Why Be Selfless At All? A Glance Back At the Root of Selflessness

[Aaron p]

You know, for a long time being raised Christian I struggled with the grace of God and how it worked with the idea of "being a good person" (otherwise known as good works). For a long time after I started to see that good works would get me very little with god in reality, i kind of gave up on moral living altogether and just lived like that. This was unintentional, but I sort of just let it continue and never really returned to why selflessness is better than selfish living...

Why be good?

Why be positive?

Why live in a selfless fashion...?

 

I was watching Leo's "Zen devil part 1" video and a big insight hit me and I realized that I need to contemplate it more, so here's my insight from about a decade of study from the Christian perspective and from the new-age nondual perspective...I feel like my fervent history in both practices gives me a unique vantage point on the matter...let me know your thoughts if you wish... 

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Ultimately, you'll discover that enlightenment isint realistically attainable by simply moralizing or being a moral individual...and that moralizing can actually become very religiously dogmatic and a distraction to true self enquiry and realization.

Subsequently the question arises..."Why be good at all?" The answer is: you don't have to be...but true transformational enlightenment will fill you with love for everyone and everything and (importantly) the way in which you can differentiate between ("do it because i know i should") [what could be called] "shallow selflessness" and "true selflessness"...is the source from which it flows, and that true selflessness flows automatically.

Imagine an outdoor, brick wall that was built without cement, and was instead supported with wooden stands and support beams...because of the lack of cement available, the wall would easily fall over without the manual wooden supports, 
but after a while the wall will have been there for so long that the algae, ivy, rainfall and natural elements of the environment will have pressed down on, and grown around the bricks so much that the wall fuses together to the point where it can stand on its own and support itself automatically, and where the manual wooden stands are no longer required and can be removed without fear of the walls collapse.

In this metaphorical picture...

The walls stability, is Selflessness, 
The lack of cement, is Natural Immaturity,
The wooden support beams, are the Manually Cultivated Habits/Outlets for Selflessness, 
…and the natural elements are Gods nature (which is also our true nature).

It would be a major mistake to fail to recognize that, while true stable selflessness flows automatically from deep a transformation (being exposed to God), the *process* of transformation itself is most definitely not as 
automatic and often requires manual effort and strong support initially.
Therefore it is not a bad thing to seek outlets for selflessness and to manually guide yourself to engage in those selfless habits [knowing the benefits that come with selflessness] because, before long, these habits, outlets and principals will begin to sustain and support themselves simply because it will literally start to feel amazing in contrast to the selfish alternative.

 

 

 

Boiled right down, the insight is this:

False Selflessness = Forcing yourself *into* selfless shapes.
True Selflessness = Relaxing into alignment with, and flowing with the natural shape of your selfless nature that exists authentically and effortlessly within.

The key supplementary insight here is recognizing that the thing that governs whether your selflessness is true or false, is the source from which it flows and rather than doing it because someone told you to...relaxing, flowing with and submitting to the selfless nature that *already* exists within...and seeing that some [or even a lot of] manual support and rearrangement of your values, actions and core principals and submitting to your selfless inner nature is different than forcing yourself into repetitive "good works"...that some manual guidance into selfless actions is healthy because it will eventually stimulate and cultivate a bliss and peace that will sustain the selfless way of life and eventually become more and more effortless.

 

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[BipolarGrowth]

At the end of the day, experience is an uncontrollable and self-automated process. The saint should receive no praise as they had no choice or alternative, even if to the untrained mind it appears that they did have a choice. Similarly, the psychopath should receive no hatred as they also have no control over the matter. The same is to be said of awakened or unawakened people. They also had no choice in arriving at either designation. Life lives itself. The only question is: how well can you live with that?

 

Solid post btw. 

Edited October 17, 2022 by BipolarGrowth

[Aaron p]

@BipolarGrowth yeah man, and thanks

[Razard86]

 

On 10/17/2022 at 0:57 PM, BipolarGrowth said:

At the end of the day, experience is an uncontrollable and self-automated process. The saint should receive no praise as they had no choice or alternative, even if to the untrained mind it appears that they did have a choice. Similarly, the psychopath should receive no hatred as they also have no control over the matter. The same is to be said of awakened or unawakened people. They also had no choice in arriving at either designation. Life lives itself. The only question is: how well can you live with that?

 

Solid post btw. 

