The Path to Becoming Selfless

In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is for each of us to detach from our egoic self and have compassion for others. 

In astrology, the sun is your ego.  It is your core.  It is your essential self.  How you display yourself, how you portray yourself.

Fire: being yourself is what you will strive for, you actively seek to be yourself and will automatically display the core you in any circumstances 

Earth: thinking of yourself in practical terms. You have your morals, rules and beliefs on how to display yourself and you will adhere to them stringently

Air:  your mental self is the most active and you will use logic to defend yourself.  You need to prevent your mental self from taking over your essential self

Water:  being overly emotional is your trouble and you either need to develop a clearer sense of sense, because you are too nebulous, or you need to prevent your emotional self from overpowering your overall personality 

Try to toy with the idea of gradually shedding your ego, layer by layer.  

Coming from a new age background, I initially found this pill ever so hard to swallow.  New age spirituality promotes each of us to be ourselves:

Do what you want! 

Be who you are!

Put yourself first!

Then when I began to study Buddhism, I learn that what Buddhists strive for is the total opposite! 

How mine boggling….

I’ve been observing this in my own life.  Every time when I become unhappy, I unravel the problem and most, if not all, of the time, it boils down to not getting what I (the ego self) want. So the Buddhist logic is that if I can manage to tame the ego self to become selfless, then putting myself first won’t be my priority anymore, so if I don’t get what I want or if my ego self become bruised, then I won’t feel the pain, therefore won’t become unhappy. 

Easier said than done.  

Yes, and if you believe in reincarnation, then we’ve probably been reincarnated many times before, each time not being able to fulfil the egoless goal.  

So why is it so hard to lose the egoic self? 

I’ll try to explain it using astrology. 

Putting kindness and compassion before yourself for fire signs is hard because Aries has a ‘me first’ attitude, Leo is all about ‘all eyes on ME!’ whereas Sagittarius is about ‘ME having fun first!’

For the Earth signs, to share one’s resources without judgement may need some justification, especially for Capricorn, though for some Taurus and Virgo, showing kindness via food and being of service to others do come naturally to some Taurus and Virgo.   For water signs, it may sound like a dream to them but their tendency for emotional attachment will hinder them from achieving an egoless self in a different way.  For air signs, being to logical can pull them away from being compassionate, ‘Why is it that we have to share? We all work for our hard earned cash after all….

My conclusion so far:  This selflessness approach does help to ease the stress, but I guess I have my Mercury in Aries so the egoic self is still predominantly playing a huge role in my mode of thinking.....they do say it would take more than one lifetime to pay our karmic debts and to overcome our life lessons....