I use my awareness to uncover the truth. Uncovering the truth in turn elevates my awareness.
I’ve worked my way through ever subtler layers of egoic personality. My awareness now falls on individual words I’m using, which, I’m finding, are subtly self-serving.
I go through life living events, but then constructing a self-serving story or narrative afterwards. The truth is usually the first casualty.
What does it serve? I said earlier that I believe how we feel to be our prime motivator, in all things.
Certainly, when I look, I see I’m committed to how I feel more than anything. And our self-serving story seeks to keep us feeling the best we can imagine being – happy, proud, confident, etc. (1) Werner Erhard has called it our “winning number.”
It does this by locking in a favorable view of everything we thought, felt, said, and did. It attributes all failures, defeats, and losses to others – “beyond our control.”
It seeks to have us hold on to feeling good, right, distinguished, respectable, whatever our desire is. “I did this. I said that. Whatsisname said this other silly thing. But I saved the situation when I said….”
I hear myself try out a line. Or a word. I watch myself go over an event again and again in my mind until I have my story just right. Covered all exigencies. All my ducks in a row.
It’s showtime! I trot it out, sell it to others. They buy. That becomes my story. And, being dead-right on top of it all, I stick to it.
Another reason to prefer what I wrote in 2015 rather than what I say about it in 2025: By then events will be well worked over.
I listened to a friend tell a story the other day in which everything bad that happened was the result of my interventions and everything good was a result of hers. I chuckled. I do the same, just not in the other person’s presence.
It’s actually quite hilarious if it wasn’t so corrosive. Self-servingness may turn out to be the number one blind spot in our Third-Dimensional philosophies. We overlooked its centrality to the way we “be” in life. But we all do it and so we agree to keep the matter invisible.
If we all raised the matter to awareness instead, there’d be a lot of embarrassment and humble pie.
While the truth reveals and heals, a self-serving narrative binds us to lies, white lies, and damned lies.
We don a wooden face. We become a pre-programmed robot. All because of a habit pattern that’s universal but harmful. It erodes sanctity.
Hold it right there. Who said that? What do I know about eroding sanctity? I’m gonna need some help here.
“It erodes sanctity. Everything about the Self is sacred. To unveil and reveal that is sacred work. To obscure and confound it is not.”
Thank you.
I agree.
It all revolves around the self/Self we’re giving our attention to. The small “s” self of the egoic personality, the mind-created self is not what the purpose of life is about discovering.
As I understand it, the purpose of life lies in discovering the essence of the big “S” Self, the offspring of the Mother/Father One and third member of the Trinity (Christ, Atman, Buddha nature). (2)
So if I really get it down to my cells, molecules, atoms, and beyond, that I’m helplessly and hopelessly self-serving, well, perhaps that’s the first step toward understanding what remains for me to drop that I may elevate my consciousness further.
Perhaps if I call myself on my own number, I can bring into better relief what I no longer want or need.
Having established my beachhead of understanding, as I prepare to venture into new territory, my plan starting out is….
I will issue a “Viewer Discretion is Advised” before telling my story to anyone. My sources have been known to be self-serving. (3)
If I can’t cleanse myself of self-servingness, what hope is there that anyone else can or would even be aware of the desirability or necessity of doing it?
My life is a workshop, made up of continual experiments into the nature of love, truth, and peace. This is definitely an experiment worth running.
As a pillar, I stay till the end so I have lots of time for experiments. What lies on the other side of self-servingness?
Footnotes
(1) See “Basic Third-Dimensional Illusion: Separate Selves Struggling for Survival amid Seeming Scarcity,” May 17, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/05/17/basic-third-dimensional-illusion-separate-selves-struggling-for-survival-amid-seeming-scarcity-2/
Also: “On Self-Servingness,” June 24, 2019, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/06/24/on-self-servingness/
“The Self-Serving Bias: The Chief Barrier to Life Working,” November 2, 2016, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/11/02/self-serving-bias-chief-barrier-life-working/
“Obstacles to a Smooth Ascension: Self-Servingness,” Dec . 4, 2012, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/ascension-as-of-2012/obstacles-to-a-smooth-ascension/obstacles-to-a-smooth-ascension-self-servingness/
“What Do We Want? A Self-Serving Society or a World That Works for Everyone?” Nov. 24, 2011, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/11/24/what-do-we-want-a-self-serving-society-or-a-world-that-works-for-everyone/
(2) Download The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment at https://gaog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Purpose-of-Life-is-Enlightenment.pdf.
Or read this chapter from it:
“The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” August 13, 2011, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/
Christians call the Trinity the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Hindus call it Brahman, Atman, and Shakti. I call it Mother God, Father God, and the Child of God (that’s us).
(3) Did you see that? Not “I have been known to be self-serving” but “my sources have been known,” etc. Subtly self-serving!