Becoming deeply aware of my own selfishness

[Spiritual Warrior]

Recently, I have become frustrated with how selfish I still am despite all of the personal development work that I've put in. 

I am painting this as a negative thing as far as my emotional state goes but in reality becoming aware of my own selfishness is the first step towards coming down off of my self-righteous high horse. The step below this is being selfish and also not being aware of it at all, which is where I was prior to this revelation. 

Now, where do I go from here? It is my goal to continue to observe my behavior and be very honest with myself in terms of what is going on in the current situation, what is going on in my head, etc. it takes viewing reality in a zoomed out way and looking at it for what it TRULY is. Look for the Truth in every situation. Do not shy away from the Truth even if and especially if it hurts. 

Namaste.

[Yimpa]

This post has sparked an insight in me:

Be mindful not to confuse selfishness with what society, culture. religion, etc. has conformed you to believe what  selfishness is. 

For example, a religion can teach you to praise and respect God as something outside of yourself, and that it is selfish to even consider that You are God. So you will never discover that You are God as long as you are conforming to that religion and set of beliefs.

Edited Thursday at 01:34 PM by Yimpa

[Terell Kirby]

1 hour ago, Spiritual Warrior said:

I am painting this as a negative thing as far as my emotional state goes but in reality becoming aware of my own selfishness is the first step towards coming down off of my self-righteous high horse.

Wonderful job at self reflection- that’s really all you can ask for.

Overcoming selfishness & self-bias is a lifelong process-enjoy it while it lasts, and don’t be too hard on yourself.

Edited Thursday at 01:39 PM by Terell Kirby

[Cred]

There is no such thing as selfishness. Everything "selfish" either stems from survival or from an authentic devine desire. Every belief that you have that claims that this desire is somehow bad is evil. This "striving for virtue" will eat you up and will only make all of your self destructive behaviour worse.

The real liberation process has nothing to do with rejecting selfishness or rejecting anything for that matter. It is letting go. Just do what you want to do and stop doing what don't want to do without judgement. This is not selfishness, it is moving into resonance with your true spirit. 

If you tap your authentic potential you can archieve things you never thought to be possible.

Edited Thursday at 01:49 PM by Cred

[Terell Kirby]

29 minutes ago, Cred said:

Everything "selfish" either stems from survival or from an authentic devine desire.

Does that include robbing a bank? 

[Cred]

1 hour ago, Terell Kirby said:

Does that include robbing a bank? 

• If you rob a bank because you have massive debt and/or you need the money, then it's survival
• When you are part of a criminal group that gives you a sense of belonging and you help rob a bank out of solidarity with you fellow "brothers", then you are tapping into authentic community. Changing your community in that situation is not as easy as you think for a lot of people.
• If you are an anti-capitalist and you like planning elaborate crimes against capitalist institutions, then you are also tapping into authenticity.
• Even if you dremt of affording a lamborghini your whole life it can still come from an authentic desire

The only "bad reason" to rob a bank and this is by far the most common one is because of self-hatred. To free yourself from self-hatred you invision a future where you are rich (or enlightened) and decide to rob a bank (or buy psychedelics). But since self-hatred is a black hole void that devoirs anything you throw at it, it will prevail.

The only way to truly beat self hatred is to free yourself from these dualisms like "selflessness", "selfishness", "high development", "low development", "higher self", "lower self" and all this bullshit. At the end of the day, these distinctions don't destroy evil which is self hatred but create it. "I am being so selfish I should hate myself. I have to be better!" this is self-hatred and it is infecting this community.

A big part of this community is the spreading of Leos self-hatred to other people. This thread is the proof. As soon as Leo learns about neurodivergency, he can heal and this trend can be reversed.

Edited Thursday at 03:32 PM by Cred

[Spiritual Warrior]

Thank you for all the replies, I love hearing your insights. The thing that I am noticing that is a mind warp is as soon as the first comment rolled in and it was praising me for being aware of my selfishness, I jumped right back onto my self-righteous high horse and started trotting along thinking to myself "Oh yeah, look at me, I'm so conscious, I am aware of all my selfishness." 

Its just funny how that works, it is positive that I'm aware of the selfishness, no doubt about it. But then my mind eats it up and thinks I'm hot shit for it.

Its like I don't even want to be this person that craves things anymore, material desires, more sex, more money, a bigger house. I can see that the greatest impact a human being can have on the world lies within a tier two way of thinking (I'm talking spiral dynamics here) in which he is able to zoom out and build systems that can sustain and help humanity prosper and grow. That is where real growth can be had and it is my life purpose to make as great of an impact on humanity as my potential will allow. 

The issue with being in tier two for me right now is I have not burned through my karma in the dating field, I am living with my mom right now, and I only make $35k a year. A person can have all the desire in the world to be at tier two where he can make the greatest impact, but if he doesn't have these more survival based needs met, there's no way he realistically makes the "quantum leap" into a tier two way of thinking. 

