EPTPride
Pride is often thought to be a "good thing." However, if we a take a good look at it we will see that, just like all the other negative feelings we have discussed so far, pride is devoid of love. Consequently, it is essentially destructive. Pride may take the form of over evaluation, denial, playing the martyr, being opinionated, arrogant, boastful, inflated, one-up, haughty, holier-than-thou, vain, self-centered, complacent, aloof, smug, snobbish, prejudiced, bigoted, pious, contemptuous, selfish, unforgiving, spoiled, rigid, patronizing, judgmental, and i milder forms, pigeonholing.
Intellectual pride leads to arrogance, and spiritual pride is the main block to spiritual development and maturation in everone. Religious pride by self identification with the righteous and "having the only true way" is the basis of all religious wars, rivalry, and dismal occurrences such as the Inquisition. The biggest downfall of all is religious pride and considering oneself entitled to kill others who don't share one's specific beliefs.
In all of us, the prideful feeling, "I have the answers," blocks our growth and development. It is interesting that the egotistical part of the mind is willing to sacrifice the whole remainder of a person for its own sake. Rather than admit to being wrong, people will literally give up the life of the body itself and sacrifice any aspect of life on the altar of pride (e.g., religious wars and crusades) . Male pride about those programs that our society considers masculine blocks the emotional and psychological inner development of most men in our society. Some women are now joining the ranks of chauvinism, which only compounds the problem and intensifies the battle of the sexes.
Vulnerability of Pride
The prideful person is constantly on the defensive because of the vulnerability of inflation and denial. Conversely, the humble person cannot be humiliated for they are immune to vulnerability, having let go of pride. In its place, they have an inner security and self esteem. Many people try to substitute pride for genuine self-esteem; however, genuine self esteem does not actually arise until pride is relinquished. That which inflates the ego does not result in an inner strength. On the contrary, it increases our vulnerability and overall level of fear. When we are in a state of pride, our energy is dissipated by the constant preoccupation with defending our lifestyle, vocation, neighborhood, clothes, year and make of car, ancestry, country, and political and religious belief systems. There is a tireless preoccupation with appearance and what other people will think, so there is a constant vulnerability to the opinions of others.
When pride and self-inflation have been relinquished, there is an inner security that takes their place. When we no longer feel called upon to defend our image, criticisms and attacks from other diminish and finally stop. When we let go of our need for validation or to prove ourselves right, then the challenges against us fall away.
This brings us to one of the basic laws of consciousness: Defensiveness invites attack. An examination of the nature of pride facilitates the letting go of it, as it is no longer valued. It is seen for what it is, in truth: weak. The dictum, "Pride goeth before a fall," prevails. Pride is thin ice, a poor substitute for that rock-like, real strength that comes from courage, acceptance, or peace.
Is there such a thing as "healthy" pride? When we talk of healthy pride, we are referring to self-esteem, an inner awareness of one's true value and worth, this inner awareness of one's true value and worth. This inner awareness is different from the energy of pride. Self awareness of one's true value is characterized by lack of defensiveness. Once we have consciously contacted the truth of our real beingness-the nature of our inner self with all of its true innocence, greatness, and nobility of the human spirit-we no longer need pride. We just know what we are, and this self knowledge is sufficient for us. That which we truly know never needs defense and is different from the energy of pride that we are discussing in this chapter.
Let's look at some of the kinds of pride with which we have been programmed and see how they bear up under examination. Pride of family, pride of country, and pride of accomplishment are typical examples that come to mind. Is pride really the loftiest of human emotions? The very fact that it is characterized by defensiveness proves otherwise. When we have pride in our possessions or in some organizations with which we identify, we feel obligated to defend them. Pride in our ideas and opinions leads to endless argument, conflict, and woe.
A higher feeling of state than pride is that of love. If we love all of the things noted above (family, country, accomplishments), that means there is no question of their worth in our mind. We no longer have to be on the defensive. When true recognition and knowledge replace opinion, which is part of pride, there is no room for argument. Our sheer love and appreciation for something is a solid position that cannot be assailed.
