It requires great courage to be wholly selfish, and in the process to be what we really are. The only route to such a state is deconstructing all the nonsense and bullshit we have absorbed in our journey through life. It’s a painful process, since part of the process involves murdering our best loved children – how charming we are, how kind we are, how loving, generous, polite, conscientious, self-disciplined …
The choice is simple. We either suffer unconsciously as the pile of festering excrement becomes ever more difficult to bear, or we can suffer consciously by clearing it out. And this is the only choice we have – suffer consciously through deconstruction, or suffer unconsciously as the poisons we have ingested eventually kill the real within us.
ON NOT CARING
Perhaps one of the most exciting trips that the ego can go on is to persuade itself that it is a loving and caring thing. New age and self-help groups are full of all this kind of thing. I speak to these kinds of people reasonably regularly, and they will tell me that they are loving, caring people - except for when you contradict them. Or except for when you push in front of them in a queue or something, anything to tread on their corns a little bit, and then they're not caring loving people anymore.
Now the theme is the idea of caring. Before you become too outraged, let me say, if you are in a situation, or if I were in a position, where somebody nearby was in distress, and I could offer them help and relieve that distress then yes, of course, I would do that. All, well nearly all human beings would do that. There are some that wouldn't, but they're the minority, the psychopaths and sociopaths of our world wouldn’t. The reason that we would do this, or would possibly even put our own lives in danger is that, beneath the surface, we are all the same thing. The awareness that is within you is the same as the awareness that is within me, and we are all that same consciousness or awareness or whatever word you want to use, and when that consciousness sees itself in distress - sees another person in trouble, then we are naturally inclined to try and help. Now that's the only sort of nice touchy-feely bit you're going to get in this section.
We need to talk about three things: caring about the world, caring about other people and caring about yourself. Now I've said before that a human being is 99% animal, effectively a wolf, a drooling wolf, desperate to maintain its existence and it does this by eating other things; we have to kill them and then eat them. Also, by competition for territory, dominance, mating rights, survival itself, competition, and there is violence between people to achieve these things; this is our world. And while man remains the human animal, then the world remains the same, nothing is going to change. Do not believe that some great thing is going to appear from the sky that heralds a new world for humanity because it's not going to happen. Well, its' very, very, very, very unlikely that it will happen. Of course, I no more than anybody else, understand the whole nature of life in this universe, but I'm not betting on some big face appearing in the sky and telling us all that we have to behave. I don't think it happens like that. If somebody cuts you up on the motorway, you're probably going to get angry because they've imposed their will upon you, it’s this animal thing for power. The very essence of all of this competition and violence and aggression is power. The ordinary polite person in the street, if they get into their work environment, will they possibly sabotage somebody's work if they think that person is going to get a promotion that they want? Well possibly. And you know work environments are just a laboratory for animal-human behavior. The state of the world isn't going to change, and human animals will behave the way human animals do. There will be murder, genocide, callous disregard for other people's lives and so on. The irony is that this big machine called animal existence that we are all a part of requires that we care about the things that are happening.
On the one hand, it creates all this mayhem and suffering, and on the other hand, it presents it to us in the news and the newspapers and social media and so on and then asks us to respond to that emotionally. Well, it’s emotional rape. This monstrous machine called life generates all this suffering, mainly driven by the survival instinct, and then we are asked to respond to it and to eat our hearts out because of the dreadful things that are happening. Well, what I'd like to suggest to you is that you don't care about all that stuff. If there's something you can do to alleviate any of that suffering, then we do it, we're all the same thing underneath. But the bottom line is that if there is nothing that you can do, then do not let this machine gobble your attention and your emotional energy, because it serves zero purposes for you - that is one level of not caring. For many years I didn't even look at newspapers and see the news. I do it more these days for whatever reason but, you know the world is like Mab. If you've seen the tale of Merlin, Mab was always effectively trying to attract Merlin's attention. Mab cast a spell on Merlin and what Merlin found, in the end, was the only way he could get rid of Mab was to ignore her blot her out, and she lost that power and the spell disappeared. Rule number one, if there's nothing you can do about a situation, forget it, it serves no useful purpose for you to pine and mourn and become sad and angry about what is happening in the world. So, don't care about it.
Let's get to personal relationships. You will notice that a lot of people like to talk about their troubles, many people are something akin to vampires, emotional vampires. They are after your nervous energy and, instinctively almost, they will know how to get it. That may be through appealing to your sense of sympathy, and your need to help. A lot of people are people pleasers - the need to please someone. These vampires will find a way to elicit some reaction from you and effectively steal your energy. And so, if somebody comes to you complaining about their life situation and there's nothing you can do about it or nothing you want to do about it, then the best thing to do is not care. But you know what? If you stop giving these people your energy, they will go away, because they're not getting what they want. We don't care about the world situation; we don't care about other people’s woes, the people that we know, people that we interact with, unless somebody says, if I cannot get to the hospital within ten minutes something dreadful is going to happen, will you please take me? Well, you know, in that kind of situation you'd probably do something, but generally speaking, it’s not like that, people are just looking for attention, and they are looking for you to sympathize and to give them the food of your attention basically.
