There’s a barrow that gets pushed nowadays about how life is not about serving ourselves, but about working for the good of the society or environment we are a part of. The insidiousness of this assertion lies in the fact that it is morally unassailable, and easily backed up by the self-evident     understanding that no man or woman is an island.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with this ideal; I whole-heartedly agree with it. As long as it is not expressed as a rule.

I learned from institutional change agents like Otto Sharmer and Peter Senge that, egoically, humans have a conforming tendency; we want to know how it is, what the rules are. So we develop concepts and beliefs about how it is, and how we should be, and we pay attention to that, focusing energy on conforming to that, even wasting energy ensuring everyone else is conforming to the same rules. 

The problem being that as long as our attention is riveted by concepts of how it is and how we should be, we are not open to and in touch with our personal truth, our authentic perspective and drives, which might not at times make sense or fit in with the rules, but which ultimately do lead us to live life as an expression of our highest potential. 

Rules really are dead, a function of separation, while truth is alive, born of our inherent connection to everything through time and space. Conforming does not serve the whole anywhere near as well as creativity. 

William Whitecloud