Spiritual Awakening Course: Topic 23 — Being Selfless In A Selfish World
Greetings beloved being of love and light. Why is everyone so selfish and so self-centred? You may have wondered this for a long time. It makes it a lot harder to be selfless when others only think about themselves. However, this is a challenge we signed up for.
You may be surprised to know that being self-centred is not a conscious choice. People cannot help only thinking about themselves. When one associates with their ego, they are constantly in a state of stress or fear, and their sympathetic nervous system is always triggered. When this happens, all their body’s energy and focus is directed towards helping them deal with their stresses or fears. All they can focus on is the dangers they perceive to be in. They can’t see past their own needs. While this is a useful biological system to help us deal with short-term dangers, it was not designed to be used for modern day stresses. When we think about how many things the modern person can be stressed about or fearful of, it is easy to understand why people only think about themselves. It is not their fault.
As we learnt in the previous level of the course, each of us have an electromagnetic field around us, which is our aura. When we have high vibrational emotions such as love, our aura is very expansive; we radiate energy. When we have low vibrational emotions such as fear or anger, our aura is very contractive; we draw in energy from our surroundings. Those that are self-centred often feel stressed or fearful, and so often have contracting auras. This is why it can feel draining to be around self-centred people.
Selfishness is not a conscious choice either. Remember, when one associates with their ego, they are unconsciously acting according to a program. This program is based on the belief of separation. When one associates with their ego, they believe they are an individual being that is separate from others, separate from God, and separate from the universe. The egoic program is also based on the belief that it is the mind-body, and so believes it has a very short life. As a result, the ego views life as meaningless and looks to personally gain as much as possible during this perceived short life. So when a person acts selfishly, they are simply following their egoic program. Does it make sense to be angry with a computer that is carrying out a program? No, of course not.
Selfishness is about putting your needs above others. You cannot be selfish if you perceive oneness because you realise there is no “me” and “others”; there is only one conscious being. Selflessness is automatic when one perceives oneness. This is because service to others is recognised as service to self. To serve others is to serve yourself. The Buddha once said “True charity occurs only when there are no notions of giving, giver, or gift.” When we realise everything and everyone is one, then there is no such thing as charity. Empathy is about being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes. So you could say that empathy is the ability to feel oneness. The main trait of psychopaths is that they have a lack of empathy, and so cannot put themselves in other people’s shoes. Society today rewards the psychopaths of the world as they tend to be the ones that hold positions of power, status and money, and these rewards can be easily seen. An Australian study found that 21% of America’s senior professionals are psychopaths, which is roughly the same percentage found in prisoners. While only 1% of the general population are classed as psychopaths. Those that are selfless are mainly rewarded intrinsically, and these intrinsic rewards are not as easily perceived by others. So it is easy to see how people who only perceive a material reality are motivated to become psychopaths.
Selfish people interact with others based on what they want and from their perspective. Selfless people interact by looking at what the other wants and the other’s perspective. Losing yourself in something means putting your conscious attention on something for so long that you forget your egoic identity. So to become selfless, instead of focusing on the voice in our head which only looks at the needs of its illusory individual character, we must always focus on the other and their needs. By losing ourselves in helping others, we drop our egoic identities. This is what true love is.
Instead of being angry with people for being selfish or self-centred, we must realise that it is not their fault. The only way to help them is by having compassion for them and by keeping our vibration high. By surrounding these people with love, joy, peace, compassion and generosity, we can inspire them to detach from their subconscious programming. Have you ever been in a very stressful situation, but because you were with someone who remained calm, you did not freak out? And have you ever had a time when you were experiencing sadness, but someone made you laugh and lifted your spirits? Have you ever been so focused on your life challenges, but then someone comes along and helps take your mind off these challenges? These are the ways in which we can help others.
The Law of Giving & Receiving
Giving is intrinsically rewarding and inevitably draws to you gifts of all kinds from others. Life is not scarce; we live in an abundant world. The ego believes to give is to sacrifice or lose something, and it only does actions that it believes it can benefit from, so it is always reluctant to selflessly give. However, if we align with our true selves, we realise the oneness of life, and so we would understand that when we give, we are giving to ourselves. As the Buddha once said, “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” When one focuses on the other, they do not perceive a loss, because all they care about is that they have helped the other in some way. The universal law states that, because of oneness, as you give, you will receive. Another quote from the Buddha is “If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.” Prophet Muhammad once said “Allah said spend on charity, O son of Adam, and I shall spend on you.” When you give, life will give back to you.
