TL;DR: The author argues for being selfish as the way to create a happy life for everyone. They share a client’s experience in creating happiness to illustrate and support his argument.
Let’s talk about relationships. There’s a lot to talk about here. Mainly because humans feel relationships are one of the most, if not the most, important things. After all, we are told, we need relationships to be happy. Everything we do, need and want, it seems, comes through relationships. It is relationships with others that create community. Such relationships also create safety, belonging and a whole lot more.
And, if we’re honest with ourselves, relationships also offer the worst in humanity. Relationships with others are the framework through which some of humanity’s worst traits surface. Greed, conflict, psychopathy and violence all would be meaningless were it not for relationships.
So relationships aren’t all rainbows and butterflies, as the saying goes. We all know this. Just ask Israelis and the Palestinians. Relationships can suck. And yet, a lot about what we seem to be (human) seems to compel us toward relationships. Especially relationships with other humans.
There’s a far more satisfying and powerful relationship, however, one through which everything we want comes. It’s so all-encompassing, we literally can’t survive without it. And when we prioritize that relationship above all else, we can live our wildest dreams.
That relationship is what I’m writing about today.
Let’s dive in.
Over all else
The relationship I’m referring to has nothing to do with a god, especially the Christian god or Jesus. But this relationship does tap into the power Christians ascribe to their god.
The trouble with this relationship is, it’s as plain as the nose on our faces, and yet, we invariably prioritize other relationships ahead of it. And that out-of-whack prioritization creates all the troubles we have in other relationships. That’s because that which we could enjoy a relationship with wants our undivided attention. When we put our attention there, un-dividedly, everything else in life flows easily.
What relationship could I possibly be referring to?
The relationship with ourselves.
That’s right, there’s no better, no more powerful relationship than the relationship with ourselves. The reason why is because everything we see “out there” in the world springs from this relationship. So when we get this relationship where it should be – as our number one priority – then everything “out there” falls in line.
It doesn’t happen in an instant. That would be magic and magic isn’t a thing. But when a person prioritizes themselves over all else, then gradually, all else reflects the improvement inherent in prioritizing a relationship with themselves over all else!
Selfishness: a virtue
That seems like circular logic, but, as I’ve written before, the Universe and All That Is functions in a circular logic way. All That Is exists to joyfully know itself. The paradox of that is, the more it seeks to know itself, the more of itself it creates. This process makes All That Is – and you and me – eternal. So the more All That Is seeks to know itself, it creates more of itself to know. That’s the glorious circular process often described in ancient teachings.
Now, some might argue that prioritizing one’s self over others leads to selfishness. I completely agree. But I know selfishness is not bad. In fact, it’s the best way to be – oriented solely to self. Because when one lives that way, they discover everything else, including other people, are able to take care of themselves, leaving the person free to be, enjoy and lavish their life.
Indeed, when we put ourself first in all things, we stop trying to change circumstances over which we have no control. Letting go of such tasks feels better and better. And when we feel better, the world around us reflects that better mood back to us. It reflects it in ever-improving life experiences.
So, really, we have control of all of our experience because experience reflects back to us our inner state. And when we prioritize our inner state – our relationship with ourselves – then our life experiences reflect that improved inner state.
We also emanate love and other higher emotions. That’s because when we seek to know ourselves, which is aligned with what the Universe does always, we can’t help but feel the eternal joy that is Universal consciousness.
Put it to the test
That previous section may sound like a bunch of “New Age” hooey. But when practiced, over time, it proves accurate. Abraham says “Words don’t teach. Life experience does”. That means I can write forever about how powerful what you’re reading is. But nothing compares to evidence produced by your lived experience.
So if you’re having trouble believing this stuff, I suggest you prove it to yourself. Become the evidence you wish to see, as Eckart Tolle puts it.
So how do we prioritize the relationship with ourselves? It doesn’t seem easy when the entire outside world encourages prioritizing others over ourselves. So it takes practice. It helps to know that a “self” exists in us worthy of our undivided attention. That “self” is the “god in human form” I write about in this blog. Discovering its existence is easy.
The best way to do that is by testing Positively Focused premises, which are summed up in the phrase “you create your reality”. As a person tests these premises, they create or manifest, experiences, people and things, that come in surprising, seemingly coincidental ways.
But when so many of such manifestations happen over and over, the person must acknowledge something other than “coincidence” is at work. That acknowledgement is just like acknowledging there is a self worthy of having a relationship with. Paradoxically, the person testing these premises, once they start seeing things happen, will want more things to happen. As more happens, they also get more bold: they want bigger things to happen.
As their desires grow in scale or magnitude, their trust grows. Their trust in themselves and in this self they are building a relationship with.
Betrayal births bitterness
Growing that relationship brings a necessary letting go of beliefs keeping us all prioritizing others over ourselves. As we let go of them, we might have to face hard-seeming choices. Sometimes that looks like cutting off certain people, including family members. Sometimes it looks like making pretty sweeping career changes.
For example, a client recently faced having to cut off her daughter. Her daughter, the epitome of a hellion, raked the client over all kinds of emotional coals throughout their 20-year relationship. The client believed she had to be there for her daughter, despite the poor treatment, because that’s “what parents should do”.
