uncommonsensetherapy

[uncommonsensetherapy]

reinventing selfishness

A yogi by lifestyle, my intentions are to replicate the healing effects yoga has had on my body to as many people as possible. Through yoga I learned mindful awareness, a state of internal bliss as well as unifying understanding to be the keys to clearing chaotic connections within our body. Here I merely hope to offer awareness to the etymology of the word selfish to help us build healthier connections with our body, mind and soul that clear duality around the term.

I have been thinking about this article for well over three years, letting life guide me through what I needed to be able to write it at the depth my heart felt it - knowing deep inside that we as a culture need to reinvent the way we look at selfishness. So many good people suffer inside because of this word - selfish -that they learned defines their inherent capacity to receive love at a very early age. Many religions and parenting styles teach that we must shame children in order for them to be responsible for their actions. On the contrary, others go radically in the other direction, glorifying ego in a way that makes it seem dirty.

As people, we seem to be stuck in a pendulum swing between ego-abolition and ego-aggrandizement, failing to see the healthy, happy medium in-between the divide. While the battles of life destroy the middle ground, it seems many of us have either forgotten that it’s still there or given up hope that it will ever be a stable, nourishing ground to grow harmonious community and people within.

We know in yoga that we must be calm in order for the souls of this plane to harmonize with their environment in a stable way. The ancient texts speak up-and-down on chaos and its inevitability to cause reactions within us if we do not train ourselves on mindfully responding instead. Unfortunately, this requires us to be very selfish - so full of ourselves that we spend much time with ourselves learning who we are, why we are, and what we are in the raw. 

As a yoga professional for seven years, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that yoga is for rich white women with nothing better to do. I also cannot tell you how deeply scarring that was to hear every single time - not because I believe it, but because I understand all perspectives of it and how dastardly it is for us to throw shade on what so many people have found in this practice, let alone the enlightenment it sheds throughout the world. 

I want you to be selfish - so selfish you learn to stay with your heart in every, single moment and make every, single person uncomfortable with it triggered because of how jealous they are you’re willing to choose yourself. My deepest heart hopes you become so selfish you choose faith over your religion - faith that whatever you believe in believes in you, speaks with you, and loves you so much that it would never want you or anyone else to stay in pain. If you become so selfish you learn to heal yourself from the inside-out, I support it, 100%.

The Etymology of Selfish

The term selfish was coined by the Presbyterians in the 1630s during a time of conservative proliferation but didn’t find its way into the mainstream until atheist Richard Dawkins wrote his book “The Selfish Gene” in 1976, which talked about biological inheritance and genes within us that cause beings of life to be selfish, or largely desire personal replication. Dawkins writes: let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.

Now I should state I have no intention on shading either religion nor anti-religion, rather intend to gently shade the chaos arguments against anything cause so we can focus on the light that becoming aware of both helps shed on what’s going on at a larger level  - beyond the politics, let’s say. 

Looking at the man behind the words before we abolition or aggrandize his offering, Richard Dawkins lives his life to proliferate his ideals while stating this - believing science to be a better source of understanding for the world over religion when it comes to understanding life. No shade! That’s great - I hope he lives to light up the world for perspectives like his that heal within that belief. 

What’s ironic to me here is that Mr. Dawkins fails to see that even science proves you must see from the perspective of the observer to understand what they are going through before denying their claims. Science also understands the placebo effect to be a real thing - our beliefs healing us. What if some people can heal themselves with their mind and others can’t? Are the gullible ones more or less fortunate? Who says what’s really healing them? And does it matter if in the end both sides are being healed as they desire?

If we live in a world of multiple perspectives - here discussing a world of believers and of knowers - the world must be created to support both for both to live harmoniously together, period. There cannot be a right and a wrong way of doing things rather a way to go right into knowledge and a way to go left into belief. The reality is, if both are present, both are available to be explored by the people thus most people will have a mix of both components within themselves. There’s enough diversity to feed the masses healthy food if health ever becomes the priority over diversity. 

Analyzing Our Own Selfishness

How do videos like the one below make you to feel inside, for better or worse?

If you struggle with the word selfish, you may be irritated, bothered, or otherwise triggered in a negative way by these kind of social posts. This exploration of oneself may make no sense to you so much it feels like nonsense, but is it? Or is it merely a modern expression of our genetics?

Our biology influences us to replicate - to spread our influence. While it used to be more physically-oriented - wanting to have power over large populations and create large families - it’s grown more viral in our day-and-age with our awareness of these urges. Now we tend to post our replications and feel like we are doing a good job when people view it and especially when they like it. 

What if, as a selfish individual soul, this person believes she came here to explore the body? To empower others to love themselves - as they are - even if who they are wants to feel more beautiful with a digital filter? To spread the influence of self love in this unique way? What if that’s what we are all doing? What if those of us who aren’t sharing aren’t because they don’t care? Is everyone not doing exactly what they selfishly believe best to be loving?