Pride, because it is a vulnerable position, always implies that somewhere there is a doubt that needs to be cleared up, and the opponent quickly centers on that doubt. When all doubts have been removed, opinions and pride disappear. There is a subtle inference of apology in pride, as though the thing in itself was not good enough to stand on its own merit. That which is worthy of our love and respect hardly needs an apologist. Pride infers subtly that there is room for debate and that the worth of something is open to question.
When we truly love something and, thereby become one with it, it is because we see its intrinsic perfection. In fact, its "faults are part and parcel of its perfection, for all that we see in the universe is in the process of becoming. In that process, its perfect evolution is part of that perfection. Thus the half-unfolded flower is not an imperfect flower that needs defense. On the contrary, its blossoming is proceeding with precise perfection according to the laws of the universe. Likewise, each and every individual on the planet is unfolding, growing, learning, and reflecting that same perfection. We might say that the unfoldment of the evolutionary process is proceeding precisely according to cosmic laws.
One of the drawbacks about the position of pride as we have said, is its vulnerability. Vulnerability then invites attack; therefore, in society, we witness that prideful people draw criticism, and their vulnerability is what accounts for the saying, "Pride goeth before a fall." In the biblical account, it was Lucifer's pride that was his Achille's heel, despite the great standing that he had acquired.
Humility
The attempt to supress pride out of guilt simply does not work. It is not helpful to label the energy of pride a "sin" and to suppress it in ourselves out of guilt to hide it, or to pretend that we do not experience it. What happens is that energy subtly takes on a new form, known as spiritual pride.
We do not feel comfortable in the presence of those who are prideful; therefore, pridefulness blocks communication and the expression of love. Although we love those who are prideful about specific accomplishments, we love them in spite of their pride and not because of it.
Feeling guilty about pride as a spiritual sin only locks it in and, as we have said, is not really the answer. The real answer is merely to let go of it by examining its true nature. Once we see pride for what it is, it is one of the easier emotions to surrender. To begin with, we can ask ourselves: "What is the purpose of pride? What is its payoff? Why do I seek it? For what does it compensate? What do I have to realize about my true nature in order to let pride go without a feeling of loss?" The answer is rather obvious. The smaller we feel within, the more we have to compensate for an inner sense of inadequacy, unimportance, and valuelessness by the substitution of the emotion of pride.
The more we surrender our negative emotions, the less we willy rely on the crutch of pride. In its place, there will be a quality that the world calls "humility" and that we subjectively experience as peacefulness. True humility is distinct from the paradox of "pride in one's humility," or "false modesty," seen frequently in the public arena. False modesty is the pretense of self diminishment with the longing that others will recognize the accomplishments that one is so proud of, but too proud to brag about openly.
True humility cannot be experienced by the person who is said to possess it, because it is not an emotion. As we have said before, the truly humble cannot be humbled. They are immune to humiliation. They have nothing to defend. There is no vulnerability and, therefore, the truly humble does not experience critical attacks by others. Instead, a truly humble person sees the critical verbalization by another person's inner problems. For instance, if somebody were to say, "You think you're pretty good, don't you?," what the truly humble person would see is that the other person has a problem with envy, and the question has no basis in reality in the first place. There is nothing to be offended by and no need to react. In contrast, for a prideful person, this question would be viewed as an insult and lead to hurt feelings, verbal comeback, or even a violent end in some cases.
Joy and Gratitude
Because pride is seen as a motivator of achievement, what would be its higher level substitute? One answer would be joy. What is wrong with joy as the reward for successful achievement, rather than pride? Pride carries with it the desire for recognition from others and, consequently there is a vulnerability to anger and disappointment if it is not forthcoming at some point. If we achieve a certain goal for the pleasure, enjoyment, love of accomplishment, and the inner joy that it brings us, we are invulnerable to the reaction of others.