So in conclusion, I will continue to work on exhausting my desires for dating and sex, becoming a maser in my field of work, and making enough money so that I can buy a nice but modest house. While doing that, the foundational thinking mind will be looking to experience the truth within every situation that he encounters, being honest towards other people and probably more importantly towards himself. 

[Arthogaan]

22 hours ago, Cred said:

• If you rob a bank because you have massive debt and/or you need the money, then it's survival
• When you are part of a criminal group that gives you a sense of belonging and you help rob a bank out of solidarity with you fellow "brothers", then you are tapping into authentic community. Changing your community in that situation is not as easy as you think for a lot of people.
• If you are an anti-capitalist and you like planning elaborate crimes against capitalist institutions, then you are also tapping into authenticity.
• Even if you dremt of affording a lamborghini your whole life it can still come from an authentic desire

The only "bad reason" to rob a bank and this is by far the most common one is because of self-hatred. To free yourself from self-hatred you invision a future where you are rich (or enlightened) and decide to rob a bank (or buy psychedelics). But since self-hatred is a black hole void that devoirs anything you throw at it, it will prevail.

The only way to truly beat self hatred is to free yourself from these dualisms like "selflessness", "selfishness", "high development", "low development", "higher self", "lower self" and all this bullshit. At the end of the day, these distinctions don't destroy evil which is self hatred but create it. "I am being so selfish I should hate myself. I have to be better!" this is self-hatred and it is infecting this community.

A big part of this community is the spreading of Leos self-hatred to other people. This thread is the proof. As soon as Leo learns about neurodivergency, he can heal and this trend can be reversed.

This is confusing absolute vs relative perspective.

Relatively speaking there is such a thing as selfishness. Understanding the causes of selfishness may cause us to be compasionate towards certain action. The fact that selfishness stems from survival does not refute selfishness. 

Even after realizing no-self you can look at someone as a system and contemplate how many time and resources does a particular system spend to improve it's own functioning versus how much does it spend to improve it's surrounding environment.

[VioletFlame]

It's innate and natural to be selfish, but that doesn't mean we should condone selfishness. Selfishness is the lowest form of human consciousness. Human beings are naturally flawed creatures. One of our flaws is selfishness. The first step is to become aware of it, which you already have. Now the goal is to become LESS selfish, not to use the universal nature of human selfishness as an excuse to continue being more selfish.

It is our responsibility as humans to grow and evolve, meaning to become LESS selfish and more thoughtful, considerate, and empathetic to other human beings. We are living in the "me" generation and becoming more conditioned to believe that selfishness is the answer. We must stop encouraging and glorifying selfishness like it's a healthy pursuit. This is counter-productive and counter-intuitive. The more selfish we are, the less lucid and conscious we are as human beings. The more selfish we are, the more akin we are to a beast.

Edited 7 hours ago by VioletFlame

[Cred]

42 minutes ago, Arthogaan said:

Even after realizing no-self you can look at someone as a system and contemplate how many time and resources does a particular system spend to improve it's own functioning versus how much does it spend to improve it's surrounding environment.

This distinction only makes sense when looking at a person who is living in disalignment aka inauthentically aka in self hatred.

When you live authentically, you automatically become at the same time the most selfish person and the most selfless person on the planet. If you are in this state, you produce maximum value for yourself and maximum value for others at the same time.

This is true for me. Ever since I started trying to embrace my neurodivergency completely, I have never been more selfish but I also have never produced this much value in my life.

The more you fight your selfishness, the less value you will be able to produce and therefore the less selfless you will be.

Edited 9 hours ago by Cred

[gettoefl]

You're just here for you. Be here for me when you have gone the distance. Until then use the 4000 weeks this life affords you for you alone. All else is trickery and sophistry. Be ruthlessly selfish. Don't let one person dare impinge on your sovereignty to go your way.

 

 

[LordFall]

Selfishness is ranked above shame in the scale of consciousness. 

I know you meant it well but look at sneaky self-deception is, you're looking for sympathy and validation instead of taking action on the goal of being selfless and less selfish.

What are you going to do in the next week and month to reduce your selfishness? Volunteer? Donate? What do you have that is valuable to give out to others? 

State it and we will hold you accountable to it @Spiritual Warrior

[Hojo]

Your frustration with your selfishness is paradoxically the selfish thing. Isnt it selfish to want more selflessness?

Next step is to meta cognisize why you are being selfish in this way. Because thats still ego, the selfish thing thinking this.

Edited 7 hours ago by Hojo

[Joseph Maynor]

Selfishness is one of those words that needs context.  In humans it occurs in degrees.  If we're saying selfishness in general is wrong, then one has to ask if that is an impossible standard to expect.  I've never met a completely unselfish person.  We all need to survive.  We all eat something to survive.  We all take over property including the environment to survive.  Are other animals selfish or only humans?  What does a completely unselfish human even look like?  Are some of us trying to low key virtue signal by saying we want to be completely unselfish?  But that's kinda selfish, no?  You want to selfishly look or be seen a certain way to others (a saintly way).

Edited 7 hours ago by Joseph Maynor