To generalize, wherever you go in this world
selflessness is a big huge human value.
At face value, this isn't necessarily a bad thing
because after all, if everybody ran around
doing whatever they wanted, individually,
regardless of the negative impact on others,
it'd be very hard to maintain a social well-being,
especially, especially, social conformity,
especially, social harmony... Right?
So, at face value this doesn't seem like a bad thing.
However, I'm gonna hit you with the truth:
It's not actually possible for a being to be selfless.
Now, at first, when I tell you this that may shock you
Especially, if you're someone who is identified with being selfless.
But stick with me. Will you?
~
Is Love Selfish?
I'm going to go ahead and start out this episode by asking you some questions:
- What was the relationship that your family of origin or culture
had with selflessness?
- When you were young, can you remember
the people in your life expecting you to do things for them,
or things that were in their best interests?
Do you remember times when it felt like doing those things
were in their best interest, but definitely not in your own?
Do you remember that when you put up a fuss about it
you were shamed or punished for it?
Essentially, you were taught
that to be right and good and therefore loved,
you had to disregard yourself for the best interest of others.
And that doing so, was loving them.
Most people on earth today
were taught that to love others is to be selfless,
and to be loved back is to be selfless
and you are only really loved if someone is selfless relative to you.
Long story short,
you were taught that love is selfless.
This belief causes all kinds of pain for people,
especially in relationships.
For example,
this belief can give rise to all kinds
of codependent and narcissistic style behavior within relationships.
It can cause a person to totally give themselves up
for the sake of belonging or cohesion with their social group.
It can cause people to go completely off track
of their own internal compass and therefore, purpose.
It can cause people to cross their wires
so that they interpret the pain they feel as not only good for them,
but also everyone else.
It's a recipe for resentment
and all kinds of invisible strings dynamics.
Okay, and the list goes on and on.
You get it, right?
This belief that love is selfless
causes so many damaging patterns within relationships.
But, one of the most damaging relationship patterns that this creates
is the:
"You only love me, if what you are doing is completely selfless" pattern.
When people have this pattern,
they feel completely unloved and completely alone.
If they detect literally any self-serving motive
inherent in any gesture that is given to them
or any love that is actually shown to them.
This means, if you get anything at all
out of loving the other person,
they don't feel loved by you.
To give you a concrete example,
I'm going to give you a case study of somebody who I worked with once.
Let's call him, for the sake of this episode, Derek.
Derek had a mother that due to her own trauma
could not make any relationships with a man work out.
She was married four times and each of those times
had multiple children with the current husband.
But, because the men she chose
had no interest in actually providing for the children
or being husbands or fathers,
from age five on, Derek got saddled with the job
of being surrogate husband to his mother
and raising all of his younger siblings as if he was the father.
His mother only gave him positive feedback when he did this,
and his mother would pull a victim control drama
anytime he protested.
He coped by subconsciously building the belief
that he was loved for being selfless like this,
and that he would know if someone really loved him
if they did things that were totally in his best interest,
regardless of whether they were in their own best interests.
In other words,
he was looking for someone to give him love
in the same way that he showed his love to his mother.
He would enter into every relationship behaving completely selfless,
happily sacrificing for every woman like he had for his mother.
Expecting to get the same in return if the occasion should ever arise.
Every time however, eventually, a situation would arise
where the woman he was with would have to do something selfless
to prove she loved him.
Such as, giving up a male friend that made Derek feel insecure,
or ceasing to wear the outfits he disliked
and if the woman protested or refused,
he would suddenly sink into a depression,
now convinced, that she didn't love him.
Derek would also pass everything that a woman did for him
through the filter of:
"What's in it for her?"
And if he found anything, anything at all
that she could possibly get out of doing it,
he could not feel loved through the gesture.
For example, if she made him a food item
that she hated but he loved,
he felt that she loved him.
On the other hand, if she hugged him
and he could feel that she wanted physical touch too,
he felt that she didn't love him
and was just using him, in fact.
He did the same thing with friends.
Derek subconsciously, also loved to put people in lose-lose situations
just to see if people would choose his best interests.
Even when there was a consequence for doing so.
So that he could test whether or not they loved him.
Needless to say, literally every woman
and every friend who entered into Derek's life
after a very short period of time
would decide that not only were they completely depleted,
that it was impossible to be around him.
When someone has this pattern,
this can display itself in more benign ways,
such as, a person can feel loved when they like purple
and they know the other person hates purple,
but that person buys them a purple shirt.
They're like: "Oh you hate it, but I love it.
And so it's obviously not in your best interest
and so I feel loved". Right?
But, this tends to graduate to much less benign forms
of this pattern in relationships.
It tends to escalate into a pattern that I call:
The "Suffer So I Can Feel Loved" Dynamic in Relationships.
What this means is that a person in this scenario
runs the very real risk
of actually liking it anytime that somebody does something
that is directly opposed to their best interests
in a way that makes them suffer for the sake of you.
Now, obviously, that can get really really south
and turn into complete abuse.
