Snippets of Wisdom,
Number 70,
Selfishly Seek Joy.
Is selfishness bad?
Were you taught that being selfish was wrong?
What if selfishness is really a good thing?
What if selfishness played a part in providing the best gift we could give ourselves and others?
I have always loved this quote from Abraham Hicks that says,
Selfishly seek joy because your joy is the greatest gift you can give to anyone.
This quote is instructing us to be selfish about our joy.
Why?
Because our joy is our greatest gift to others.
If we don't seek joy for ourselves,
We have nothing to give anyone else.
We can't give what we don't possess.
Yet I was taught that being selfish was wrong.
I was taught that you were supposed to put others before your needs.
I was taught that our lives were for service and sacrifice to God,
Next to others,
But to put ourselves last in the equation.
The Eden even had an acronym for joy that was Jesus,
Others,
You.
That always seemed weird to me because if I don't care for myself,
How can I have the gumption to serve others?
I've come to realize that we cannot give what we do not possess.
So if I want to serve others and encourage their joyful living,
I must possess joy for myself first.
There is no otherishness.
We only have our perspective.
So we can only experience selfishness.
If we deny ourselves,
We are denying our inner being who is joy.
If we reject our desire for joy,
We also give up our desire for a joyful life.
And we simply can't do that because our inner beings are always calling us to experience the human emotion of joy.
Because that's what they feel all the time for us.
I believe joy is who we are and joy is our purpose.
We are here to experience as much joy as possible.
If we don't seek joy,
We certainly will not find it.
If we don't experience joy,
We can't extend it to the world.
We are extensions of source energy,
Which is love and joy.
So we are love and joy embodied.
If we deny our joy,
We are denying and resisting being who we really are.
We can't deny who we are and expect ourselves to be ready to have joyful relationships with others.
That resistance interferes with every other relationship we encounter.
So,
For the love of all things good,
Allow yourself to selfishly seek joy.
Then and only then will you be prepared to give the best of yourself to others.
Our joy is the greatest gift that reverberates around the world.
Our joy is expansive into all that is.
And that's something awesome to selfishly seek.
Big hugs,
Mary Ann.
