To Be Truly Selfish Is To Be Selfless
From the day we are born we view this world from our perspective, a perspective where we seem to be the center of this reality. All that appears real to us is what we want, what we feel and what we think. Selfish nature seems to be innate within our brains and yet as we age, some of us develop a selfless nature for we learn to see from the perspective of the others around us. Those who suffer more understand the sufferings of others, those who experience hunger know what it is for others to go hungry and etc. Yet, with all the information around us to adequately equip us with the wisdom of the suffering and pain of all those around us, our selfish nature seems to prevail most of the time.
I used to be a bad tempered selfish brat that only cared about what I wanted, this eventually developed into how I wanted people to feel because obviously most of the time, I couldn't get what I want and somewhere along the way, I realized that it was a downward spiral of negative emotion and desire which is selfish above all else. Eventually, I also realized that getting what I wanted out of the spite of getting what I wanted, never really filled that gap of want in me. That was where I started to learn to start the chain reaction of goodwill which would only come back to me and others I cared for... that was my first frail understanding of karma. What I want can pass as easily as a thought in my mind but the karmic ripples of thought and action could eventually rupture into a tsunami of destructive thought waves.
I'm 30 this year, I have met almost every kind of person there is to meet... by learning not to judge at an early age, I was able to befriend everyone from a junkie to a religious fanatic... by understanding the state they were in and why they are the way they are, forces you to accept why they need to be, who they are and what makes them tick. That in turn forced me to dig deeper in myself to see why I am the way I am. This cyclical inner self diagnosis can be overwhelming and tiresome at times; but it made me look at myself in the 3rd person for the last 10-15 years. That is why sometimes I am not even sure who I am, let alone the purpose of my existence.
With meditation and thought, I begun to see that what is, is, and why I exist? Is to simply exist. And to exist as me is simply not enough as we all exist as one and as many. Under a microscope we are an individual, but as a whole, we are one enormous conscious and sentient being, every single matter in the universe is a part of us. So to be selfish on a full scale, we would have to fill every want from everyone, which is impossible, so the next logical thought process would be to eliminate that pointless want. And that is why Wisdom and Compassion goes hand in hand. If you understand selfishness in love and in hate, then it would make sense to you to love all of ourselves (everyone around us) and hate all that would make any of us feel pain and suffering. And to achieve that, each of us would need to attain enlightenment, god's grace and/or Allah's love, for IF it can be possibly deduced that the billions of us are as one, why can't the beliefs we have be similar, but merely tainted by interpretation and translation. For, it takes courage to love someone, but great courage to love everyone. So if you are innately selfish, like 99% of the world, you need to rethink the scale of the self that you comprehend.
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