Nothing Is Selfless Or Selfish

[Saarah]

A lot of the times I tend to think about how my actions are selfish or when people talk about functioning from a place of non-ego how then you're selfless and that that's true compassion etc. 

1. But if I am a piece of life just as much as any other thing or being and this organism happens to take an action that helps itself, then I am not being selfish because I'm acting for all of life itself 

2. And from the other perspective if I was some enlightened person taking action towards maybe world hunger, even though I don't have an ego and I'm not acting from it, I'd be serving life and life serving itself is selfish anyway, ego or not 

So really selfish and selfless are just redundant and all action is both and neither
Maybe that's why the person with the ego is still said to be enlightened this very second as their actions are all neither good or bad, neither for themselves or for others, it's just that they don't see it and that the enlightened person can actually see both perspectives that's why they're 'realised'

I think this can help people who have self-compassion issues see that anything they do is just fine and they are just fine, and maybe it can help people see morally that all action is neither selfish or selfless, it's just another way of saying there's no good or bad, with the ego or without, whatever a criminal does, it's just life serving life

And now I see why you can be at any level in moral development or in terms of spiral dynamics and enlightened at the same time, since regardless of whatever place you function from, when you're enlightened all action is just action anyway 

Just seeing it from this 'nothing is selfless or selfish' perspective has helped me understand better 

Edited June 13, 2016 by Saarah
I made a boo boo *sniff*

[Mal]

@Saarah

Why are you not allowed to be both?

If you embrace your selfishness you can only embrace others selfishness, which will make you selfless. 

If you disown your selfishness you're not being selfless, you merely create a shadow like so many spiritual people do.

Mal

[Nathalie]

I think you can only be selfish or selfless when you're acting out of a dreaming state.. Too simple??

Don't have to be "enlightened" just conscient enough and you feel both, so to speak, at the same time.. Even not really both because before thinking it already has merged in one..

[Saarah]

@Mal yeah definitely need to avoid that trap!

I was actually attempting to embrace my selfishness and that prompted me to think about this selfish vs. selflessness and it led me to the idea that all action is both and neither at the same time 

But I wonder if I'm using that as a way to not hurt my ego for the fact that it's so selfish and I'm trying to justify my selfish actions by saying ultimately they're selfless so it's ok, but then I still feel there's some truth and reality to the idea that all life serves life and is both selfish and selfless and then neither, then it's just the reality of the action 

[Saarah]

@MartineF I feel like I can trick myself into thinking I'm aware of it properly by mistaking the map for the territory, thinking too much about it cognitively and not getting it in real time 

[Nathalie]

1 hour ago, Saarah said:

thinking too much about it cognitively and not getting it in real time 

exactly..

just feel what you feel by giving and taking. If your mind comes in, a lot of stories follow.. But if you don't, or let me say just before you start to think about it, it's the same, a kind of connectivity, bond.. isn't it?

[Mal]

@Saarah

What's beyond the selfish/selfless duality?

Both selfish and selfless are ideas. What would be beyond these ideas?

[Saarah]

@Mal hmm, I don't know just the reality of the action itself, the occurrence of it, just what you see but not interpret 

I have my thoughts about the action, but then there's the action itself separate from my thoughts about its assigned intention or meaning 

[Mal]

@Saarah @Saarah

Ok, you see that.  Do you think the person you are helping will be able to congnize in the same way you will?

Think about that for a while. 

In my experience all we can really do is be an example of unconditional acceptance.  I didn't know what unconditional love was until my mentor modelled it for me consistently while I went through extreme periods of self hate.  He always seemed to be OK with my needing to answer back or get angry.  It took a long time.  Then I went through a period of imagining that he himself was the source of love, and put him on a pedestal.  He made sure I took him off that pedestal by doing something imperfect that I would become disappointed at him for.

It was such a long process.  I eventually realized that I would not have been talked into that way of thinking, I had to integrate it myself. 

