Self-Centeredness

Most spiritual systems -- indeed, most social systems -- teach that self-centeredness is a dead-end path.  Others don't like it when they see it in us, and we ourselves ultimately find that we're turning others off and blocking out opportunities for growth and learning when we adopt this defensive perspective.

Focusing our attention on our own wishes and desires to the exclusion of other things is, after all, a defensive strategy.  It's a way of battling with the world, reinforcing our fortifications against onslaughts from others, lying to ourselves that we're more important that anyone or anything else, and enslaving ourselves to a frightened voice from within which expresses the sense that something inside is missing, so we'd better cover up the vast hole.

But wait....  Isn't it contradictory that most spiritual systems also teach people to spend lots of time in self-reflection in order to "find themselves"?  Is that anything more than a way to normalize or ritualize self-centeredness?

My favorite teaching of Jesus has always been about losing yourself to find yourself.  And now I know that this same teaching is present in many of the great world religions.  The "self" we need to lose is the egoic self -- the self which is so easily fixated on itself.  This is the self that criticizes others spitefully, boasts, is prideful and arrogant, is lustful to fulfill its own desires.  This is the self that is willing to push others' needs away without due consideration or on the other hand that is nice to others while feeling resentment about "having" to act that way.  This is the self that bases so many of its behaviors on unrecognized hurts from the past and wants to protect itself.

The self we are given the opportunity to find is the essence of our very being.  It is our soul, our spirit, the core of our embodied existence which is a manifestation of God on earth.  Once we find that true self in the here and now, we live authentically, we behave with grace rather than out of defensiveness.  When we are centered IN that true self, we no longer need or want to be centered ON the ramparts of our egos.