We can recognize our proneness to pain by looking at the kind of reactions we are hoping to elicit from others by our choices ad behavior. This includes mannerisms, expressions, style of dress, the kind of possessions we choose, the brand name of car we drive, the kind of home we have, the address at which we live, the schools we have attended or which our children attend, or the labels on the products we buy. In fact, if we look at our current society, we see to what an absurd degree this pridefulness has taken place. Labels are now worn on the outside of many clothes and personal articles. It hasn't reached the level of rakes and shovels yet, but it could sooner or later! Nobody has thought about it yet, but we could all carry around rakes and shovels ostentatiously with designer names emblazoned upon them.
This points to another one of the drawbacks of pride: the exploitability to which it exposes us. Pridefulness means that we can be manipulated with great ease. In return for an absurdity, a great deal of money is lifted out of our pocketbooks. The situation is currently comical in thaat people take great pride in how much they have been exploited. It is a current status symbol among certain circles to brag about how much one has paid for certain things. When we remove the glamour from it, we might say that the person was sort of stupid. They really got suckered in or was naive and just didn't know any better.
The pride of snobbishness is probably the most superlicious of all. Does ostentation really impress? Actually, no. The response that we see is one of fascination. People get a charge out of the superficial glamour, but underneath they do not truly respect it, because they know what it really is. When we settle for the pridefulness of ostentation, we impress no one.
This dynamic revealed itself during a trip to Canada to visit the home of a wealthy individual who subtly conveyed the price tag of his many possessions. On the same trip, malnourished Canadian Indian children were seen playing around the huge grain elevators that were filled to overflowing, the grain being held there to manipulate a higher world price through artificial creation of a shortage. As this wealthy person talked of his possessions, images of the children with their thin little legs flashed to mind. Far from being impressed with his wealth, there was sorrow for his sense of values and compassion for the lack of self worth that forced him to compensate in such a pathetic superficiality.
Does that mean that we cannot take pleasure in expensive possessions? No, not at all. What we are talking about is pride. The problem is not that we have possessions, but that we have a prideful, possessive, and self congratulatory attitude about them. It is the attitude of pride that creates the space for fear. The same wealthy man in Canada mentioned above also had an expensive burglar system. Pride, like all the other negative emotions, engenders guilt. Guilt engenders fear. Fear means potential loss. Pride, therefore, always means a loss of peace of mind.
The opposite of prideful acquisitiveness is simplicity. Simplicity does not mean poverty of possessions; rather it is a state of mind. Another individual is worth millions of dollars, and she holds title to vast estates and possessions. Yet, as a person, she represents absolute simplicity. Her possessions reflect what the world has brought to her, and she takes joy in their beauty. Consequently, never a single criticism is made of her, nor do others express envy. It is not what he have that matters, but how we hold it, how we frame it in our consciousness and its meaning to us. Incidentally, this woman's entire estate is totally devoid of burglar alarms or watchdogs. In fact, when this was brought to her attention, she replied, "Oh, heavens! If somebody really needed something that much, they could have it!" There was a correspondence between the fact that nobody ever stole anything from her and the fact that she was willing to share with others. Her invulnerability to theft was related to her lack of pridefulness about her possessions. Possessiveness and attachment occur as a consequence of pride. Attachment is, therefore, a potential cause for suffering, because attachment brings about fear of loss and, with loss, we go back into apathy, depression, and grief. If we are prideful of a car and someobdy steals it, we will experience anguish, pain, and suffering. If, instead, we loosely hold the car (emotionally speaking) and we enjoy its beauty and perfection and we feel grateful for having it, its loss will bring about only minor disappointment.
Gratitude is one of the antidotes of pride. If we happen to be born with a high IQ, we can be grateful for it rather than take pride in it. It's not an accomplishment; we were born with it. If we are grateful for what has been given us and for what has been fulfilled through our God-given talents and endeavors, then we are in a peaceful state of mind and invulnerable to pain.
