To live your own life is not selfish. The theme of this website, Live Your Own Life, can be misconstrued as a life of selfishness. Or the exertion of a heroic will to make things go the way mainstream culture has told us will make us happy. This is always in the direction of increased security, status, and conformity.
That direction never makes us happy. Because life doesn’t offer security and safety.
To live one’s own life requires that we stop chasing an illusion and exchange the chase for a true life.
The Paradox
To live your own life does involves a paradox however. Every spiritual lineage down through the ages teaches that your life is not your own—that Life or God has something in mind for you that transcends the desires of ego. It’s the paradox of having to lose your life in order to find it. Many experience that if they don’t consent to this life, they will suffer emotionally and physically until they do. This consent is sometimes called surrender, but it often feels like being broken. The title of my last book, Dismantled: How Love and Psychedelics Broke a Clergyman Apart and Put Him Back Together describes my experience of this.
What or who is being broken?
I use various terms: ego, performative self, false self, or the trying self.
Individuals who have consistently faced humiliation, punishment, interruption, correction, and general mistreatment when expressing their natural selves often become alienated from a state of relaxed spontaneity. This alienation can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and antisocial behavior, as individuals suppress their authentic expressions to avoid negative reactions. It is what an individual looks and feels like when s/he learns to protect herself from reality as s/he has known it. The individual dissociates herself from the present, from the body, from the emergent flow of life. Will replaces trust, thinking takes over from a primal trust in the natural, sacred intelligence that is living us, animating us and expressing itself in, through, and as us.
The ego often engages in thinking and behavior aimed at survival, even when survival isn’t at risk. This aligns with the concept of defense mechanisms—unconscious processes that protect individuals from anxiety and internal conflicts. The dissociation is from life itself. We experience ourselves as isolated creatures forging an existence in a hostile world and with humans who cannot be trusted.
Obviously, if we fashion our life from this condition we are not “living our own life” — we are surviving, imitating conventional norms, finding the words and behaviors that fit somebody else’s ideals.
But, a sovereign, self-defined life is not selfish.
True Selfishness Is Living in Ego
Institutions such as political, economic, educational, religious, and health systems, along with toxic families, often reflect a survival mentality. They direct us to adopt their beliefs, follow their agendas, avoid questioning, and transfer our inner authority to them, promising care in return.Institutions such as political, economic, educational, religious, and health systems, along with toxic families, often reflect a survival mentality. They direct us to adopt their beliefs, follow their agendas, avoid questioning, and transfer our inner authority to them, promising care in return.oic Survival Mode
This condition is actual selfishness. Our survival instinct drives us to selfishly recruit everyone and everything to confirm our significance, Because we unconsciously feel insignificant, we continually seek validation from others. This recruiting of life to justify our existence is the very definition of selfish. It never ends.
This pretty much describes the human condition on our planet today. They recruit us to build their power, influence, and viability.
We are born into this institutional self-serving corruption. The concept of “original sin” can be interpreted as the inherent flaws within societal institutions and the resulting systemic violence. These institutions—political, economic, educational, religious, and familial—often perpetuate false narratives and practices. This perspective aligns with the idea that original sin represents inherited ignorance of controlling patterns and paradigms. Conforming to these institutions to ensure belonging and identification inevitably leads to a false life.
We Are Life Itself Living Us
How do we break away, break down, break through?
When the suffering of “normal” becomes acute, we awaken, mature, and contribute to curating alternatives.
Starting with our own life.
Once individuals shed their false selves, they often experience a profound desire originating from Life itself, or Source, seeking expression through them. In this perspective, each person becomes the universe’s unique adventure—a localized expression of Life. “You” are how this localized expression responds to new conditions. (And it’s always new). Recognizing our dynamic and evolving sense of self prevents confinement to a fixed, unchanging identity, which can stifle personal growth and vitality. Embracing this fluidity allows for authentic self-expression and adaptability, essential components of a fulfilling life. “You” are not predictable, even as the world tries to lock you into a past (controllable) expression.
“You” are ever new, like the Intelligence and Love that is living in you, as you, through you. This you discovers, again and again, that it’s natural to treat others well, to treat yourself well, to treat Earth and her creatures well. Because we are all localized expressions of this Big Mind and Big Heart that is living us. And we’re all in this together.
“You” are an individual, meaning that the Big Thing, can know Itself uniquely as you.
To live your own life is not selfish.
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