THE “SELF”-ISH NATURE OF BEING HUMAN
ALL KNOWLEDGE BEGINS WITH SELF KNOWLEDGE
Most will never discover it, but when we look back on our lives from our death bed with any real degree of contemplative scrutiny and self-reflection, it is my hope that one might come to see, the only relationship we were ever having from the day we took our first breath till our last, is the one we were having with ourselves, WITHIN ourselves, and that relationship is ONLY and ALWAYS going on within us, NOT WITHOUT. This is true “self” awareness!
With each incarnation along the “Wisdom Chain,” as I like to call it, as we transition from life to life, experience to experience, each experience is our teacher.
Experience is the only “TRUTH.” Everything else is ‘belief.’ And oh, how we are blinded by our beliefs. Reality remains a veiled truth, as all any of us see are our “beliefs,” whether it be the faith we project onto and accept as truth in the form of our religion, politics, faith in pharmaceutical medicine, relationships, news, and on and on. Our entire reality is a construct built and stitched together out of nothing more than the canvass of our beliefs we’ve been imbued with by parents, education (which I believe is more of an indoctrination that largely keeps the masses from thinking), advertising, media, news, propaganda, and religion.
The problem with beliefs, is that once we accept them as “truth” we as individuals are content with the answers provided to us. We stop seeking. A person with answers no longer seeks the “TRUTH.” The fact is, “TRUTH” cannot be known through any medium.
YOU ARE THE ONLY DOORWAY TO EXPERIENCE!
There is no truth outside of the experience you’re having at any given time. So, immersing ourselves in the ‘nowness’ of every experience is paramount to our learning as EVERY experience teaches us something about ourselves. All external interactions only reflect back to us the “beliefs” we hold within us about ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Though we spend a lifetime externalizing our happiness and exert countless amounts of wasted energy, hoping, cajoling, and even manipulating in our attempts to get others to bend to our will and comply with our expectations, it’s a vain pursuit. We go through exhaustive efforts to market ourselves to the world to win the acceptance and the appreciation of others for jobs, for advancement, for sex, for companionship, but when we’ve ultimately exhausted ourselves in that pursuit, we will learn that the love for ourselves, that we so desperately sought in the eyes of others was elusive in that pursuit. All for naught . . . a futile endeavor to say the least. That’s because no amount of praise and external adoration can make us love ourselves. Created by an ego, manufactured by a society through endless marketing that keeps us all in a state of comparative analysis, where we constantly compare ourselves to everyone else, insecurity is bred into us. After years of exposure to society, most of us arrive at 3 basic conclusions . . . “I’m not likable, I’m not lovable, and sadly, I’m not good enough.” Our own internal dialogue is what destroys us, no one else.
Few individuals rise above this mindset and the trappings of the ego. If we did capitalism and the economy would fall apart . . . with the events of 2020, 2021, 2022 . . . aside.
Capitalism is predicated on a system of indoctrination, where people are programmed to attach their sense of relevancy and self-importance to their bank account and possessions, to be insecure, and to become endless consumers in trying to compensate for their recurring feeling of irrelevancy and sense of being unimportant. Our self-image and self-worth are commodities in first world countries is largely purchased.
As hard of a pill as this may be to swallow, “You’ve never loved any one and no one has ever loved you – EVERYONE IS SELFISH!” – or perhaps better said “Self”–“ish” – it cannot be any other way.
I can imagine there are those, especially parents – of which I am one – that will read such an egregious, dispassionate, antithetical sounding statement and take exception to it. Admittedly, please understand, I agree with whatever reaction may be occurring within you. I think that is a very natural response. Most of us prefer to see ourselves as having character and a moral constitution that is predicated on cherished virtues such as being compassionate, loving, thoughtful, endearing, respectful, etc., etc.
So, let me explain . . .
Because we cannot experience life outside of ourselves, only within ourselves, ‘EVERYTHING’ – literally EVERY experience and the feelings those experiences evoke – is only and always happening WITHIN us. Life is never happening ‘TO’ us; it’s only happening ‘WITHIN’ us.
How we experience any event is based entirely around the narrative we create within us, that defines the experience itself. That narrative is always commensurate with and validates our beliefs. Physical pain and abuse notwithstanding, though we may blame others for the way we feel, no one can make us “FEEL” anything. Conversely, none of us can know what another person is thinking or feel what another person is feeling. We can only “guestimate” (guess in our estimation) at best in surmising what another person’s experience is, and that guestimate is always based upon our own experiences and the impressions that were made upon us into going through similar experiences.
