Life is best lived where what you want for yourself is a side effect.I know, for half of humanity that sounds like liberal nonsense... but this is how life becomes the most enjoyable, and maybe the most "life-earning" as well, in spite of it being counter intuitive.
And this is true in every area of life...
I can"t write a better article on this than Zat Rana here.
What I can write best is the wretchedness of going straight for what you want, and quitting when anyone else benefits... And I can share how this... getting what i need as a side effect, consciously, has been one of the secrets of my inner peace, fulfillment, and happiness.
Some 15 years ago I started studying Kabbalah, an ancient body of thought. The truth value of Kabbalah is about 30%, while most other "ancient" teachings are less than 10% truth value, so if you have a large body of knowledge yourself, have read hundreds or thousands of books, have degrees, etc. You are somewhat safe in studying Kabbalah.
People I have observed only cared to learn what they already knew from other disciplined, the religious crap... and that part is NOT true in Kabbalah.
The most useful distinction of Kabbalah has something to do with getting Light... Light is everything you can get... energy, health, help, happiness, fulfillment, success... and if it is governed by some "rule" or "law", it is useful to look at.Kabbalah says your desire is very important... 1. You have to have desire, because it is like the pilot light of receiving. (The meaning of the world "Kabbalah" is, in Hebrew: receiving.)
One could say the Kabbalah is the sum total of Jewish though on how to understand the Universe, so you can receive the most of what you want to receive, and the least of what you"d rather not receive.The linchpin distinction is this: are you desiring to receive for yourself alone? or are you desiring to receive for the sake of sharing?
If you are human living in this world, you probably desire to receive for yourself a whole lot more than you desire to receive for the sake of sharing.
The proportion will decide your level of fulfillment and happiness. And maybe your level of activity to become all you can be.
There is a strong correlation between your about-me score and the level of desire for the self alone.
The most visible signs of a high desire for the self alone is in NOT acknowledging source...
Some clients/students of mine feel a physical pain when I "force them" to give credit where credit is due. They mumble something incomprehensible, and then say something eloquent about how they deserve all the credit. Very funny, albeit tragic.
To cover it up, they may be very good at praising... but praising is not the same as giving credit where credit is due.
So in extreme cases, desire for the self alone spreads desire for annihilate others... not just usurping their right to receive.
I hope that you can see that when the desire to receive for the self alone is really strong, the result is extreme wretchedness.
But why? Because the more you want something only for yourself, the less it is forthcoming.
It took me years to sort this out for myself. Why so long? Because even my Kabbalah teachers could only repeat the sentence, but could not explain, could not coach me.Luckily to me, this is actually easy for me. Except for food, I have always lived this way.
With food... not so much. As a child, I hated some of the dishes my mother loved, so I would sneak into the kitchen, and eat the parts that made the dish... And even though I was beaten each time, this beating felt good: my eating style, eating nothing mixed with other things is allowed, was satisfied, even though everyone was deprived from fruit-cake, and other supposedly yummy food my mother was going to make.
But in other areas I was seemingly generous, even though while I channeled Light to other people, I also got what I needed.
Music, languages, sports, and especially learning anything...
I am, in a way, learning disabled. I can"t make the knowledge usable, unless I teach it.
So all my life I taught, everything I needed to learn. And that, it turned out decades later, was the secret that got me Light... in spite of my hard circumstances, in spite of my weak constitution, in spite of my broken brain.
When you look at people who amounted to much, in science, literature, music, education, except politics, lived and thought the same way.
Politicians may pretend that they desire to receive for their constituents, but it"s mostly a fat lie... they desire to receive for the self alone, not even for their spouses, or families. Just for themselves.
It is impossible to see the invisible unless you know it"s there... and then you can wait until you can see it... stare and wait.
I teach my students to train their eyes after they turn off the light at night... by staring at the ceiling, and wait for the invisible to appear... The invisible appears when your eyes get used to the darkness... without fail.
The invisible, that you learned is there, appears just as reliably... but 1. you never learn... 2. you never wait.
Ayn Rand has taken a lot of flak with his theory, the virtue of selfishness.
Why? Was she right? I don"t know, I haven"t read her book... The truth value of the book, The Virtue of Selfishness, is very high: 30%. Why not higher? She never penetrated the invisible... and could not see behind the veil.
But if you look at her novels, which I read several times, all her heroes were examples of desire to receive for the sake of sharing... while all the second-handers, moochers, looters, the selfless crowd, were examples of desire to receive for the self alone.
She was talking (I guess) about the producers" selfishness: the desire to receive for the sake of sharing...
I am animated, controlled, driven by the desire to receive for the sake of sharing, and the Light showers its blessings on me. I am VERY SELFISH.
But the principle applies, "you don"t see the world as it is, you see the world as YOU are", you see in other people how YOU are... not how THEY are.
If you are dominated, controlled, enslaved by desire to receive for the self alone, then you won"t see any desire to receive for the sake of sharing...
And, of course, the unevolved human can"t even fathom the idea that the benefits will come as a side-effect... that if you go for them directly, they will make you wretched, whether you get the benefits or not.
The measure, to what degree you are dominated with desire to receive for the self alone (I call it the only evil there is, by the way) will show you clearly why you are not getting what you think is your due, what you think you earned, and get instead wretchedness.
I will organize our Talk to me webinar around this issue... because it is so important and so little understood. The date for the webinar is, as always, the last Wednesday of the month. Wednesday, November 28.You can register in the webinar... no cost. These webinars are small, so be prepared to have one-on-one time with me... Bring a good quality headset.
If you want to enjoy the topic and maybe start "correcting" your ways so you can get more benevolence from the Light... Get your Starting Point Measurements, and I promise I"ll start to make sense to you.
I have a grand total of two students whose "desire for the self alone" number is under 20%...So if you are a student... where can you see, in our relationship, who you are with regards to "desire to receive for the self alone?"
You can see it by what you cannot do...- You cannot readily see value
- You are stingy
- You feel you are in competition with me
- You habitually think that you are going to get your money"s worth
- You keep me on a call longer than what you paid for... you want to squeeze another drop off me...
- You can only see the value you provide... none of what I provide, or what a partner of yours provide
- You never ask: what in what I want is there a contribution to what Sophie wants? Why? You don"t care.
- and many more...
PS: If my article is too highfalutin for you, here is an article that spells out the principle... in a more accessible way, translating it to 14 or so principles. The truth value of that article is 10%. My article"s truth value is 70%. But truth is hard to penetrate, if your habitual environment and thinking is around those 10% truth value articles. So be nice to yourself, and read that article.
