Virus

So, last week my computer literally started screaming at me saying that it had a virus. Boy, did it ever. Twenty five of them. It is out of commission. I have been longing to blog so here I am "borrowing" a computer so I can get some stuff out of my head and out into the great beyond...cyberworld? Anyway, I think that today this may be more of a confessional than anything else.

I have a virus too. It's called selfishness. It's a nasty one, because it takes a lot of work to get rid of it entirely. It's deadly because I like it. I rarely think about the potential side effects of selfishness, but they are far reaching and brutal, breeding more of the same. I was born with this virus. It is in every cell of who I am. It feeds my desire to take care of my needs at any cost. It keeps me isolated and stuck. It binds my hands when I see other people with needs because I have to think about myself first. It builds a wall around my soul that keeps me numb to compassion. It eats at my time, energy and resources until I am locked up tight in a drama of my own life.

The cure for selfishness seems simple enough... but until you actually try to use the cure, you don't even know how badly you have the selfish virus. The cure is pure love. Love is always an affront to selfishness. They are enemies. The very fibres that make up love are the antithesis of selfishness. Those fibres are giving without strings attached, compassion, and selflessness. I have a picture in my mind of what I want from love and it is usually all about my needs. A little secret...this is not love. This is selfishness. When I place my need for love, how I want it, above the love that I could give away instead, the virus has the upper hand. I am manipulating the antidote and not allowing it to work. I am dying inside and sometimes I can't even feel it. When I do, by some miracle, feel my heart breaking for someone else and I long to help or to change a situation, I know that true and pure love is fighting for supremacy in my soul. I want to be cured. I want love to win. Am I willing to let love kill selfishness in my soul?