Being Selfish

I wake up as the sun rises to teach a retreat of self healing in the beautiful setting of Nai Harn Beach at Phuket. I am surrounded with people that took the time off their jobs, families, social duties and many responsibilities just to stop and re-evaluate their choices, their thoughts, their lives aiming to heal, grow and transform.

I admire those beautiful souls for making this choice as  it is so vital for us to feel our own value. To feel that we deserve to invest the time to check in and ask ourselves where and what are we lacking? What is our vision for ourselves? Where are we heading and what hurts?

This self work is important both to ourselves and to those around us as there is no way for us to give anything that we lack. It is impossible for us to love another unless we love ourselves. It is impossible to give peace, acceptance, tolerance or forgiveness unless we do that for ourselves first.

Spiritual teachers often talk about "putting on your own gas mask" first before helping others, establishing a strong foundation from which to help others before even attempting to do so. And this is no news to many of us.

But what I'm here to talk about today is a different angle to selfishness. An angle that hit me as I was listening to a lecture by Abraham Hicks when he affirmed that he "really, really, really does teach selfishness", and here's why.

Abraham explains that when someone accuses us of being selfish they are actually saying "how dare you choose your happiness over mine?". Isn't the accuser then, the  selfish party in that argument? Isn't it selfish to ask someone to go against their own understanding of what makes them happy simply to conform to our expectations?

When did we lose track of this and accept the conditioning that we must ignore our own understanding of happiness in a hallow attempt to "make" someone else happy? When did we lost sight of the fact that each one of us can only be responsible of their own happiness. Why were we conditioned to think that it is noble to assume our own needs are less important than others? When did sacrifice become something we felt proud of instead of a clear sign of distorted self worth. 

I wish you all a life in which you are clear on your vision for yourself and you have no guilt or shame of doing what it takes to achieve that.

Om Shanthi Shanthi Shanti.