Ayurveda helped me to understand that what each of us needs to be healthy is very, very different and won’t look the same for everyone. Thinking of touch alone - a vata (or anxious) person craves pressured touch while a pitta (or angsty) person cares less about pressure specifically and more about the intention from where the touch is coming from. A kapha (or lethargic) person prefers it gentle. For each of these states, these preferences are most healing.

An Ayurvedic Take on Selfishness

I am selfishly passionate about Ayurveda because it helps me be selfish enough to prioritize taking care of myself, which has been revolutionary in my healing. As someone who fought most of my life to not be selfish, I came to realize the biggest thing it did was create a very unhealthy connection with my own body as well as other bodies taking care of themselves. 

How could he/she be so selfish, spending so much of their time on themselves? I won’t be like that! I will only give myself what I need. Unfortunately, we like to think we only need food, shelter and water, but what we also need is warmth. We need to feel warm inside our bodies to want to go inside our bodies, and, unfortunately, running away from or resisting being selfish only causes us to go fiery or cold, which in Ayurveda we know turns us aggressive, anxious, exhausted and/or detached.

On the other hand, just accepting we are all selfish is liable to turn us a bit greedy. We call these imbalanced states vata, pitta, and kapha in Ayurveda and they are the primary focus of healing momentary imbalances or dis-eases in the body. So is there a healthy way for us to live with our selfish gene? Of course.

It all comes back to awareness, bliss and understanding. The Ayurvedic approach helps us to understanding by connecting us with our primary imbalances - are we more manic and anxious about life than feels healthy? More intense and aggressive? More passive and greedy? Do any of these words trigger us from wanting to identify with them? Do we feel all of them?

Through Ayurveda we understand mania and anxiety tend to be our primary imbalances in modern times but that most of us are imbalanced in all ways. Unless we are consciously choosing our health, modern life throws us off-balance just by living in the circus. We are all selfish, and it’s honestly a good thing. We are all also different, so we have to be selfish in order to understand those differences and mindfully acclimate them into our environments. 

I could talk for days on Ayurveda and it’s wonderful, countless benefits. Here’s a three and a half hour training powerpoint I use to teach yoga teachers, check it out to learn more about Ayurveda and how it helps us to become mindfully selfish people who can balance our knowledge and our beliefs within. There’s all kinds of links at the bottom for you to take quizzes to learn your imbalances, how to heal them, and what it all basically means / where it came from. 

[uncommonsensetherapy]

“I Wanna Get Better”

There’s a song by an Indie-Pop band called Bleachers with this title. The words and loving energy behind them subscribe the fire I have learned in my yoga journey to be necessary to fuel a healthy, productive path toward inner peace - tapas they call it. Accepting and walking into the conscious, burning desire within to be a better human-being so that it no longer inspires dark reactions when it comes up, and you, thereby, live in peace. 

Unfortunately, in the modern yoga word, few people know of this word, this offered spiritual foundation from our ancestors. So many people come to their yoga mats, like me, looking to leave their desire to be better behind them, which is the goal, eventually, to just be. To start, however, we must turn into the accepted foundation - the burning desire to tether our actions to higher purpose, to more harmony within the world around us by cultivating a deeper connection with the harmony inside of us.

This is a picture of me with my mom, the foundation of my drive toward better. We both want so badly to be best friends with one another, but we instinctually mesh more like oil and water than bread and butter. We always have each other’s backs, but we also always see from behind one another the whole picture the other is in a bit more clearly than we can on our own.

Do you have those relationships where you love someone so much you want to live for them? It’s like your body turns on this weird instinct: you can help them do better. So arrogant yet so hopeful. Well, that’s how my mom and I get frustrated with each other. We do this to each other. Both of us love each other too much at once and it makes it hard to handle it within the moment.

The cool thing about mirror relationships like this though is that the other person doesn’t have to take part in the healing in order to find peace within them, rather yoga teaches us that healing ourselves changes the reflection. With enough love, we take the reflection in. To let the fire burn with the love.

Instead of staring into the mirror when I think of better, its time to close my eyes and stare within, on how I can harness my locus of control most effectively and efficiently in a moment to find center. It’s time to zen better. One day I’ll bet on zen, today, I still hope to do it better by keeping it with me, with my control.

My friends and I are creating resources to help all of us who want to. Videos, audio, graphics, in-person and online classes, consultations, workshops, series and trainings. We are ready to use our fire to help all of us stay with the truth - that we are our own locus of control. What we do affects the environment around us, whether we want it to or not. 

We plan to start zenning the sh*t out of the world inside of us, maybe then we stop cursing ourselves when we look in the mirrors reflecting at us each day. If that sounds tight to you, join our crew! Follow on here and @zenbetter.life on all major social media platforms. Website launched projected for Summer 2019!