This reminds me of that old saying in the spiritual community 

"Be the change that you want to see happen in the world"

Mal

Edited June 14, 2016 by Mal

[FindingPeace]

The whole concepts of 'selfish' and 'selflessness' don't really work as they create a paradox. It could be said that the reciever of a selfless act is selfish by allowing someone to benefit them at the expense of the 'giver'. It's almost impossible not to act out of self-interest in life. It's a fact of life, quite literally. Life, by it's very nature is self-interested in it's own self-agenda - at the most simplistic level that being survival.

Selfishness can be defined as acting in the interest of one's own self-agenda. Selflessness can be defined as acting not out of one's own agenda but for the sake of another person's. Although how can you decide to do a selfless act if it doesn't come from some sense of self-agenda in the first place? But if selfishness is acting out of one's own self-agenda, then to be on the recieving end of a selfless act must be in favour of the reciever's agenda. Which makes them selfish.

Fundamenatlly the whole thing doesn't work. What I see are three scenarios:

Someone acts in their own interest not at the expense of others but doesn't benefit others either. This is healthy 'selfishness'.

Someone acts in their own interest and benefits others. This is also healthy.

Someone acts in their own interests at the expense of others. This is the unhealthy behaviour.

As long that we are acting from within the contexts of the first two then I see no problem. It is the 3rd context that causes the most suffering and dysfunction in life.

Really we should drop the whole concepts of selfishness and selflessness as they can't really be resolved. It is better to adopt a strategy of 'do no harm to others' instead which negates the need to label things as selfish or selfless.

16 hours ago, Saarah said:

if I was some enlightened person taking action towards maybe world hunger

The thing that interests me about ideas like this is that why would you choose to take action towards world hunger in the first place? Because, fundamentally, it serves your self-agenda. You wouldn't take action for the sake of it, You have to have a reason, and a reason comes from the self-agenda. Which, on some level makes it a self-interested act.

There really are no actions we take in life that don't come from our own self-interests. No one would ever take action that serves no purpose to them. At the very least, the 'reward' for the action has to be a sense of validation or satisfaction. But validation and satisfaction are still self-interests.

These are all human concepts at the end of the day. Look at animals. They only ever operate from a 'selfish' stand point. They have no interest in acting in the interests of others unless that action comes full circle to benefit them in some ultimate way.

[Saarah]

@Mal Wow, thanks for sharing your personal story, the idea of unconditional acceptance just reminded me of the needy vs non-needy perception video and how looking at things without imposing our own agenda and without only focusing on our single relationship to that object or being can help us see and accept things for what they are, I can see that's what you were doing with your mentor too. 

I'll have to think about your question every time I interact with someone and see what I notice!

 @FindingPeace I see what you mean, your three scenarios are great because it reminded me of what Stephen Covey says in his book, he mentions 7 scenarios I think that are about being effective in interacting with other people, but you've touched on three which are basically

- win/win - you benefit and they benefit

- no deal - nobody benefits or loses 

- win/lose - one person gets something at the expense of the other

I see he's actually touching on this selfishness issue here even though he doesn't say so explicitly, he also says win/win is always possible and if for some reason it isn't, no deal is best, which is what you also said! 

 

[Mal]

On 14/06/2016 at 3:35 PM, Saarah said:

@Mal.... see and accept things for what they are...

 @FindingPeace

Sarah,

It depends on what you mean by "seeing things as they are".

On the relative side of the street you want to embrace selfishness, yes because if you don't you will end up hurting yourself, the easiest way to transcend ego is to embrace it first.  

On the Absolute side, there is nothing arising, the manifest world is an illusion, a projection of your mind. 

Non-duality is understanding that the Relative domain is just the Absolute in another form.  To be "enlightened" is to know that all things arise in you, and that there are in fact no beings to "save".  The Bodhisattva is the one who resides in the relative to help those awaken.  This is "compassion" from an enlightened perspective. 

Confused?

Mal

[Saarah]

@Mal haha! Yes, the first few times I read it  
I understand most of it now except those last two sentences