This is never more true than in romantic relationships which I have written extensively on. So, with respect to romance? I digress. I certainly encourage reading my series on healthy approaches to romantic relationships beginning with, https://shiftethos.com/2019/11/02/crazy-little-thing-called-love/
Couples I’ve counseled are often shocked when I share with them that the modern word “LOVE” comes from the Sanskrit term “lobha” – a term that means greedy and self-serving. I don’t believe the coincidence is accidental, a concept I explain in detail in my other writings.
As a parent, even the most benevolent, intimate, often inexpressible feelings of love we feel towards our children and readily pontificate as being the most sacred of human bonds, are still only an experience happening within us based entirely upon the value we give them as “OUR” children. We see them as an extension of us. Why is it we don’t feel the same about another couple’s child as we feel about “OUR” child? Simple. They’re not “OUR” child. They’re not part of “OUR” story. They’re not an extension of ‘us.’ How “self”-“ish.”
Understand that as a parent, I’m not above this statement or so evolved that I don’t derive from the relationship with my son, all the same feelings other parents have. I’m every bit as protective, googly eyed, and obsessed with my son’s well-being as other proud parents. I’m simply acknowledging where all the feelings emanate . . . they bubble to the surface from within me, created by me. Every experience is created by me and only happening within me.
Every choice we make, we make with the belief that that choice will lead to and create “within” us a sought after and desired emotion, feeling, or sensation. Everything external to the physical aspect of us (ie. our body) is pursued with the belief it will create an anticipated experience that will evoke within us a feeling we desire to have, whether that feeling is sought out to provide pleasure, advancement for us, continuity, predictability, security, a sense of altruism, a sense relevance, a sense of importance, or to simply bolster our sense of self-worth.
We been taught to regard selfishness as a bad thing, but ‘selfishness’ is neither objectively good nor bad. It is in fact, the default state of conscious awareness of all living, conscious, sovereign beings – a point of consciousness embedded in the avatar (body) we animate, that we identify with as being “us” – the “I am” that we’re convinced lives somewhere in the middle of our head, behind our eyes. When most people use the term ‘selfish’ it a reference to the narrow focus of one’s perspective and how their choices discount the consideration of others.
If we really pay attention, ‘selfishness’ is hiding in plain sight all the time, but we lack the self-awareness to see it, especially within ourselves. The ‘SELF’ is us as the observer – that is something entirely separate from the thoughts that seem to occur automatically on the movie projection screen of our minds. ‘Selfishness’ is the prime mover and impetus behind everything we do and every choice we make.
As I’ve written about in prior writings, “We cannot know or experience anything outside of ourselves. Since consciousness is always an outbound phenomenon, emanating from within us, we are the center (the observer looking out) and the circumference (the entirety of the events in we take in over the course of our lives), the subject (the one seeking the experiences) and the object (the beneficiary of those choices), the actor (the central figure) and the audience (the appraiser) of everything that happens to us.”
Selfishness is therefore only a question of scope as all any of us seek is our “preferences” – what we want to see in the world and believe.
If I regard only the physical aspect of myself (my body) as being “ME,” the narrow scope of my choices may come to create very negative consequences by disregarding how our choices may negate and hurt others in creating untoward circumstances for them. If my selfishness is “EXCLUSIVE” – meaning exclusively confined to “ME,” all I care about is “ME.”
As a result, my life becomes one with a very myopic, diminutive perspective, with me (physically and emotionally) as the only consideration. These choices generally tend to lead to a life of loneliness, separation, disconnection, disunity, isolation, and alienation. This leads to an emptiness, a void. Our lives in turn, become one of endless compensation in managing the propagation of floundering insecurities. Our ego collapsing under the weight of its own self-imposed misery and loneliness, seeks validation by adopting materialism and externalizing our sense of relevance through the acquisition of money and possessions we believe define us, all while feigning confidence to hide our profound emptiness. This is to a large degree most of society, with its “every man for himself” mentality.
Carl Sagan once said, “An organism at war with itself, is doomed.” An observation very relevant. Humans are truly at war with themselves both internally and externally. Ignorance (what one doesn’t know, and worse yet don’t know that they don’t know) is the only true pandemic in the world.