Little did she know she created the belief “that’s what parents should do” after her parents did something the client considered unconscionable.
Throughout her youth, her parents promised her they’d save for and pay for her college. But when the client was 16, the parents reneged on their promise. The client had to pay her own way. Because of this she felt her parents betrayed her. She bitterly resented their decision and that bitterness festered within her.
An angel disguised as a hellion
The betrayal was personal for her. So, when she had a child out of wedlock, something she didn’t want in the first place, the client swore to “make things right” by not doing to her daughter what her parents did to her.
The problem with all of that is the Universe has an amusing way of showing us all how such beliefs aren’t in our best interest. In the clients case, the Universe gave her a hellion. And boy, did this young person torture my client in so many ways!
She was making the client miserable. Little did the client realize, her daughter was an angel the client sent herself. The angel’s mission: to teach the client she has everything she needs within her, to stop blaming her parents, and to put herself first.
After weeks of learning to prioritize herself through the Positively Focused Way, the client, after one particularly harrowing conversation with her daughter, decided to put herself first. She cut her daughter off.
The relief she felt was immediate. And, as days went by, her relief grew.
Doubling down
Thirty days in, she was feeling great. But then, her old created reality, born of her belief “that’s what parents should do” reasserted itself. Her daughter reached out. The client felt pulled by her belief to reconnect. Which is what she did. This is not unusual.
Typically, when this kind of thing happens, a client will have an epiphany making their life much better. But then, old belief momentum draws them back into their old way of being, the way of being they left behind. This dynamic always shows the client why they would have been better off not letting that happen.
But there’s no way clients can get it wrong. For these kinds of “set backs” actually amplify their commitment to put themselves first. Which is exactly what happened with this client.
That reconnection was horrible. And it reminded the client what had been absent for 30 days. It also put those past 30 days of relief, peace and ease in proper perspective. She wanted more of that. So she doubled down on cutting her daughter off.
The way to relief
Two weeks after her recommitment her husband said something remarkable over dinner.
“You seem really happy,” the client said her husband said. The client told her husband she did feel happy, happier than she had in decades. The husband credited that return to happiness to his wife cutting her daughter off. But the client knew it was primarily because she was putting herself first and that caused her to make a choice she otherwise would not have been able to do.
A week later, her husband once again noticed.
“It’s so good seeing you so happy,” he said. The client replied that she was returning to the self she knew before her daughter “happened”.
Now, it’s not that the client dislikes her daughter. She loves her and wants the best for her. But she realizes that, to be happy, she must put herself first. And when she does that, she thrives. And as she thrives, eventually, so will her daughter. That must happen because the client’s experience and everything in it, including her daughter, reflects back to her her inner state. Her daughter’s behavior was reflecting turmoil within the client. Turmoil born of expecting her parents to have put her first, when, obviously, they couldn’t.
Their decision not to pay for their child’s college was the right thing: they had to put themselves first. The client was making them wrong for doing what they knew was right. And so, the Universe, through her daughter, was showing the client the way to relief.
It’s all choice
And that’s the thing about realizing what comes from putting ourselves first. We realize no one is responsible for our happiness but us. And, no one can make us happy but us. Any other happiness source is fleeting, capricious and fickle. As such, such happiness sources are not in our best interest to put before the one relationship that really matters.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, everything in our experience improves when we do this. And so, the client’s daughter’s life must also improve, as she learns what her mother did: That she must put herself first and stop relying on her mother for her happiness…or anything else, including tuition, food and rent.
Relationships, from the Positively Focused Practice perspective, are not about people coming together, planning together, working out problems, coming up with solutions together, compromising, and investing in and extracting from each other what they need, all while claiming to love one another. Rather, each person is 100 percent responsible as a creator for creating the best version of their life and any relationship for THEMSELVES.
When they do that, the whole world improves, but only for that person. In the meantime, those choosing a different life way fade out of that person’s experience. Then those reflecting the person’s choice show up as reflections of that made choice.
This explains why so much variety in life experience exists. It’s not luck. Nor is it fate. What it is is people choosing, either deliberately or not, then the world reflecting the nature of that choice.
It’s all about unconditional love
This means, first cultivating a strong relationship with one’s self is paramount. When that happens, life reflects back to the person only the best things in life, because that’s just what happens when one puts themselves first.
Then, and only then, can a person create better versions of life AND better versions of people in their lives. They create versions of people by coming into the presence of another with their relationship with themselves so secure, that that other person has no choice but to reflect back to the creator a version of them matching what’s going on in the creator.
And when the creator achieves that, sees the person exhibiting the version of themselves the creator envisioned, and then revels in that, the manifestation of evidence of their creation, then that person being created feels that reveling as unconditional love for them. And that changes that person irreparably.
That’s why selfishness is so important. It can literally change human relationships. It does that through love, which is what ourselves have in abundance for us.
And that’s how we can influence others in the best way. “Influence” happens whether we know we’re doing it or not. Unfortunately, for most of us, we’re using that influence by recreating versions of people we don’t like, by complaining about their behavior, wishing they were someone that they’re not, or complaining in general.
Meanwhile the one relationship that empowers us to have a different experience of all we experience awaits us. That relationship is all unconditional love. And when we prioritize that relationship, we become that: Unconditional love.