It is a comical curiosity of the human mind to watch how it attaches pride to anything that is prefixed by the word "mine." We can have absurd pride over the most trivial things and, once we see the comedy of that, it is not too difficult to let go of the pride involved.
Some people, ironically have the vulnerability of reverse snobbery. They take pride in "bargains" and thrift store conquessts. Their personal opinion of people who pay excessive prices for things is that they are sheep to be sheared and thy rehearse the quote, "A fool is soon parted from his money." In this thrift store snobbery crowd, the status symbol is the incredible bargain. In fact, they are often in competition with each other to see who will find the best bargains. It is funny to observe that an article of clothing hanging in a thrift shop has no value at all until it becomes "mine." Instantly, great value is attached to it.
The difficult side of prefixing things with the word "mine" is the pride that goes with that sense of ownership. This makes us feel called upon to defend everything we label as "mine." We can reduce our vulnerability by letting go of the desire to possess;instead of saying "mine," we can use the word "a." Not "my" shirt, but "a" shirt. Thus, we will notice that if we view one of our thoughts as "an opinion" instead of "my opinion," the feeling tone changes. Why do people get so hot under the collar about their opinions? It is just because of that sense of mine." If opinions are viewed instead as "only an opinion," then there is no longer the vulnerability to prideful anger.
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Opinions
If we look at opinions, we will see that they are a dime a dozen. Everybody on the street has thousands of opinions on thousands of subjects, and their opinions change from moment to moment and are vulnerable to every passing whim of fashion, propaganda, and faddism. Today's "in" opinion is tomorrow's "out" opinion. This morning's opinion is passé by afternoon. We can ask ourselves: "Do I want to spread out my vulnerability to attack by so extensively identifying with all these passing thoughts and calling them 'mine'?" Everybody has an opinion of everything. So what? When we look at the true quality of opinions, we will stop giving them as much value. If we look back on our life, we will see that every mistake we ever made was based on an opinion.
We become much less vulnerable if we put our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs, which are all opinions into a different context. We can view them as ideas that we like or dislike. Some thoughts give us pleasure, and so we like them. Just because we like them today doesn't mean we have to go to war over them. We like a concept so long as it serves us and we are getting enjoyment out of it. Of course, we discard it quite readily when it is no longer a source of pleasure. When we look at our opinions, we will see that it is primarily our emotions that are giving them any value in the first place.
Instead of feeling pride about our thoughts, what is wrong with just loving them? Why not just love a certain concept because of its beauty, because of its inspirational quality, or because of its serviceability? If we view our thoughts that way, we no longer need the pride of being "right." If we hold the same view of our likes and dislikes, we are no longer prone to argumentativeness. For instance, if we love the music of a certain composer, we no longer need to defend it. We might hope that our companion would also love it but, if not, the worst that we can feel is mild disappointment at not being able to share something that we personally value and enjoy.
If we try this, we will find that people no longer attack our likes and dislikes and concepts. Instead of defensiveness, what they are getting from us now is appreciation. They understand that we appreciate certain things, and that is why we think the way we do. But they will no longer criticize or attack us. The worst we will get is perhaps a kidding or a quizzical attitude. Where pride is absent, attack is also absent. This is very valuable in those areas, such as politics and religion, which are so historically prone to elicit argument that they are tactically bypassed in polite society. We find that if we love our religion whatever it might be, no one will attack us. If we are prideful, however, we will have to avoid the entire subject because anger will quickly arise as a by-product of the pride. When we truly value something, we lift it aloft out of the demeaning target range of argument.
That which we truly cherish and revere is protected by our own reverence. If we tell somebody that we do something because we get enjoyment out of it, there is really nothing much they can say about it, is there? If we infer that we do it because we are right in doing it, we will instantly see their hackles go up because they, also, have an opinion on what is right.
Our values are preferences. We hold them because we love them, enjoy them, and get pleasure from them. If we hold them in that context, we will be left in peace to enjoy them.