If, on the other hand, my selfishness is “INCLUSIVE” and expanded to other humans, other species, the planet, the cosmos, and on and on, my selfishness can become a very powerful force in the world, seeking to provide and contribute to the well-being of all living things.
The question at hand is whether our selfishness is “inclusive” or “exclusive.”
I personally, selfishly desire the well-being of every living thing on the planet and want others to live in peace and harmony. Is that bad? Of course not. In doing so, when I act altruistically, I’m still being selfish, because I ‘like’ the way it feels within me to contribute to the happiness of others and the well-being of the planet. I’m projecting the way I believe things should be. That’s not a bad thing because in my selfishness, I’m improving the quality of other’s lives. In this vein, the ultimate form of selfishness is to be responsible for EVERYTHING – exercising our “responsibility” (response-ability), our “ability” to “respond” to a given need.
For example, I tend to constantly pick up garbage, especially when walking into restaurants or retail outlets. I could certainly say to myself, “I’m not picking up that garbage. I didn’t put it there. It’s not my responsibility.” But, because I have the “ability” to “respond” to that need, I’m happy to pick up the trash before it blows into the woods or rivers and finds its way to the ocean that are already accumulating billions of metric tons of garbage every year. Feel free to read my article titled, “IGNORANCE, ARROGANCE, NEGLECT AND CONSEQUENCES.” The Story of Plastic, Oceans, and Our Survival. I promise, it will be eye-opening!
Can you imagine the world we’d create if everyone was selfish enough to be 100% responsible – responding to what they can positively influence without prodding or guilting others and responding to needs with no fanfare? What a world we’d create.
Sadly, we live in a society that conflates responsibility with blame and fault. We need to broaden our definition of “responsibility.” If we equate responsibility with blame and fault, we can deflect our personal accountability and blame others for our circumstances or the way the world is. Failing to take response-ability leads to choices that only benefit us, reinforcing negative societal values that only lead to further degradation of the planet.
Well intentioned priests, pastors, clergymen, life coaches, and motivational speakers promote the idea of being “selfless,” which of course, is an impossibility. The only way one can be “selfless” is to not exist because the very basis of one’s existence, is the conscious awareness of the experiences happening within their “SELF.” The body has no “experiences” independent of the conscious awareness contained in the body. Remove life from the body and it has no more experiences. Only our consciousness, our conscious awareness of the experiences we’re having in any given moment, creates the experiences themselves.
Our brain, with its vast network of dendritic neural extensions and connections, all wired through repetition and the phenomenal “neural plasticity” of this remarkable organ, only works through association. It classifies, categorizes, and associates “present” experiences with something in our past that we’ve already experienced. Every relationship we are having with another person is in fact only a fantasy, a projection of our own mind. The difference between the “brain” and the “mind” is that the brain is only an accumulation of impressions, memories, words, associations.
The “mind” by contrast is the “observer” of the impressions, memories, words, associations, and identifications the brain has catalogued. Think of the brain as the OS – Operating System – of the body, a very sophisticated technology, powered by the immaterial energy of the mind, the life powering the system. Sound like a stretch?
When we are born, we have pure awareness. No thoughts, no memories, no words, no associations, or identifications to distort reality with. Simply put, sensory experiences devoid of any associations, expressions, or memories, that we can project on to them.
In this state, we experience the “essence” of everything. Once our education begins, we’re provided with label for everything, and we never see the essence of it ever again. We become familiar with it and dismiss its novelty. This is what the brain does. It creates a construct of reality through a series of beliefs we espouse. What we see depends almost entirely upon what we’re looking for or perhaps expecting to see. Again, “ALL WE SEE IS OUR BELIEFS!!!” Each of us living in our own reality, a projection of the “SELF” and all of its prescribed beliefs. There is no objective reality, and no two people are ever having the same experience. Each person’s experience are unique to themselves, because they are own unique “self.”
The mind, by contrast to the brain, is the “OBSERVER.” The brain is the CPU running the technology we call the body. The reason I refer to it as a technology is because our body is involved in innumerable, incomprehensibly impossible to imagine processes, ranging in the trillions every second of every day, that we are completely, profoundly clueless about. It runs flawlessly without any conscious effort on our part.