A poor man once asked the Buddha, “Why am I so poor?”. The Buddha replied by saying “You are not giving anything and you have not learnt how to give”. The poor man said “But I do not have anything to give.”. And the Buddha replied, “You do have things to give; you have a face which you can use to give a smile; you have a mouth which you can use to speak kind words, and give encouragement and comfort to people; you can open up your heart to others; you have eyes which you can use to look at others with kindness and compassion; and you have a body which you can use to help others.” It doesn’t matter in what way you give, or how much you have to give, what matters is the act of giving. And the more you give, the more you will receive. We all have much that we can give, and we have several opportunities each day to give to others. One day, Jesus sat down opposite the place where offerings were put, and he watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on.” This poor widow would have undoubtedly received more from life than the others as a result, because she gave all that she could, while the others only gave a small portion of what they could.
However, giving does not necessarily have to be in monetary form — it is best to give in ways that bring you joy. This often means using your special talents to give to others. For instance, if you like to cook, you are likely to enjoy cooking for others. If you like to play football, why not set up a weekly football practice for poor kids, or for immigrants who have recently entered the country? If you like to meet new people, why not visit elderly people who live alone? If you like playing music, why not involve yourself with a music night where the proceeds go to charity? If you like to paint, why not give your paintings to care homes? The possibilities for giving are endless. There is no need to give in ways that don’t bring you joy because there are many ways you could give that do bring you joy. Just follow your heart. And giving does not have to be charity. You can give and sill earn money from it — this does not negate the act of giving. If you follow your joy and bliss, life will always reward you.
A quick trick to escape unhappiness is to give more. This can seem odd at first, because your ego tells you that your priority should be to find something external to you that will make you happy. This is because it doesn’t realise that the source of your happiness is within you, and you are the cause of your own unhappiness. Happiness and giving are strongly linked. When one gives, they feel happy. How can one be unhappy when their life revolves around giving? Buddha once said “Generosity brings happiness at every stage of its expression. We experience joy in forming the intention to be generous. We experience joy in the actual act of giving something. And we experience joy in remembering the fact that we have given.” Unhappiness is often a sign that you aren’t giving enough. By giving, you can feel intrinsically happy. Life is always inviting you to give. Look out for these opportunities. Every moment is an opportunity to give. Give your dog a cuddle. Give a smile to others. Give appreciation to a bird’s song. Give gratitude to your food. As Prophet Muhammad once said, “A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world. Every act of kindness is charity. Smiling in your brother’s face is an act of charity. It is also charity to utter a good word.”
Any giving is a form of projected love to God, and any receiving is a form of injected love from God. Through giving and receiving, God is exchanging love with itself. The difference between the giving done by your true self and the giving done by the ego is that your true self gives to others, and then it receives indirectly as a result, but the ego gives to itself directly without giving to others. In fact, more often than not, the ego is only able to give to itself by taking away from others or by not giving to others. The ego’s aim is to give to itself, and your true self’s aim is to give to others. The ego often wants to receive in a particular way, but life often gives to you in many different ways. You are being given love from God every day, yet you might not recognise it. The sun gives us light and heat, the plants give us oxygen and food, people are giving you love in the form of smiles, drivers give love in the form of kindly letting you through. So let us recognise the different ways that we receive from life, and let us be grateful for this love. Life always gives you in the ways that your true self needs, not in the ways that your ego wants.
It is important not to reject love as well — many people focus on giving love, yet they try to make sure they are not relying on anyone else and refuse help or generosity from others. They believe it is polite to refuse other people’s generosity. But think about how good you feel when giving love — when you deny someone giving love to you, you are denying them that warm feeling inside. By allowing people to give you love, and receiving it in gratitude, you have allowed them to love themselves. So, in a way, accepting love is another form of giving love. When you choose to receive, you are allowing God to love itself. This is a lesson that I personally have only recently learned. When a woman knelt before Jesus and started washing his feet, he let her, not because he wanted to feed his ego, not because he felt pity for her, not because he couldn’t wash them himself, but because he knew it would make her feel good. He knew that God was showing him love in the form of this woman washing his feet. It is an act of kindness to accept love.
Being selfless or selfish sets off a chain reaction. If someone has showed kindness or generosity to you, you are more likely to show kindness or generosity to others, who are then more likely to be generous to others. However, if someone has been quite selfish when dealing with you, you are more likely to be selfish to others, who are also more likely to be selfish in their interactions. So, through each person, and through each interaction with others, we all make a huge difference in this world, and we can decide whether to promote a selfish or selfless world.
Thank you for reading. To access all 19 topics of this level 2 spiritual awakening course, as well as several exercises to help you integrate these topics into your life, please follow this link to buy the level 2 book. If you would like to book a free spiritual support session with me, or if you would like to donate love or money to my channel, then please visit my website www.highvibelivin.co.uk .