Spirituality for egoic benefits

[Mezanti]

as i'm doing contemplation, i realised that much of my pursuing in spirituality is because of personality benefits! to further convey my point, these benefits include: an increase in alertness, ending fear, becoming more charismatic, becoming wiser, freeing myself from suffering. 

i can say with certainty that im a STAGE ORANGE person that has masked there egoic needs with STAGE TURQUOISE ideas.

The reason im in this whole spirituality ordeal is for my own personal gain. me. me. me.

[Leo Gura]

Yeah, the devil loves nothing more than to cloak itself in God.

That is the devil's cleverest survival strategy.

[Mezanti]

@Leo Gura i know how some might call you out for using the name "devil" to describe people.

but quite literally this is the ego, this is self, its the devil it's the opposite of love (fear). 

[Knock]

@Mezanti You are talking as if personal gain is a bad thing 

Personal gain is essential to being a provider. The aim of a tree is to grow itself, it's benefit are the fruits it provides to others. If you focus on just growing fruits, and not your roots, you will have neither.

[RickyBalboa]

I think its great you are doing spirituality for your own benefit. That's great! What is also great is that doing whats best for yourself in the long-run for your physical and emotional health is whats going to benefit everyone around you. These practices are priming you for how you are going to help others later on. Leo has mentioned this in his talk about paradoxes. You gotta be selfish so you can be more selfless. Don't worry about the selfishness. The changes you are making are bringing you clean joy. You will be thankful for all you have learned and want to give it back to others later. Keep it up. You are doing great!

 

edit: oh jeez, I didnt read the prior post. I guess we are saying the same thing. 

Edited August 2, 2019 by RickyBalboa

[OctagonOctopus]

Learn how to help yourself, in the process one learns how to help others. While helping others, one learns how to help themselves even more. It is a circle of love. 

[Mezanti]

@Knock yes ofcourse, this can be the case with some people. but for me its just out of sheer greed, like i want it so that i can be more charismatic, have less fear.

[RickyBalboa]

@Mezanti Simply by being aware you are doing it for yourself you are peeling a layer of the onion back. The personal gains are attractive and make you feel powerful but the rewards that are the most hedonistic began to lose their luster the deeper you go. 

[Knock]

@Mezanti You have reframed your growth into something negative!

Greed implies you are taking more of something, to the detriment of others. 

Becoming fearless and sociable are great platforms of growth, and has nothing to do with reducing others benefits. Growth has to be egoic, there has to be a 'you' that benefits and grows. 

You can be both egoic and benefit the world. Therefore egoic pursuits are neither good, nor bad, by itself. It is the means by which you do so, that can be judged as good or bad.

[possibilities]

There probably needs to be a reappraisal of what people understand themselves to be so they don’t beat themselves up about it. Regardless as to you look at it, consciousness requires governance in a cause and effect reality such as our own, this is where inner conscious politics is important. At the inception of experience a conceptual identity is formed between consciousness and the world about the world, as sentience advances it is has a greater propensity and ability to form an idea about oneself, this single seed is the beginning of an inner identity which paves the way forward for psychological development, for better or for worse. Because it is difficult to become conscious of the ideas and corresponding identities we create in this interaction, we are not conscious of the inner maps we travel to navigate how it is we perceive and interact with the world. This leads to inevitable various forms of suffering, all misappropriations shift us ever so slightly off the path of truth and therefore internal liberty through proper governance and instead closer to falsity and therefore imprisonment to the degree that our understanding of this necessity for internal monarchy is threatened.

To understand that implicit question I’m still refining my own work here and believe it has several layers (for example I think you also need to try and understand and subsequently frame what reality is simultaneously), but like many things I’d start with what I’m not and end at a place like “localised consciousness (even if we can experience non-local states), localisation of which is physically constrained by the human body. This consciousness constructs reality (I.e. perception) and through this construction as an end point to the behavioural outcomes of its capacity for synthesis here both reality and the contents of that being evolve over time. In this construction, inner identity is shaped by externally assigned identities, together these evolve the contents of its mental maps, that is, perceived terrain of what is. The physical body of consciousness possesses survival imperatives where based on prior interactions with the environment (genetically and over the lifespan), consciousness is generally used as a vehicle of expressing identity imperatives that are designed around its perceived sense of actualised survival... (much more)”

All in all, even though I still have much more work ahead of me the better the frame the greater the ease by which I can dispense of faulty ideas and habits (I.e. inner/outer judgements, laziness, etc), etc. Often for me, the incorrect belief, attitude, etc is simply something that lives in an incorrect frame, meaning in this instance, it’s the misunderstanding of what consciousness is, what the brain is, etc that gives rise to other incorrect realisations. So next time I have something holding me back that doesn’t make sense I can ask myself, from what level of consciousness am I viewing this effect, problem, action, etc? In this sense, the frame creates the perceived terrain.

So in response to “so I can get personality benefits...”, well it all depends on the frame. The frame sort of determines whether or not that’s going to lead to good outcomes, so if anything, I’d encourage asking questions like that (I.e. what is consciousness? What is purpose? What is the role of consciousness?).

In the end, governance is going to be required where a decision needs to be made on what serves or doesn’t serve development like what you’re suggesting and these kinds of questions can aid in generating inner politics that produce more sophisticated identities which facilitate growth rather than take away. So regardless you gotta serve “me”, that’s unavoidable, but what is the frame of “me”? That’s for you to decide ?.

Edited August 3, 2019 by possibilities

[hamedsf]

do the work, that's great!