Well Free Will both exists and doesn't exist. Because of the illusion of separation, within that illusion free will exists, as the ego is a self-interference pattern. Now when the illusion falls away then free will is seen to have been an illusion. Now you might argue that if its an illusion then it was never real, but real and illusionary are actually the same. Because real and illusion is just an interpretation. Everything is just an interpretation of the senses (perceptions) so if I give you a drug that makes you walk in a circle in an alternate reality in which you are living a life for 30 + years I cannot no more tell you that life was imaginary anymore than this current one.

Its all interpretation. Ultimately if everything is connected then there is no free will, but if illusion is still there then for you that is not the case. 

On 10/16/2022 at 8:06 PM, Aaron p said:

You know, for a long time being raised Christian I struggled with the grace of God and how it worked with the idea of "being a good person" (otherwise known as good works). For a long time after I started to see that good works would get me very little with god in reality, i kind of gave up on moral living altogether and just lived like that. This was unintentional, but I sort of just let it continue and never really returned to why selflessness is better than selfish living...

Why be good?

Why be positive?

Why live in a selfless fashion...?

 

I was watching Leo's "Zen devil part 1" video and a big insight hit me and I realized that I need to contemplate it more, so here's my insight from about a decade of study from the Christian perspective and from the new-age nondual perspective...I feel like my fervent history in both practices gives me a unique vantage point on the matter...let me know your thoughts if you wish... 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ultimately, you'll discover that enlightenment isint realistically attainable by simply moralizing or being a moral individual...and that moralizing can actually become very religiously dogmatic and a distraction to true self enquiry and realization.

Subsequently the question arises..."Why be good at all?" The answer is: you don't have to be...but true transformational enlightenment will fill you with love for everyone and everything and (importantly) the way in which you can differentiate between ("do it because i know i should") [what could be called] "shallow selflessness" and "true selflessness"...is the source from which it flows, and that true selflessness flows automatically.

Imagine an outdoor, brick wall that was built without cement, and was instead supported with wooden stands and support beams...because of the lack of cement available, the wall would easily fall over without the manual wooden supports, 
but after a while the wall will have been there for so long that the algae, ivy, rainfall and natural elements of the environment will have pressed down on, and grown around the bricks so much that the wall fuses together to the point where it can stand on its own and support itself automatically, and where the manual wooden stands are no longer required and can be removed without fear of the walls collapse.

In this metaphorical picture...

The walls stability, is Selflessness, 
The lack of cement, is Natural Immaturity,
The wooden support beams, are the Manually Cultivated Habits/Outlets for Selflessness, 
…and the natural elements are Gods nature (which is also our true nature).

It would be a major mistake to fail to recognize that, while true stable selflessness flows automatically from deep a transformation (being exposed to God), the *process* of transformation itself is most definitely not as 
automatic and often requires manual effort and strong support initially.
Therefore it is not a bad thing to seek outlets for selflessness and to manually guide yourself to engage in those selfless habits [knowing the benefits that come with selflessness] because, before long, these habits, outlets and principals will begin to sustain and support themselves simply because it will literally start to feel amazing in contrast to the selfish alternative.

 

 

 

Boiled right down, the insight is this:

False Selflessness = Forcing yourself *into* selfless shapes.
True Selflessness = Relaxing into alignment with, and flowing with the natural shape of your selfless nature that exists authentically and effortlessly within.

The key supplementary insight here is recognizing that the thing that governs whether your selflessness is true or false, is the source from which it flows and rather than doing it because someone told you to...relaxing, flowing with and submitting to the selfless nature that *already* exists within...and seeing that some [or even a lot of] manual support and rearrangement of your values, actions and core principals and submitting to your selfless inner nature is different than forcing yourself into repetitive "good works"...that some manual guidance into selfless actions is healthy because it will eventually stimulate and cultivate a bliss and peace that will sustain the selfless way of life and eventually become more and more effortless.

 

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I respectfully suggest you realize you are overly complicating something very simple. Selflessness and Selfish is just another interpretation. Because if everyone is YOU, how can you actually be selfish? Your definition of selfish is not some hard line its something you change depending on the situation. I mean you are even talking about false selflessness? If truth is what is...if a person performed an act of selflessness can you even call it false regardless of the motivations? Also every act is selfish actually at all times. You have never done a selfless act in your entire life. Why? Because the DESIRE to be selfless is motivated by something selfish....which is desire. 

All desires is based on attempting to attain something which is a belief that something needs to be fixed or improved. Nothing wrong with that but as long as you think things need to be fixed or improved....you will always see problems....which is what the mind naturally does. 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Razard86