Selfishness is pretty well known but not very well understood by most people.  We are so good at finding selfishness in others because we ourselves are full of selfishness, pretending or covering up what we are. We dislike people who have the same weaknesses or flaws that we do. We can criticize them so easily because any flaw a person has we recognize in ourselves, which is another level of self-ness.

Self-ness and selfishness are two different things.  Self-ness is a process of thought and conditioning that is our tendency in situations.  Selfishness is the meeting of one’s own needs regardless of how they affect others. In all situations it is putting one self first, taking the best because one knows it is the best or is the thing that most people want. Self is always rooted in envy, because to be envied is deeply gratifying to self. That is why one longs for fame because in fame one thinks fame will end one’s deep insecurity and inadequacy.  Selfishness is the art of getting one’s own way by so many means. It will take a variety of approaches or no approach, as it cunningly pays attention to the situation and the self-ness of the other. Selfishness is good at reading situations for one’s own self-interest or even promoting someone’s interest, if in the end it gets what one wants. This is often called good business and is how the world works.

In any relationship, self-interest or selfishness will always destroy the couple or team when it is not addressed or excused because a person has a gift or talent and is therefore tolerated. Tolerance in any form is hidden intolerance and eventually will act as a cancer and poison the environment and create deeper problems between the two or the many. Selfishness in our society is accepted and nourished in most aspects of living. Because it is external psychology (the psychology of disconnection) it is rampant and we resort to it whenever self cannot get its way. The habits of external psychology are then used to gain control of the situation or person we practice it on and deeper damage is done that divides human beings.

Human beings are the only animal on the planet that, out of selfishness, will kill every living creature so they can have what they want.  Out of selfishness we form beliefs, dogma, and ideologies and kill others who threaten them. Self is always trying to be something. Whatever it sees itself as being, it lives into and it will kill for on so many levels.

Is it not about time we start to see the importance of being nothing? That nothing is holding the whole world and universe together. To be empty of self means to cooperate without self trying to control and dominate. Self, which is a product of thought, is never without motive or seeking some sort of satisfaction. To love another without motive or payoff is to have a mind that is truly innocent. As long as self dominates and runs the show, the awakening to a different movement is impossible.  Self is always giving itself qualities that it doesn’t possess and therefore it cannot be innocent. Self is always seeking something – seeking after enlightenment or God or the perfect experience or the perfect man or women, all of which is to seek under one’s own prejudice.  That prejudice will in fact be projections of one’s own mind and therefore a creation of selfishness. What is selfish is exclusive and love and compassion are of a completely different quality and will be inclusive. Selfishness and virtue cannot exist together, for a virtuous person could never recognize their own virtue. If they did it would be an egoism.

To see all this is in itself, and to understand it, is to free the mind from selfishness. This is the journey humankind must take if we are to have a world that is orderly, responsible, and sane.  Very few people are interested in all this or even care about being free. Freedom has nothing to do with self. Self is in bondage and a slave to thought and all its habits. Love is not a habit that can be practiced.  It is the perfume that makes all things possible with self-interest is set aside. Love is not selective or personal. It is expressed by its own volition.  It is whole and depends on nothing. Selfishness is always dependent on thought and is always trying to be something.  Love is like the air we breathe, free for everyone regardless of skin, color, race, or heritage.  One can’t go to love – it finds you when you are not!

Coach bri

It was a gentle rain that grew more intense in the strong breeze. It was like seeing the wind as it moved. It came in waves and would crash against the large stone house and cars in its driveway. The birds would all be very quiet and would start up again as the wind subsided. It all seemed like a symphony – the wind, the rain beating down on the metal cars, the birds chattering, and noise of water rushing off the roof into the large puddles that formed around the house. The trees seem to delight in the shower of rain that washed all the dust of the past days, allowing them to breathe fresh again. The bounty of the earth’s lessons speaks to us if we listen to her. But few are interested! Like the rain that washes away the dirt I wonder what will allow man to wash away his self-interest. It is our self-interest that seems to destroy everything.

There were lot of people; the energy of excitement was there. This energy of excitement comes when we as human beings identify our self with the things of thinking. It is not the energy of human beings connecting or people coming together for a noble cause. In the Bell Center there was a full gamut of energy. The energy was of people that were happy about their son being chosen and the energy of nerves and worry about not being chosen. It seemed for most of the young men it was a series of tense moments collapsing into themselves in a feeling of rejection and hurt. Then, when their names were called, elation and congratulations of hugs and kisses. As the day went on people grew impatient and small conflicts arose that soured the event. The crowd attached to their sport team often booed and cat-called other teams, making it almost impossible to hear what was being said over the PA system. We are so well trained to be competitive to allow people from the outside to judge us and we compare our self to another. It this self-centered process that reinforces the images we have of our self and the other. All comparison leads to disconnection and conflict. To compare human beings is to set self-centered criteria in place and fulfill it demands to meet ones own idea or ideal.

Coach bri