Jan 14, 2014 | By: A Woman

The Value of Self-Interest - Day 444

There are these moments, infinitesimal moments, where one can really see one's participation in one's mind and clearly see one's manipulation towards oneself within the justifications and excuses one's tell to oneself. These moments are a potential for self to physically change and align oneself within the principle of Oneness and Equality, within the decision of 'Who I am' in this very moment. Yet, it is also these moments where falling to one's own self-manipulation, one's own Self-Interest decisions is very easy and to practically stand up within oneself and make the decision to physically change, is faced with great resistance.

 

Let me give you an example that I faced this morning -

I normally don't work with the horses on the farm though recently, I assisted the team when extra support was required. This week specifically, there is a short of people working with the horses and I offered to join them with the responsibilities. One of the responsibilities is to wake up in the morning and walk the horses to the neighbor's farm where they have enough grass to eat during the day while the grass in our farm is busy growing. For me, waking up in the morning to walk the horses is a story because in terms of my normal working hours - I go to bed very late at night and the horses walking time is very early in the morning.

 

When Sunette woke me up this morning to walk the horses, I had this cringe inside myself like: "oh no, I didn't sleep much, I want to sleep" but at the same time, I realized that I committed to this point and that I must wake up now. Sunette said that she will check up on me in 5 min and during this 5 min - I walked through the open door of my mind, bringing on all the justifications and excuses that I could find of why it is ok if I wouldn't walk the horses this morning and when she came back 5 min later, I told her that I'm not joining them this morning.

 

So, I went back to sleep BUT, I could clearly see what I was doing inside myself and physically, I didn't feel comfortable as I saw how I was manipulating myself and how the decision that I made to stay in bed is based on my own self interest. At this stage, I was still in bed, struggling with the decision. I then asked myself one simple question - "If the plans were different and I had to wake up for a meeting in town, would I still justify to myself that I hadn't slept enough? The answer was: "Obviously not - I would wake up for these purposes". Then, I asked myself another question: "Is the value that you give to walking the horses is less than the value you give to other plans you would have made?" and the answer was: "Yes". This is where I stood up from within myself and went out of bed as I realized that what I was accepting and allowing myself is purely unacceptable  and so, I join the team and walk the horse to the neighbor's farm.

 

I continued investigating the point within myself, the relationship between Self-Interest and Value and I've realized that in every moment, we assess the value of our decisions. Value of the decisions meaning - There is a difference between making a decision and applying the decision. Making the decision is done by oneself in one's mind while applying the decision is the physical application of what the decision entails where one is actually 'walk the talk' so to speak. Making a decision is the easy part but walking and applying the decision is a different story as one have to physically make the decision again and apply oneself in one's physical reality.

 

What was suddenly obvious is how we assess the value of our decision within the principle of: "What is it for me" and according to the value that we have defined the result to be, we would either act on our decision or change our mind.

So for instance with me - I didn't develop any particular relationship with the horses and thus, in my internal reality, walking the horses did not contain great value and so, in the moment of truth, when I had to remake the decision to wake up and walk them, it was very easy to fall inside myself because the value of the decision was not important to me based on my self-interest inner reality.

 

What I had to align within myself is thus the point of 'Group-Interest' within the principle of what is best for all from the perspective of - I committed myself to the horse team that I will be there in the morning as I've seen that I was able to support in terms of my schedule. The Value of me walking a horse is that it place less pressure for one member of the team where instead of the walking 2 horses, they will walk one horse and within the principle of Prevention is the best cure - it is much safer to be responsible for one horse instead of 2 horses because who knows what can happen during the walk and if one of the horses snap out and become crazy, it is very difficult to control the situation if you have 2 horses in your hands. Thus, if I were to sleep instead of walking the horses, I would place the group in a compromising position unnecessarily. In this, it is no longer: "What in it for me", it is "what is best for the group and for the horses".

 

Obviously, this experience in the morning shows that we have to reassess the value that we give to specific points in our reality and accordingly, move from one's self interest to the best for all interest. Yes, one may have a preferences but one's preferences cannot make the decisions for self, based on one's self-interest design as one must look at all that is here and assess the points in self-honesty within the principle of what is best for all. For example, my preference was to not wake up after 4 hours and walking the horses but what was best for all is for me to walk the horses, do what needs to be done and when I'm back, go back to sleep if physically, my body requires more rest.

For myself, moving through the resistances to wake up in the morning was a struggle, so long as I looked at the point from my own self-interest point of view - there, it was very easy to follow the mind and decide to stay in bed. It was only when I saw the window of opportunity to physically change my living application, when I saw what I was accepting and allowing within myself that the actual physical decision to get out of bed was effortless.

 

Another point to consider here - the fact that I was able to see the point this morning and make the decision to get out of bed, in no way means that I have walked through the point into an absolute change as a physical expression of myself. Lol - this was just the tip of the iceberg and it would take an accumulation of moments until my absolute living application would be according to the principle of what is best for all.

 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool stuff Maya, thanks for sharing!

Daniel said...

Yeah, thanks for this one! I'm looking at this same moment of decision to physically move in alignment with what I've already decided is best VS. allowing an intellectual understanding to be enough and follow the mind's impulse instead.

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