What does selfishness mean is an inquiry that must be answered from the perspective of the one asking. Depending on the reason for asking, that will require one of different correct answers. For example, if the one asking needs healing for self-esteem in therapy or self-help for their emotional improvement, the answer would be far different from someone in a church. A religious answer of what does selfishness means is different and opposite of an answer for someone seeking clarity in understanding their physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries for healthy psychological living.
The religious definition of selfishness is the tendency to violate others’ boundaries and steal something from them, which is always bad. The spiritual and psychological definition of selfishness is the tendency to know, defend and respect the boundaries of our self and of others, which is always good. If you have been taught that selfishness is bad, that is a Christian religious view, if you are teaching yourself that selfishness is good, then that is an emotional healing spiritual self-help view.
The correctly matched answer, and some explanation behind it will depend on which view are you are coming from and to where are you going. Everything has a right to its own self and its own self-interests, and the right to pursue such. Christianity argues against that right with the assertion that all things are God’s and because He made them, all things should not defend their identity and all things let themselves dissolve if outside forces destroy them. The spiritual argument against that is if God made something, such as a person, community with life enhancing characteristics, then that person or community should serve God by preserving that uniqueness which was created. To do that, each person, value, or community must regard selfishness as significant and life enhancing, and act accordingly, defending their boundaries and their identity.
Selfishness is the recognition of your uniqueness and believing your uniqueness has a characteristic needed by Humankind in your local community, much like our bodies need vitamins, water, and nourishment. The different spiritual makeup of each person is what makes Humankind complete. For us to perfect and embellish our gifts and share them with others requires us to see our boundaries and defend them against outside interference. To do that we must have a sense of our own selfishness, our sense of self, and feel full permission to act in all matters in what is in our own best interest.
The argument from religion to not be selfish is incorrect and flawed in their logic emotionally. Christian religion argues that if we be selfish in everything, as we suggest, we would be stealing from others who are lesser in status and therefore wrong. That accusation shows lack of understanding of what boundaries exist in spiritual life between us, which are our life path and what rightly belongs to others in their life path. If God gave us our life paths as they and we both believe, then it would follow that each of those life paths would be adequately supplied, as again they and we both believe. Therefore, if we fully understand what boundaries are and feel our moral permission to act within them, then being selfish will always produce life enhancing good results for both us and those around us in our separate worlds. It is not two persons fighting over limited resources, as Christian religion claims, it is not either-or as they claim. In fact, it is both-and as we claim, because both worlds and life paths are independently supplied.
To understand selfishness, and the moral permission to be fully selfish in pursuing our life’s purpose, we need to understand what our boundaries are and what spiritual parts of our lives have boundaries and how we can act freely within them. Simple review is our physical and material world has boundaries that are easy to understand, but the spiritual world in which our soul exists have boundaries within which we have every moral permission to be fully selfish which are just as important as well. Our spiritual boundaries upon which we need to be selfish are our seven spiritual activities we all begin doing the second we begin life. They are:
Seeing things through our own eyes.
Feeling our own feelings.
Thinking our own thoughts.
Making our own choices.
Beyond that, if we do the above, and are selfish, not letting others do the first four things for us, being negatively influenced by others and culture itself that disagrees with what we want to do in the above four, then we will in our lifetime express ourselves in the last three, the most spiritual and nurturing of all. They are:
Imagining and dreaming our dreams.
Building on our dreams, gifts, interests, and talents.
Joyfully sharing our dreams, gifts, interests, and talents with others in celebration of life.
Selfishness involves understanding our self, our gifts, our boundaries, and our life path together. To understand fully what selfishness means, and to give ourselves full moral permission to be selfish, we need to understand what our boundaries are and feel free to always act in our best interests in building our lives within those boundaries. Going further upstream from that, to understand what our specific boundaries are we need to fully understand our selves as a unique individual with a unique gift to develop and share with Humankind. For each of us, our lives are all very different, and our life paths, fully supplied by God are likewise just as different. Working outwards from the center, which is always our Self, (not others, not the environment) then our gifts, then our life path to develop our gifts, then the boundaries of the path to fulfill ourselves, then the selfishness we give ourselves permission for pursuing those gifts within those boundaries.
Selfishness means becoming all we can be, living in our fully supplied life path, giving ourselves permission to be selfish in our pursuit of this. Selfishness is not greed and stealing from others, as religion claims, that is boundary violation. Being selfish is what you have every moral and spiritual right to be within your own world. Selfishness paves the way from where you started in your life, to where God wants you to find as your destination. Selfishness guides you on your path to finding your contribution to Humankind. Focus on these interconnected concepts, you, boundaries, selfishness, and your life-path already planned out for you by God for you to walk.
The Definition Of Selfishness Is Not Violating Boundaries, It Is Respecting Them The Definition Of Selfishness The Spiritual View
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.