It is so important that every person can begin to escape self-obsession because truly our lives are about serving things bigger than ourselves—the world we live in, the community we live in, the people who are important to us, protecting nature, protecting our nation, protecting the well-being of people, even people who we don’t know on the far side of the Earth.
The really important things about our life really are not about us. So the more you are concerned with your own happiness and personal fulfillment, the more you become embedded in kind of a hopeless internal conflict with desire and disappointment, ambition, confusion, frustration, even despair. It is not a position from which you naturally serve other people, which you are really designed to do, or to be of service in the world, which you are really designed to be.
So self-obsession is at the heart of all mental illness. Escaping it, then, in a positive and constructive way is like finding your way out of a jungle that seems to have no possible exit, a dilemma with no resolution, a pursuit with no real and permanent fulfillment. And yet the world prods us, encourages us, to enter into this self-obsession. And the more we have, the more we want and the deeper embedded we can become; the wealthier we are, the more trapped we are. It is like a jungle with no escape, no path leading outward.
But when you begin to turn a kind of corner in yourself, then a path begins to appear, slowly at first, but discernibly. This is why God’s New Message for the world is so critical for the well-being and fulfillment of individuals everywhere—all cultures, all nations, all religions—because it offers a path out of self-obsession, endless suffering, desire, confusion and despair.
God saves you by giving you something important to do in the world and to engage you with other people in doing something important in the world. That’s what lifts you out of the hopeless dilemma of pursuing happiness and fulfillment for yourself. The New Message says that that pursuit is hopeless and can never produce a permanent reward. And yet the allurement, the promise, the encouragement, the inducements to pursue that are everywhere around us.
So something has to happen on the inside that makes you begin to look at something bigger that you are already a part of, that you are sent here to be a part of, that you are designed to be a part of, that you are destined to be a part of. This is what God’s New Message for the world provides, as the pathway for personal revelation for all who can walk it. But this journey begins with disappointment—disappointment in life as it has always been: the emptiness of these pursuits for happiness, discouragement, frustration with superficial relationships, meaningless conversation, hopeless endeavors.
There is a turning point where this greater journey in fulfillment becomes valued and considered. And when that happens, Heaven re-aligns around you. Opportunity will come your way, a gift will appear. But it’s got to be the right gift, and only Knowledge within you can know what is the right gift from everything else that merely appears to be seductive or promising.
Self-obsession is a habit. It’s a consuming habit, and habits are broken by engaging in other kinds of activities that become habits, that begin to replace and overlay how we have been, how we have thought in the past.
Therefore, realize that your redemption will take you beyond so much self-concern into a greater kind of participation in the world. For this is what your heart and soul yearn for, this is what you were designed for, and this is what God’s New Message for the world calls you to do.
