The true meaning of "selflessness"
When you have completely stripped yourself of your own self, and all things and every kind of attachment, and have transferred, made over, and abandoned yourself to God in utter faith and perfect love, then whatever is born in you or touches you, within or without, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, that is no longer yours, it is altogether your God’s to whom you have abandoned yourself.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon Three. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (links to Amazon).
When people hear or read about abandoning one’s self to God, a lot of them freak out. It may help for you to realize that the “self” doesn’t exist — it’s a construct.
When you were an infant, you interacted with your environment directly, like an animal does. As you learned to speak, you learned to symbolize things - soon the symbols became more important than the things they symbolized. Eventually, you created the ultimate symbol - your “self”. And this symbol has become more important to you than any other.
from the film Appealing.
But giving up your attachment to the construct of self frees you to move with God’s will, as opposed to what you wish was happening. This is like the old Taoist metaphor of someone on a raft in the rapids — you can move a little starboard or a little to port, but you’re damned well going downstream! If you try to paddle against the current, you will just exhaust yourself.
(This is what) God does for one with detachment: He* takes away the active intellect from him and, installing Himself in its stead, He Himself undertakes all that the active intellect ought to be doing.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon Three. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (links to Amazon).
This is like the concept of Wu Wei in Taoism:
The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.
Lao Tsu, Chapter 48. Tao Te Ching (Feng & English translation) (links to Amazon)
However, and this is important: Neither of these mystics is advocating a life of never doing anything. The idea is to flow with the will of God / The Tao, not to just sit on your ass. For example:
A truly good man does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone. A foolish man is always doing, yet much remains to be done.
Lao Tsu, Chapter 48. Tao Te Ching (Feng & English translation) (links to Amazon)
And:
Let go of yourself and let God act with you and in you as He will.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon Three. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (links to Amazon).
To move with the flow of God’s will and not against it is one of the most important concepts of Christianity. But if you’re about to crash a car, don’t take the phrase “Jesus take the wheel” literally!
*Please note: Traditionally in Christianity, God has been referred to with male pronouns. Meister Eckhart himself notes in many places that God doesn’t have a gender.