Then we come to our inner life. Let's say you're in a situation where you get a bit angry. Well, I've said before that the way to deal with the emotions is a two-fold thing. One is to understand them; most feelings derive from the survival instinct. For example, if somebody cuts you up on the motorway, they're threatening your survival to some extent, and doing something dangerous and also imposing their power over you by making you modify what you were doing. And that change in the balance of power, namely that you having to adjust what you do to their will, will make you angry because the decrease of power creates hatred, and one manifestation of hatred is anger. The important thing, however, is when you get mad, to not care, to see the anger arise, to understand why it's appeared. Somebody has challenged your power, that is the understanding, and then the observation is just looking at it; oh yeah, oh my god, I feel angry, and I feel tight in my chest, and my pulse is a bit raised, and I'll sit with this. And you sit with it; you don't try and stop it or do anything about it. It's a natural manifestation of your animal body. It's as natural as raindrops dropping off a leaf. Why try and modify it? Why try and change it? The best attitude to have towards that anger is not to care about being angry. Or if you meet someone and they've just got themselves a brand new Mercedes that you would dearly love, and they are boasting and telling you everything about it, which may be natural enthusiasm, but human beings being what they are it's usually bragging. Then they're boasting about their first trip out, they're going to stay at some nice hotel and yadda, yadda, yadda and you're sat there and you start to feel envious, and you're feeling envious because again, this person
is trying to dominate you. They're dominating you by displaying their power in front of you and them showing that power, in turn, makes you feel a little bit less powerful so that you will hate them, and this hate will manifest as envy. Again, don't care that you feel envious, just let it happen. Understand why you're feeling resentful, this person is pissing all over you, and then observe it, sit with it, feel it, don't care that you feel uncomfortable. Not caring is such a powerful thing to do, such a powerful thing - because life in most of its aspects is trying to attract our attention in one way or another. You know, the dreadful news, people complaining about their life situations, people boasting, people trying to put you down, people evoking emotions within you, situations evoking emotions within you. It's all going to happen, but the key to at least some sane life is not to care that it's all happening. If you try and stop it all, it shows that you care. You know, if you are angry and you're saying to yourself ‘well I shouldn't be angry, I'm a spiritual person, and I shouldn't be like this,’ it shows that you care about being angry and somewhere someone has told you that being angry is a bad thing. And because you want to appear to be a good person, a caring, loving person, you shouldn't feel this kind of anger. But just let it go, let it happen within you. Whether you express it or not is a different matter, but not caring is a habit you can establish within yourself. And guess what? In the midst of hell, you can still be happy. And in fact, there's a well-known saying; I can't remember whether it’s from the Hindu or Buddhist tradition, but it doesn't matter. It says the sage can sleep peacefully in the graveyard at night. Horrible apparitions, ghosts, demons, all appearing in the cemetery at night. Guess what? The sage doesn't care. Don't care and life will be much, much, sweeter for you.
ON BEING SELFISH
Are you selfish? If you answer yes to that question, oh my word, what a lousy person you are. I admit to being entirely selfish, and we'll get on to why in a moment. Let’s talk about this book that started the whole thing. In 1920 a guy called David Seabury, who was a practicing psychologist at the time, wrote a book called The Art of Selfishness. It was met with outrage, particularly by the church because of course no-one was allowed to be selfish other than the church - all these very well-to-do and pampered bishops and priests who have some high place in society, and who have a unique line into God. The church was reasonably critical of being selfish as were various other parts of the establishment. Even so, it became a best seller.
You probably allow yourself to be made the victim of people who use the word “selfish” as a weapon to compel you to do what they want. It is not uncommon for people in a relationship to use the "selfish" label to get someone to do what they want.
The word selfish has been bent to mean harmful, to screw people over and all that kind of thing. That's not what I'm talking about here. The word self-assertive might be more appropriate. A more politically correct way of saying this might be the art of self-assertiveness, but you know, fuck that, let's use the word selfishness because it's more accurate. It's being interested in self. What else are you going to be interested in? Let me talk about selfishness for a moment. Many people, particularly in family situations, are always being selfish. You may not think so. You see someone who is devoted to the family, and you say to yourself why are they devoted to the family? Well, as you probably know, in many societies, certainly in Western nations, it's quite common for people to have kids, so they've got someone to look after them when they get old. Is that selfish? It sounds like it to me. And I'm not using it negatively; they are looking after themselves. The tradeoff is that you give birth to a couple of brats, you dedicate all your resources to them for quite a few years, maybe 20 years or thereabouts, and for many people the tradeoff is that they then have a couple of people who will, hopefully, help them in the system when they get older. That doesn't happen so much these days. I've got kids, and none of them are going to look after me when I get older. I know that. But, the family thing is also pushed along by the will-to-life, basically the survival instinct, the drive to procreate, it's programmed into us.