To understand the full dangers of where this belief
that selflessness is love
can eventually and does eventually graduate to,
I want you to watch a video that I created called:
The Suffer So I Can Feel Loved Relationship Dynamic
The idea that love is selfless
is an idea that people have to let go of
in order to have good relationships
and feeling like you can only be loved
if there's no selfish motive for the other person to show you love,
is a recipe for never feeling loved.
This isn't to say that there aren't people out there
who do literally everything for self-centered personal gain,
including showing love to somebody else
without really caring about the impact on others.
There are people who've been traumatized enough
that that's actually how they function in the world.
What it is to say is that people need to change their definition
about what love is and isn't.
Most people feel that love is this intense positive feeling of appreciation
that you have towards someone or something.
That's actually not love.
That can however, be a byproduct of love.
To love is to take something as a part of yourself.
To take something as a part of yourself,
now all of a sudden, because it's part of you
you can't injure that thing without injuring yourself too.
You can't also cause that thing pleasure,
Without it causing you some degree of pleasure too.
You're essentially choosing to become inseparable
from that person or that thing.
Rather than say inseparable,
because I know that's going to trigger a lot of people
in the independent spiritual philosophy field,
let's say that you're incapable
of staying in a mentality of disconnection.
Now, when I say that this is what love is,
most people get really upset about this, especially codependents.
Why? Because they're like:
"Well but then you're just acting in their best interest all the time".
No!
That only happens if you give yourself up.
This is an inclusion.
Love is inclusive.
It's not like by loving something, I take it and let go of myself.
No.
It's more that I now exist as this shell
that has my truth and the other person's truth
as two parts within me.
And now I can't play a zero-sum game with these two parts.
So, finding a meeting of minds
about the best interest of both of these parts
is the most important and paramount thing.
Most people can only conceptualize of this
by thinking about two of their own children.
If you have two children,
how does it make you feel, honestly,
when one of them is happy and the other one is really really sad?
Not good. Right?
And so, in all situations you're looking for that third option
that makes them both feel good
or the highest and best in whatever situation that you're in
for them both.
This is what truly loving something translates to.
This means that the best type of love
is love where both the giver and receiver of the love benefit.
Both people's best interests are a part of the gesture.
For example, a person who's giving love through affectionate touch,
who feels fully received and therefore also loved by giving touch,
or a person who loves to cook because cooking makes them happy,
cooking for someone who feels loved when they are fed,
or a situation where neither partner is okay with the other feeling bad
and so, in a needs conflict situation
they each work to try to meet the needs of the other
so as to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement and decision.
And this is one reason
that no matter how much you hate me saying it,
compatibility is such a critical element to consider in relationship.
To understand more about this in depth, watch my video titled:
Incompatibility (A Harsh Reality in Relationships)
In a universe that at the highest level is all one,
which it is,
there is nothing in existence that is not you.
Even when collective consciousness
decides to hold the perspective of separation,
which is what gave rise to individual fragments
within source consciousness, like you and me,
this is true.
So, even doing something for someone else
is doing something for yourself.
On top of this,
because there is nothing that is not ultimately you,
all love in this universe is ultimately self-love.
This translates into the physical embodiment
as the inability to be selfless.
You can ultimately trace
absolutely everything that someone or anyone in this universe does
back to the fact that doing it makes them feel better.
Even things that we in society label as selfless,
or even self-sacrifice.
So much of the time
when people are being "selfless" or "self-sacrificing"
they're doing it because doing that makes them feel better,
because doing that makes them feel like a good and a right person.
Which is a self-centered motive.
If you want to understand this in depth, watch my video titled:
Self Sacrifice (The Most Self Centered Thing In The World)
If you don't believe me, try it.
You can whittle literally everything down
to the bare bones of:
"A person did something because it made them feel better to do".
Now, when most people learn about this,
it causes them to become depressed
and a lot of people sink to a space
where they feel like this is just a cold and narcissistic world.
Not a world any of us would want to live in.
But this isn't actually what this means.
It's a very good thing
that you are actually not capable of not caring about yourself.
You are a precious piece or fragment of this universe
and must, therefore, take care of it.
Besides, it is "us"/ "we" thinking
that is going to ultimately line us up with this unification
and this peace that we are looking for within society
and within the world in general.
As opposed to the "me" or "I" way of thinking
which is what selflessness and self-sacrifice,
ultimately is.
It's to see yourself as if its "I" instead of "we".
And I need you to take my word for it
until this is your truth,
because you're conscious enough to see it.
There are a great many acts in this universe
that someone who is truly conscious might commit,
that other people on the outside may judge as self-sacrifice,
but from the perspective of the person doing the "self-sacrificing"
the truth, they know it,
is quite the opposite.
They're just conscious and connected enough to see it.
Have a good week.
If you liked this video, be sure to share it, like it,
and also subscribe to my channel so you can see more content like this.
But I want to personally thank you for taking the initiative
and having the bravery to step into the space of awareness
not only for yourself, but for the benefit of those around you.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte