When you hear “Ayn Rand,” what do notice in your body?
Maybe it depends on if you’ve actually read her books.
Either way, on the bright side, you may feel joy, possibility, sovereign assertiveness, honesty, integrity, and unapologetic existence.
On the dark side, you may feel uneasy, bitterness, fear, tentativeness, and apprehension.
Again, maybe it depends on if you’ve actually read her books.
But either way, you may feel her polarizing energy.
She’s loved + hated.
Because she’s speaking truths.
And those truths activate the buttons of your subconscious.
The beliefs that tell how to be a “good person.”
She questions the core collective notion of selfishness and self-sacrifice. Flips it on its head.
The culture says “think of others first” to be a good person.
Rand says “think of yourself” first to be a good person.
So she’s polarizing.
And hence you may actually feel torn in response to her (especially if you’ve actually read her books).
You resonate with the frequency of truth, integrity, and desire. Your right to exist.
And parts of you (or maybe just me, as I project), feel apprehensive because you don’t want to be perceived as selfish. Because your childhood programming taught you to not be the Tall Poppy. Blend in. Stay in the crab bucket.
The thing is that you don’t have to actually pick between “think of others” and “think of yourself.”
The integration is a Teal consciousness that says: think of your own needs and others’ needs, simultaneously.
Of course, when in doubt, start with your own. Fasten the oxygen mask.
Yet the highest form of self-actualization includes benevolent generosity from joy.
The call-to-adventure is the self-honesty and self-integrative healing that generates high self-esteem.
As you achieve that, you realize the greatest gift to give others is to never live for the sake of them.
Peter Keating: “You’re the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense.”
Howard Roark:“Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean.”
—The Fountainhead
