Is It Loving Or Is It Selfish?
by Dr. Trish Whynot
My intention in this newsletter is to assist you in bringing to consciousness, your beliefs around being loving and being selfish. I hope to help you bring to awareness what you may be doing unconsciously. Behaviors and beliefs around love that were learned in childhood will be expressed automatically as adults. As you bring beliefs to conscious awareness, you can explore them to see if they make sense to you. Then you can either consciously choose to continue with them or do some healing around your experiences with these beliefs, and change them into something that reflects your definition of loving.
Your findings on what you were taught was loving and selfish, are likely to surprise you. You may come to realize that much of what you learned was loving, is actually selfishly motivated. You may also find that some of what you were taught was selfish, was actually loving. In order for your thoughts, words and deeds to be genuinely loving, they must come from a place that is pure-of-heart. You must be open and brutally honest with your findings in order to distinguish what is loving from what is selfish, effectively. Everyone has a longing to love and be loved; the means to this end is where it gets confusing.
Religions and society have taught for generations that it is noble and saintly to put yourself last. Their teachings imply that the action of putting yourself last is loving. In their efforts to mimic the saints who were coming from a loving place that was pure-of-heart, many have mistakenly resorted to manipulative and controlling tactics with selfish intentions. Priests that abused innocent boys were being selfish-of-heart to say the least, hiding their actions and the feelings fueling them, in their efforts to appear pure-of-heart.
The selfish-of-heart have a strong desire to love and be loved, but don't know how; they don't understand the process and can be destructive in their refusal to take responsibility for their feelings. The problem here is that the selfish come from a place of fear rather than from a place of love. Fear-based motivations include fear of not being loved for being yourself, fear over what others will think and fear of going to hell for not being pure-of-heart. Fear-based motivations promote intentions that are selfish rather than loving. Ironically, the selfish-of-heart expend a lot more energy in their attempts to get others to believe that they are pure-of-heart, than those working toward being pure-of-heart spend in their process to be loving.
The genuinely pure-of-heart have nothing to prove to anyone. They just know in their hearts when they are coming from a loving place and don't need to justify their actions or prove them to anyone. When coming from a place pure-of-heart, we have nothing to hide and no need to defend or justify, only a desire to explain.
Messengers for the Divine, such as Christ and Buddha, were pure-of-heart. They were living examples of their teachings; inspiring us and showing us our potential just by being themselves. People following them were encouraged by their pure intentions and loving expressions and wanted to learn from them.
Lost in their need to control their members, many modern-day role models and authority figures have forgotten their true power which is the power of love. They can't teach it if they aren't practicing it. If they are fear-based, practicing control and the domination over others for power, this is what they will be teaching and this is what you will be learning. In order to learn to be loving and to find your power in your power to love and be loved, you must find a teacher that is working toward becoming pure-of-heart and learn from them. These are the teachers that are making the maps to greater love.
Loving expression requires that you take responsibility for the emotions that get between your heart and your desires. It is not about being perfectly pure-of-heart all the time. Expressing to someone that your words or actions are coming from an angry or fearful place, even if in the moment you don't know why, can be more loving than if you pretend that everything is just fine. Unexpressed emotions we are unable to own will come through us and hurt others. Express your feelings, not for the purpose of using them as an excuse for your behavior, but for the purpose of healing. In denying your feelings for selfish reasons such as to look good, or to avoid being hurt, your attempts to express will be tainted.
Someone that wants nothing to do with you when your life is going well, but would be there for you in a heartbeat, if you were in crisis is an example of the selfish-of-heart. They only want to be there for you if they can benefit in some way. Feeling valuable is what they may be desiring, but needing someone to be in crisis so they can feel valuable isn't the best route to take. If you don't feel valuable, it would be more loving to work with the part of you that feels this way.
Being there for someone out of love has no strings attached. Being there for someone because you are afraid they will be angry at you or not be there for you in the future if you aren't there for them now, is selfish. You wouldn't be there out of love for them, you would be there for what you would be getting back in return. In all of the above examples, the person is only desiring to be loved. The confusion lies in how they are going about getting it - from a place of love for themselves and for others, or from a place of fear that they won't be loved for being themselves.