Now let's talk about co-dependency because this is what families are. They are large or small units of co-dependency, and I'm probably going to offend some people by saying what I'm going to say, but I've found it to be true. I've got nothing riding on this at the end of the day. A man may marry because maybe he wants a family, perhaps he wants someone to pass on his worldly goods to, it’s very common, I've seen that many times. Men will have kids because they want to, it's an ego thing at the end of the day, they want to promote their line into the future. They will bequeath their worldly goods to their kids, and God help anybody who marries this person or a person like that for the second time because those worldly goods will not be passed on to their kids. If a man marries a woman who has got her own kids, he will make sure that the assets go to his genetic line. I've seen it many times, and any amount of skullduggery and lying and cheating to make that happen, will happen. This biological thing is powerful, so men will, very often, work their whole lives and give everything to their kids as a means of finding their way of achieving immortality. I think it’s pathetic, but people do it.
Women are driven by the breeding instinct in a different way to men very often; they want to nest. They want kids, they want a safe environment, they want a house. There's a tradeoff takes place between men and women. It can be the other way around as well, it doesn't have to be the man who goes out to work and earns all the cash, the woman can do that, and then the man stays at home and looks after the kids, but the responsibilities are shared. All the time, each person is getting what they want, that's the point I'm trying to get to. This is not some altruistic act. Because of this, and because people do have to make compromises, there is co-dependency, and the co-dependency is ‘if you go out to work and earn money, I'll look after the kids.’ We're both doing it because we want a nice home environment and because we want to support the family. Family support and the cost is why we must do all this stuff, and the payback is that we get the nice nesting environment and we get an environment where other people support us. So ultimately, it's an act of selfishness. If you were to say to most people “you have got kids, and you are in a family because you are selfish, and you want those things of a safe environment, and a supportive environment” they would rip your face off. Why? Because you're telling the truth and they don't want to hear that. This idea of selfishness is so ingrained in our society, that to go after what you want is taboo. Secretly, this is what people are doing all the time. Now the problem is that as all of this is not out in the open, people must do it in an underhand way even to themselves - they can’t even be honest with themselves. A man, who is having to go out to work to earn money to support the kids and the home, may grow to resent that. The problem is, he will not be honest enough with himself to say, ‘actually my part of the bargain is that I get on-demand sex,’ did I really say that? Well, yeah, a lot of men do think like that. It goes something like - I've got on-demand sex, I've got kids that I can pass on all my worldly good to, and these kids promote my genetic line into the future, and I've got a comfortable environment in which to live, and I've got food on the table when I get home. But the tradeoff is I must do this shitty job. But because such a person can’t' be honest with themselves, they start to resent the fact, and they feel like they're getting nothing back in return. They must do all this stuff to support this environment and resent it. It may also be the same with the woman. I'm in the house all day; I'm looking after kids, and yadda yadda yadda.
The point I'm making is we are always selfish. Someone who seems like some groveling non-entity is a groveling non-entity because they have learned that that's the way to get what they want. We always go after what we want in the way that we've learned to go after it. That is the nature of the beast. A lot of people will be trying to please people. Why? Because they want approval from those people and they want support from those people, so they'll try and please them. The fact that this act of tryin
g to please them probably annoys the other people, they don't notice.
Families can be dreadful things. A tight family is a horror show, a live horror show. Why? Because in a tight family, a closely-knit family, you cannot be different. You absolutely cannot be different. If you are different you will be thrown out of that tightly knit family, or at least you'll be deeply resented, and life will be made very difficult for you. That's the way families are. Here's some quotes from some people on this, a couple of philosophers and a psychologist. Seneca wrote quite a long essay on the shortness of life. It's a great read, but I've just taken this quote:
“Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their land, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life.”
He's talking, apparently from the title of the thing, about time, to trespass upon their time. If you are the kind of person who believes that by doing things everyone else wants you to do, you are in some way virtuous, then you've just got it so wrong. The next quote from Spinoza should clarify:
“No one wishes to preserve his being for the sake of anything else.”
Now, what does the term ‘preserve his being’ mean? It means being what you are. People confuse that term with the survival instinct, preserving your life, but that's not what he's talking about. When he says no one wishes to preserve his being, he means no one wishes to express what they are for the sake of anyone else. You are what you are, and you were made a certain way. Nobody calls you selfish if you eat. Nobody calls you selfish if you go for a shit. Those are things that you have to do. But will someone call you selfish if you spend your evenings reading books on philosophy? They probably will do. Why? Because they want you to do something else, they want you to do what they want to do. To hell what ‘you’ want to do. No one wishes to preserve his being for the sake of anyone else, that is the reality of it. And finally, I will use this quote from Kathleen Speeth, a psychologist who was very heavily associated with the Gurdjieff work. I don't' like the woman very much for whatever reason, but she says something that is so true. And that is;
The Corporeal Fantasy Page 11