Love and selflessness.
This series is about how we look at the universe, really, and how we choose to focus our attentions and our energy.
How much do we focus on ourselves, versus how much do we focus on what’s outside ourselves, and maybe the bigger picture? So this I find is always a matter of conflict or balance and give and take, because we can’t- I mean, the simple thing to say, you know, don’t be selfish, and always be about the greater good.
But it seems like there’s no easy way to simply give up ego and live for the greater good, because there’s always going to be some kind of conflicts between what we can do to take care of ourselves versus maybe taking care of other people or some kind of bigger picture.
And we can see easily people that in too simple a way give of themselves to be selfless and help the greater good, without taking care of themselves.
As much as we can admire this altruism and dedication, it seems like in so many cases, it can lead to simply, well, not taking care of yourself, sacrificing yourself for other people, being easy to take advantage of and manipulate because you want to be helpful, and there’s always going to be people that will be happy to take your help without giving much back.
So as much as on a fully theoretical level, on a fully kind of level of principle and ideals, I believe we should be selfless and serve the greater good, but there’s so many traps that we can fall into when we try to do that.
So it’s this battle between idealism and cynicism.
How far? Can we go right to the ideal of serving the higher good, or do we have to kind of cynically put up our barriers, boundaries, and be able to defend what’s ours against attacks from outside? And I don’t see any simple answer to this.
It’s always going to be some kind of a give and take and a balance.
So going too far on the side of selflessness, then we are taken advantage of, manipulated.
We can just have our energy drained to serve other people’s selfish intentions in one way or another.
But of course, we then react against that and say “OK, I can’t trust anybody.
I’m going to live all for myself.” Then we end up in the sad state of people that go entirely for selfishness, where their entire focus- if your entire focus is on making yourself stronger, making yourself better, improving your life at the expense of others even, then it just seems to create this kind of shrinking universe, where you’re all about yourself, and it weakens the connection with the rest of the universe.
You become very isolated.
You’re just focused on building up yourself, but then what yourself is becomes smaller and smaller.
As you sort of pit yourself against the universe and against everybody else, the actual thing you’re fighting for, yourself, just seems to shrink down.
It becomes less and less.
And then ultimately you die, and dying as an isolated person, disconnected from the universe: well, you know, it just it seems to- although sometimes we can look at people who live selfishly and see that they often seem to be happy, it seems like overall, it is not a particularly happiness-producing strategy to go full selfish.
So somewhere in between, I believe, is the balance.
We have the ideal of full selflessness and the cynical approach of full selfishness, and somehow they meet.
And that’s what this series is about.
And about finding that balance, and then how can we actually bring out this feeling? How can we live with that kind of feeling of being part of this bigger thing, living beyond ourselves? And sort of living with this kind of idea that I am more than just my own self and this one entity alone in the universe.
That instead we can live as connected pieces of a whole universe.
And that seems to be the happier way to go, the more meaningful way to go, and yet there’s so many tricks and traps along the way that can easily hold us back from this.
So this is an area that I’m certainly still working on.
#selflessness #selfishness #selflessorselfish