The following is a great example of loving and selfish we can all learn from. When a client, that I will refer to as Kim, was in the first grade, her teacher had asked the class to straighten their desks. Kim's straightening didn't meet the teacher's standards so to prove a point, the teacher dumped everything from Kim's desk onto the floor and demanded she pick it up. Kim innocently stated that she wasn't going to pick up her things because she hadn't dumped them out. The teacher reported Kim to the principal who called her mother to come to the school to address the problem.
Clearly the teacher had some unresolved rage that she wanted to dump. She had chosen Kim because she was very quiet, feminine and petite, appearing to be the perfect victim. Who she had really chosen was a 6 year old wise one, and I don't refer to wise as fresh here. She was responding from a place pure-of-heart. She was loving herself and respected her teacher enough to not take responsibility for her rage. Kim was honoring her boundaries. She hadn't dumped the desk so she wasn't going to pick it up. It was that simple. Forcing a child to take responsibility for the actions of an adult, would make no sense to a wise one.
Intimidating Kim by involving her mother and the principal was the teacher's second attempt to dump her rage. Kim was fearful of what she might have done to require such action. Some parents would have made their child apologize for disrespecting the authority figure, but fortunately Kim's mother renewed Kim's faith in herself by supporting her in front of these authorities. Kim's Mom's support offered the teacher another perspective from which to view the situation.
As we have said in the past, as adults, as a rule, when your feelings are triggered, only 10-20% is from the current situation and the other 80-90% is old stuff that the current trigger has brought to the surface. Triggers are pointing you in the direction of a place that needs some healing. Clearly, a desk, not straightened to a teacher's standards, does not warrant her dumping out the contents. There must have been some rage already present that got triggered. The teacher's actions were selfish attempts to dump feelings from her past onto an innocent child. Dumping Kim's desk was not a loving way to build self-esteem and teach neatness. As you can replace your life's traumas with wisdom and compassion, you can move forward grateful, free from the past, more pure-of-heart and less triggered.
The next example can play itself out in various versions within families, friendships, intimate and business relationships. Karen came to me when considering ending a 15+ year relationship. She had been unhappy in her relationship with Carl for awhile, but was confused because he wasn't a bad person, and fearful that she wouldn't find anyone better.
Karen had been sacrificing what she liked to do in order to be with Carl, and had become increasingly resentful. Prior to coming to see me she had made a choice to stop sacrificing and had begun honoring her heart's desire to go out and have fun with friends, even if Carl didn't want to come along. As she followed her desires, she began meeting people with similar interests and felt alive again. She was attracting people that made her feel valuable and in the process she met someone who, she realized she was developing feelings for.
As we went more deeply into her feelings, she could see that the man she had met had reminded her of what feeling valuable felt like. This new friend was showing her what she was missing in her relationship with Carl. This surfaced even more bitterness toward Carl and more confusion with her feelings. She couldn't help but to initially blame Carl for her feeling insignificant and unappreciated. There was a part of her that believed getting rid of Carl would get rid of these painful feelings.
As we delved more deeply into the reasons for her change of heart, there were revealed, multiple occasions where Carl had put her needs aside to meet his own. He had made choices without considering her feelings, and the results of his choices, were at her expense. As examples, he had made expensive purchases that put plans they had made together on hold; and if friends called him to go out he would, but if Karen wanted to do something he was usually too tired. She would express her frustration and he would get defensive. Nothing would be resolved because the deeper feelings that were causing the problem weren't being addressed. After awhile she didn't even feel comfortable expressing her anger because he would be so defensive, so she began to hold that in too.
She had never given herself the opportunity to really explore her feelings underneath the anger. In subsequent sessions, as we peeled back the layers, feelings of hurt, insignificance, worthlessness, hopelessness and not good enough surfaced. There had been an accumulation of these unexpressed feelings from various situations involving Carl and others from her past all the way back to her childhood.
Karen acknowledged that she had been unable to forgive Carl in the past because he had defended and justified his actions. She expressed, "How can I forgive him if he won't take responsibility for what he did?" Many of us falter here. The thing is, he was mirroring her refusal to take responsibility for her own feelings underneath her anger. In only feeling and expressing her anger, all the feelings of insignificance and hurt had been accumulating to the point where she couldn't get excited about the relationship anymore and didn't even enjoy being around him. All her accumulated emotions were between her heart and her desire to love and be loved by Carl. She didn't realize it, but he was a constant reminder of all her unexpressed feelings of "not good enough," and her new friend was a reminder of her heart's desire to be valued.