Even “our” thoughts are NOT “OUR” thoughts. They don’t belong to us. They belong to the body, and we? We are simply the observers of thoughts generated within the body by a brain trying to associate our present experiences with something it has catalogued in the past. And yes, we can take control of the machine, this technology we are borrowing, that runs largely independent of any direction we may provide it.
Every second the human body is processing 500 million proteins. Are we controlling that? The body breathes independent of thought, digests, independent of thought, performs billions of chemical reactions independent of thought, and regulates body temperature independent of thought. It has an unimaginable intelligence and software that lies entirely beyond our thinking about it. And yet, we somehow “think” (even though we’re not even the one doing the thinking) that we are this body.
Scientist have been looking for the past 120 years for consciousness in the human body, and yet, no one has been able to find the seat of consciousness. Recent studies in consciousness seem to suggest that consciousness is not contained within the body, but rather flowing through it. In other words, the mind is not generating thoughts, it’s receiving them. The entire universe is a series of vibratory fields of energy fields vibrating at different scopes, bandwidths, frequencies, and different levels – 99.99965% of which lie beyond our perceptive capability of our 5 senses. Yes, 99.999965% of the universe is imperceptible to us.
The entire universe is made up of innumerable vibratory fields of energy. The Galaxies, stars, and planets all have a vibratory frequency to them. Every organ in the body has its own separate and unique vibratory frequency. What we call consciousness is just our perception of the infinitesimally small bandwidth of frequencies that are commensurate with our 5 senses. We only experience a sliver of ‘reality.’
Therefore, we’re never having external relationships with people, places, or things. We can never know what another person is thinking or feel what another person is feeling. When others share their perspectives and feelings with us, we can only extrapolate from their words how we would “feel” relaying or expressing the same thoughts to them. We “relate” through association by filtering what is being shared with us through the lens or the filter of our own past experiences and remembering how we felt in those situations.
In romantic relationships we are almost always lost to the whims of our imagination. Whether we are aware of it or not, the entire relationship is merely a story we tell ourselves. How we “experience” our lover is ALL based upon the beliefs we project onto them at any given time. But again, this narrative is ALL HAPPENING WITHIN US!
ALL WE SEE IS OUR BELIEFS
Think of how many assumptions, suspicions, and beliefs we project on to our relationships. If we pay very close attention and becomes mindfully aware of our thoughts, we’ll notice that as we interact with the person we are romantically interested in, we are actively weaving our hopes and aspirations together into a fantasy, imagining what we could be together, which is the whole reason we pursue them. We’re trying to make the fantasy in our head our reality. We listen intently for cues and inferences that validate the story we’ve created and then make assumptions that bolster our sense of being accepted by the other person.
Because language is limited, when someone says they “love” us, for example, we cannot possibly know what “love” feels like for the other person or even know if the person is authentically sharing their true emotions. We make assumptions about the authenticity of what they’re expressing to us. In doing so, we draw upon past experiences we’ve had when we felt love for another and imagine that they feel within themselves the same thing that we feel or have felt within ourselves in the past when expressing feelings of love…
In other words, we try to associate it with an experience we have had in the past in which we may have used the similar words to describe our feelings.
The reason we can be empathetic towards others (believing we feel what another person is feeling), is that we mentally project ourselves into their situation and then “imagine” how it is we would feel in their position. But we cannot possibly “experience” what they are experiencing because we have not had their experiences and therefore cannot have the same frame of reference. Because we cannot have an experience outside of our own body, and certainly cannot enter the mind of another person, we relate to what it is they are sharing with us through association . . . categorically pairing their experience with something similar to what we’ve experienced or felt in the past, remembering how we felt in those moments.
This is why I always say we are both the center and the circumference of every experience we are having the subject and the object of every experience we are having. What is being sought (an experience – that can be a person, a purchase, a place we visit, etc.), is sought by YOU (The Subject – Seeking of the experience) because of what it will provide YOU (the Object or Recipient of the experience) emotionally. Every choice we make, is in fact, “selfish,” because all of our choices are predicated in seeking things or experiences that will create within us a feeling or emotion we desire to have and continue replicating over and over. This is why we have favorite foods, drinks, songs, movies, places, and the people that we love in our lives.
I would love to hear from you and hear your thoughts on this article in the comment section below. Let me know if the content presented in this article resonates with you, provides perspective, or helps you see things in a different way that empowers you to make different choices or see life and relationships through a different lens. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
David
