The Importance of Self-Interest
From the “Life is Meant to Work: Prepare Yourself for a New Reality” tele-seminar.
The life of every living organism must be based on self-interest. Every moment of our lives is based on it. Breathing, eating, sleeping, loving, helping others. A plant turns toward the sun in order to get the nourishment it needs. And it’s flourishing gives us pleasure. If it were to deny itself what it needs to do well, would we think it was being virtuous? The very nature of life is based on self-interest. You are ALWAYS doing what you conceive of as self-interest, even if it’s denying your self-interest in order to be what you believe to be virtuous. The reason you would do this is because it makes you feel better about yourself. If doing what you believe to be virtuous ended up making you feel bad about yourself, you wouldn’t do it.
Following your own self-interest defines who you are. It is the expression of who you are. When you are allowing yourself to move toward your enlightened self-interest you are contributing who you are to the whole. You are revealing a piece of creation.
Even if you are not connected to your enlightened self-interest, you must start with the self-interest you can access in order to move toward more enlightened self-interest. Those who deny their self-interest are living in an artificial shell, a false persona, in a false world. They are not authentic. Life around them is devoid of anything real, and therefore anything of real nourishment or value.
Before you made limiting decisions, and before you started creating false personas and false worlds, you were living in a state of true self-interest, i.e. what really benefited you. Your focus was on life, truth, experience. You were led by what mattered to you. That is what guided your every moment — opening up your life, experience, and development. You were participating in living, flowing, experiential truth.
What makes suicide bombers so frightening and difficult to combat is their denial of the most basic self-interest of being alive. They, presumably, believe they are following the self-interest of doing what it takes to be virtuous, by doing God’s work. And they look forward to their reward in some version of heaven.
The people who are the most disconnected from their own most basic self-interest are the ones who act in ways that are the most distorted and dysfunctional. And it generally results in out of control behavior, under the radar of consciousness. For example people who are immersed in fundamental, repressive religious dogma, who can find no legitimate outlet for their human desires, can tend to act out sexually dysfunctional and destructive behavior in situations where they think it can remain hidden or not talked about, such as molesting children.
It is not possible to deny one’s own self-interest. It will be expressed in some form, either in its pure form or, as a result of being denied, in its distorted form. In its distorted form, it is likely to be destructive.
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