As we went even deeper, she could see that she had dumped 100% of her "not good enough" feelings onto Carl by expressing her desire to end the relationship. This was her way of punishing him for how he made her feel. Her bitterness had prevented her from even having the desire to work on the relationship.
She had stayed with him this long out of complacency and fear that no one better would come along - not very good reasons to be in a relationship. Karen was not taking responsibility for how she was allowing Carl to make her feel and why. She hadn't even been aware that she was allowing, the only way she could see the relationship was through her wounded eyes, blaming Carl with her as the victim. The only resolution she could see from this perspective was for him to change how he treated her so she could feel good about herself, or find someone else to make her feel significant. The thought of her changing how she was relating to herself, was not even a conscious option until I presented her with the possibility.
Expressing her accumulated anger toward him in efforts to get him to change and to punish him, had only made him defensive and distant. His withdrawal felt like punishment to her. Her anger was protecting and preventing her from feeling the emotions underlying it. She was caught in this loop of punish and be punished. Her sacrificing was giving off that unimportant, not good enough, insignificant energy that he was responding to. That was how she was treating herself and her heart's desires. Because she was sacrificing her heart's desires to prove she was good enough to Carl, she was indicating energetically that her heart's desires were unimportant. As she shifted her energy she was able to see that others, including Carl, were now valuing her and her heart's desires in response to her choice to honor her heart. This new guy was not necessarily meant to take Carl's place, and feeling valuable with Carl was a real possibility.
As she worked through the forgiveness process she could see that Carl, too, believed he was not good enough. He expressed his belief through withdrawal which she had judged to be lack of motivation and selfishness. On further examination his motivation had actually been a fear of others seeing his flaws if he put himself out there. Yes, this motivation was selfish, but not the selfish Karen was assuming.
Because she liked to be visible, needing others to make her feel important, and overachieving to compensate for not believing she was good enough, she thought she and Carl were very different. In reality, they actually were very similar, a similarity that Karen was ashamed to admit. They both believed they weren't good enough and each had developed their own ways of controlling people and situations in efforts to avoid feeling the pain associated with the belief. They both longed to love and be loved, but their motivations to avoid feeling their pain in that process were fear-based and selfish.
Because she sought approval outside herself to avoid feeling not good enough, she took his withdrawal personally. He was being selfish for not wanting to hang out with her friends and she was being selfish for wanting him to. She needed him to do things with her to avoid her pain around not feeling good enough, yet he was busy attempting to avoid his own similar pain. His unconsciously selfish focus, prevented him from considering what she might be feeling. Karen had been similarly motivated. In her sacrificing and desire for him to do fun things with her, she had not considered Carl except in respect to how she wanted him to respond to her. They both had hidden agendas that were even hidden from themselves.
He was responding passively to his belief and she was responding aggressively to hers. They each wanted the other to be something they were not to prove they were worth loving. This unhealthy spiral of sacrificing, punishing, proving and withdrawal can also play itself out in the bedroom.
As Karen was able to forgive herself for the belief she had been putting out there to be demonstrated, took responsibility for all the emotions it had created, and began the process of healing it back to where it came from, the relationship began to shift. She did need some distance from Carl as she processed her feelings because of all the pain she had allowed to accumulate over the years, yet she felt hopeful for both of their futures. The more she loved the wounded parts of herself, the more Carl and others were able to respond to her in the loving way her heart desired.
Healing their beliefs actually held the potential for taking their relationship to new heights. Their beliefs were holding them back from greater love. As she forgave herself for her belief she was able to respond compassionately to Carl's as well. As Karen responded from this compassionate place it brought Carl closer. He wanted to spend time with her and to spend money on her. Karen could now see that her anger hadn't brought Carl closer, it had pushed him away. She was learning the importance of embracing the angry part of herself that is afraid of losing love for just being Karen and can see that the processing of her feelings is a necessary component in fulfilling her heart's desire to love and be loved.
As Karen continues to go deep within herself for her answers, and takes responsibility for her part in the creation, she begins to respond from a place more pure-of-heart. The more she loves herself, the safer she feels and is able to experience what unfolds without being attached to a particular outcome. From this more pure-of-heart place, she only wants what is for the highest and best for her and for Carl. If that means moving forward together, great, and if it means separating, that can be great too. She doesn't need a guarantee as to the outcome because she knows that the more she loves herself, the more love she will attract, and feels safe in that process. There will still be a grieving process because the old relationship is dying. She is learning to trust that in time a new one together or apart will take its place as long as her heart so desires.