The reason that pride arouses attack is because of the inference of being "better than," which is a part and parcel of pride. We see many people with dietary regimens about which they are prideful; consequently, they are in constant arguments over the rightness of their dietary regimens and nutritional opinions. They even try to impose their regimens on family members and friends, touting the moral or health superiority of their dietary practice. In contrast, there are people who follow the same regimens because they enjoy doing so, because it makes them feel better, or because it fulfills certain spiritual disciplines; consequently, they are never heard to be in argument, because they have nothing to defend. If someone tells us that they eat the way they eat because they enjoy it, there is nothing much we can say about it, is there? If, on the other hand, they infer that theirs is the right way of eating and, by inference that ours is wrong, what they are really saying is that they are better than we are. That always arouses resentment.
If we don't take a prideful stance about our opinions, then we are at liberty to change them. How often have we gotten stuck in performing something we really didn't want to do, because we had foolishly taken a prideful stance on an opinion! Very often we would like to have changed our mind or the direction in which we were going, but we got ourselves boxed in by having taken a prideful position.
That brings up one of the resistances to surrendering pride, and that is pride itself. In the prideful position, one of the underlying problems is fear. We fear that, if we change our position in a certain matter, the opinion of others about us will be adversely affected.
One reason for the need for humility about our opinions is because our opinions change as we get deeper and deeper into any given subject or situation. What seems to be so, upon superficial examination, often turns out to be quite different when we really get into it. This, of course, is to the dismay of the politician who makes promises based on fantasies of what is possible. But as he assumes power, he finds that matters are quite different than he had thought. The problems are far complex. The situation is really due to the net effect of many powerful forces in net society. All that politicains can truly promise us is that they will use the best possible judgment for the good of all, as they get deeper into each matter.
This evolutionary aspect of life is really all that any of us can promise ourselves, and this self-knowledge will protect us from disillusionment. This is the safety of the "open mind" position or what is called "beginner's mind" in Zen practice. When we are open-minded, we are admitting that we are not in possession of all the facts and we are ready to change our opinions as the situation unfolds. In this way we do not box ourselves into the pain of defending lost causes.
This is very true even in areas we think are based on strictly factual and observable data, such as the field of science. Actually, science deals with hypotheses, and scientific opinion is constantly in the process of flux and change. Scientific opinion, much to the person of the laypersons, is also subject to fads, passing popularity, paradigm blindness, and political pressure. For instance, in the field of psychiatry, the subject of the relationship between nutrition, blood chemistry, brain function, and mental illness was not popular in the past. The scientists and clinicians who worked in this area found themselves in the "out" group. As time passed and it proved that there was value in this field of investigation, popular scientific opinion changed. Important discoveries were made, and whole industries came into being to provide products which utilized the basic findings of the relationship between nutrition and brain function. The subject is now accepted as respectable, so clinicians and scientists can do research in that area and be accepted as part of the "in" group. Pride, therefore, is also responsible for holding up scientific progress (e.g., global warming theories).
Pride blinds us to many things that would be profoundly beneficial; to a prideful mind, to accept them would be inferring that we are wrong. The more inwardly powerful we really are, the more flexible we become so that we are open to all that is beneficial. Pride prevents us from seeing that which is totally obvious. People die by the thousands because of pride. They literally give up their health and life itself. Addicts and alcoholics will go to their death because of the denial inherent in pride: "Other people have the problem-not me!" Pride prevents us from recognizing our own limitations and accepting the help we need to overcome them. Our pridefulness isolates us.
When we let go of pride, help comes into our life to address the problems with which we are struggling. We can experiment and prove the truth of that principle by picking one area in which we are having difficulty and thoroughly surrendering all the pride involved. When we do that some surprising things begin to happen. Letting go of pride unlocks the door to our receiving that which is the most beneficial to us. Are we willing to let go of pride and feeling superior to others? When we are willing let go of the pseudo-security of pride, we experience the real security that comes with courage, self acceptance, and joy.
