest or happiness
- Supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest or happiness
- Putting one’s own interests before those of others
I propose that these are qualities we need to embrace. Self-Love is the real name for selfishness.
The cultural definition of selfishness is used for power. It takes your power and gives it to another. We have been convinced that loving ourselves first is bad. However, not loving ourselves will hurt us. It will sabotage our progress to having and achieving our dreams. Self-Love is the purpose of me taking care of my body with good nutrition and not abusing myself with stimulants.
I understand that things need to be in balance. We must also remember others with our Love. Remember God loves everyone equally. There is no one that God loves more than another. There isn’t conditional Love that we typically adopt. The only time selfishness is accepted and promoted is in capitalism. Selfishness is capitalism. It is the invisible hand that drives the economy. The name of the game is self-interest and if it is within the boundaries of the laws we have made, then it is totally legit to benefit ourselves even in spite of hurting others. The players that get hurt just didn’t play the game as well. Why is this acceptable in business?
I propose that it is our primary focus to have Self-Love and it is entirely unacceptable to hurt anybody in the process. We don’t disregard others in our journey of Self-Love, but we remember that they are just as important as we are and their Self-Love must be primary to them and their focus. We can still be selfless while loving ourselves. Selflessness is part of that balance. Selflessness is remembering the worth of others and that their choices are important too. This is nonviolent. This is balance.
Self-Love is how we love God. We don’t just nurture our bodies with attention by listening. We also nurture our Spirit. We can exercise to build our muscles. Not just our body’s muscles, but also our mental learning. That can be with acquiring and unacquiring knowledge. Learning more about things that interest us, as well as emptying our minds with meditation. We can build our Spiritual Muscles with Divine Wisdom. All our answers are within. Silence is the language God speaks (Rumi). We can learn from spiritual tools like plant medicine or reading/listening to books or just listening to our voice within when you are still and open. We all are on our own Course and Path and we all have our own answers inside us. My Wisdom inside is for me and yours is for you. I don’t have anybody’s answers. That is for you to hear and be and do.
God is our Soul. We are a Spark of the Creator’s Fire. We are eternal beings with a Spirit that is Perfect. So, if God is our consciousness, then we must love ourselves. This is a purpose and goal for everyone. Self-Love is loving our Perfect Creator. We have the power of our Creator in us. Christ was God because he knew this. He knew how to shed the small self’s choices for True Love. Jesus knew Self-Love. Jesus understood that when he loves himself, not only is he loving God because he is God, but also he is loving others too because they are also God. We can only mimic to others the love we have for ourselves. Love your neighbor as yourself requires you to first love yourself.
Self-Love is being selfish to the culture we know. It doesn’t ever hurt another. It places your wants and desires first as you are on your own Path up the mountain and everyone else needs to blaze their own trail. It allows you to have what you need to scale that mountain. We are loving our Creator when we honor ourselves and recognize our worth as being of God. God wants us happy and equipped and to have what we need. We are to enjoy this ride and how do we do that when we give our preferences away to everyone that walks up to us? It is okay to have our priorities first with regard to others. It is even required if this is how we love others and God. We can still remember that we all have self-interests we are pursuing and we are all important. When we Love our fellow human, we are practicing Self-Love because we are all One. We are them. They are us. We are all made from the same space dust. Love yourself and give yourself the understanding that when you acknowledge and focus on your wants and needs, you are loving God and others because we are all of God and have Christ’s Consciousness as our Soul.
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