Sometimes people realize they got married or are remaining married for the wrong reasons. As you take responsibility for the feelings fueling the choices you made, you can either do some healing and create new reasons to continue the relationship, or separate out of love for yourself and your partner. You can make the choice to stay together or separate from a place more pure-of-heart than the place you initially connected from.
If Karen didn't want to take responsibility for her feelings, she could blame Carl and go forward into a relationship with someone new who initially will make her feel important. She will eventually repeat her experience of feeling hurt and insignificant because this is what her energy manifests. Some people spend their lives selfishly looking for Mr. or Ms. right, that one who will finally make them feel important. What they don't realize is that the process begins with them. No one can do it for you, it is up to you to care for yourself in the way you long to be cared for. That is loving. The intimate relationship that many are desiring begins with being intimate with your feelings, not searching for someone that won't bring them up.
When you are coming from a selfish-of-heart place there is fear of making the wrong decision. Out of fear, many stay where they are, believing that "the devil they know is better than the devil they don't know." There are gifts down every road that we can take, but the roads of responsibility are the most elegant. If you come out blaming you will most likely choose a parallel road that will give you the opportunity to learn responsibility again. Where you are in your spiritual development will contribute to the choices you make. Your energy will be a magnet for whatever is in it. We have all walked away blaming and found ourselves walking down a parallel road, recreating the same play with different players. Your accumulating feelings will attract situations that speak more and more loudly. As you can forgive yourself for choosing parallel roads you can make new choices and be more compassionate toward yourself and others on parallel paths.
We are transitioning from survival mode to spiritual mode on our journey toward greater love. In survival mode your choices tend to be fear-based and selfish. You are not directly connected to the Divine and can only trust in choices your logical mind can make. You may talk the talk of being connected, but are unable to genuinely trust and lean on your relationship with your Source. You only trust choices your logical mind can fathom, limit your possibilities for solutions, hold out for guarantees that never come, and control to feel safe.
In spiritual mode you have re-connected to Divine Sources and realize there is a choice where everyone wins. You may not be consciously aware of it in the moment, but know that if you ask for help in creating it, Divine assistance will guide you. In spiritual mode you lean on your relationship with your Source and trust in its guidance without a need for a guarantee. You are aware that there is a bigger picture as well as the current situation and are willing to address both. You take responsibility for all your creations and the emotions fueling them because you know that pure-of-heart is effortless and anything less is struggle.
The selfish-of-heart long to be loved, but are hurtful in their process. They are wounded people and become dangerous when they refuse to take responsibility for the feelings fueling their thoughts, words and actions. They justify and defend what they do in efforts to convince themselves and others that their intentions are genuine. By denying the feelings that fuel them, they will consciously or unconsciously dump those feelings onto others. Justifying and defending are attempts to hide feelings you don't want to take responsibility for. No one hides nothing.
It is impossible to come from a place pure-of-heart when you harbor unprocessed emotions from situations in the past with similar essence. I am not suggesting that you get rid of your emotions, what I do suggest is that you embrace them. In embracing them you will realize that you are embracing a part of yourself that is holding the emotion. If there is heat attached to your emotion, be responsible and blow it off meditatively, (the 80-90%), prior to responding. Allow the emotions to lead you to the part of yourself that has come up for some healing. Let this part express their emotions, love this part of you and help it feel safe, but don't give it decision-making authority. In this process the phrase, "let me get back to you", can buy you the time necessary to come from a loving place. The result of successfully completing your processing is increased wisdom and compassion and ultimately pureness of heart in that area.
If you are reading this newsletter you probably have been working toward becoming pure-of-heart for many lifetimes. In the areas where you can respond from this place there are no obstacles between your Heart and Her desires. From this loving place you have the power to attract miracles just because your heart desires them. You will notice that sometimes you can be genuinely loving and sometimes you can't. When you realize you can't is when it is time to take responsibility for the reasons why not.
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Dr. Trish Whynot is a Holistic Counselor and Doctor of C.O.R.E. Education. She utilizes meditation, aromatherapy and crystals in her alternative approach to eliminating the root cause of problems, physical, social and financial in Middleton, MA, and can be reached at 978-314-4545 or visit her website at
www.holisticoncepts.com. She experiences life as an amazing journey and assists those ready to experience the depths of the adventure.
