Inferiority Is a Form of Arrogance
La inferioridad es una forma de arrogancia
A question about arrogance and superiority: how a lifelong sense of inferiority can itself be a form of arrogance, and where arrogance is rooted.
Inferiority Is a Form of Arrogance
A question about arrogance and superiority: how a lifelong sense of inferiority can itself be a form of arrogance, and where arrogance is rooted.
I wonder if you could talk about arrogance, or superiority. Personally, it has been a life of inferiority, which feels arrogant in its own way. More recently, sometimes there is a sense of superiority; there has to be a sense of me and other for that. As if I have something for them, or I'm more at peace than they are. It doesn't feel right, but it's there.
It is the same thing. What do you mean when you say you have something for them?
In the spiritual sense. Some wisdom, something to offer.
So you have something they don't have.
Yes.
What you've described shows unusual authenticity and self-reflection. To notice that inferiority is a form of arrogance is a really big deal.
It's basically the sense of being something. And the only way we can define ourselves is on some spectrum, in some direction: big or small.
False knowing as the root
The root, the seed of arrogance, is false knowing. I believe this is the meaning of the story of Adam and Eve eating the apple: taking a bite of a sense of knowing, but it is false knowing. That is the root of arrogance.
To feel inferior, you need beliefs about what you are in the negative direction of the spectrum of comparison with others. So it is still false knowing. Even to say "I am a lot less than most" is arrogance: to be especially smaller, especially negative. Behind that hides the arrogance, which is why it's important that you see what you see. The arrogance is what needs to be seen and seen through. Ultimately, it goes so deep that it is the root of self.
Myth as collective dream
That is why I bring up Adam and Eve. It is the beginning of the narrative of self. Remove it from the religious context and think of it as what I believe it is: a myth. There is a perspective on mythology in which myths are collective dreams. In dream interpretation, a personal dream reflects something of the personal psyche, the mind of this body-mind. It reveals what is hidden. When something is dreamed collectively, it reveals something more profound, not limited to a particular body-mind but belonging to the foundational psyche of the species, at a moment in time.
The myth of Adam and Eve appeared in the collective psyche, was communicated and written down, and became part of a book; an attempt to put truth into a book, the beginnings of Christianity. But you can also look at the mythology of today, which is in great part filmmaking. What are the myths that are collectively dreamed? The mythology of zombies, the mythology of superheroes. These are fascinating, but they are also captivating and of collective interest because they reflect aspects of the human psyche. The mythology of zombies points to the fact that we can be so deeply asleep as a society that we are all at risk of going very deeply into the opposite of awakening: a deep, deep sleep.
On the other side, there is the dream reflecting a potential for awakening. In these collective dreams, certain individuals are surprised to discover a potential in themselves that was not known, that is often rejected, and there is often a struggle with that potential when it becomes actual. Then it is a matter of how to navigate it. To me, that points very clearly to the fact of awakening.
Back to dream interpretation, where you don't consider the character of the dream to be "I." It is a part of the psyche. In the mythology of Adam and Eve you have two aspects, masculine and feminine. It is not that men are Adam and women are Eve; it is the polarity itself, expressed as masculine and feminine, created by the creator. Then there is a temptation, represented by the snake, and the fruit of knowledge, which precipitates the loss of the knowing of truth, love, and beauty: the garden.
The loss of the garden
When false knowing becomes the priority, the consequence is the loss of peace. But it is also the foundation of the development and evolution of human society and the human psyche, and so it is inevitable. In a sense, every child that is born has to take a bite of that fruit and savor the journey of the loss of the garden.
The knowing that comes from biting that fruit is arrogance. Is it false? Yes. But it is not arrogant because it is false; it is arrogant because it becomes "I know." I know, as opposed to not-I; as opposed to you, other. In fact, it is "I know" as opposed to divine knowing. This is where arrogance is the right word: to know with more certainty than the creator.
The healthy core of Christianity (there is a lot that is unhealthy, and the healthy part is the lesser part) points to this relationship. Once the fruit is bitten, there is a relationship between knowing and that which is known, which is divinity. "I know what divinity is." There is the beginning of separation. What I become, what I am, is that which is separate, and only as separate can I know what is not me. What I am, I can know directly, without mind, in a non-intellectual way; that is where we speak of self-realization, the knowing of self directly. But I can only know that which is not I, that which is separate, by taking a step into being that which knows.
So that which knows, separation, and identification are the same thing. And it can only be through arrogance, because if you look at the foundation of that knowing, it is all based on belief. There is no evidence for any of it. None.
More conventionally, we speak of arrogance when someone clearly believes they know more than they do, or behaves as if they are superior in a way that clearly they are not. But I am referring to it in a deeper sense: the position of "I know something" which I cannot fully know; taking a position of certainty that is not based on any truth, with no evidence for that knowing.
Inner integrity
So first of all, what I'm reflecting to you is that this is really good. This is what I call inner integrity: you see a mechanism in your experience of body-mind, inferiority, and you are able to see it as a form of arrogance. That is inner integrity, and I think it is one of the most important requirements for awakening. If we are not able to see our own mind truly, without self-deception, it is very difficult to wake up, because we would be constantly deceiving ourselves (which we are) into different forms of false knowing, defending assumptions.
I am also reflecting that this is a collective thing. It is natural, and it is part of human evolution; part of a journey. Society has gone through this journey. Humanity has gone through it. But every child that is born goes through that journey as well. Human evolution took a bite of the apple however many millennia ago. Now every child is born, takes a bite of that apple, and enters the journey of the collective psyche. But a child can move through that process more quickly, doing in one lifespan what humanity has done over millennia, catching up, and then possibly going beyond.
Was there a time when the apple was just looked at and disregarded?
I think there are a very few individuals who did not take that bite as children. Very few.
I meant more in the eras of humanity.
No, because it has already happened. The delusion, the belief in mind, has happened as a society. Every child is born into that and goes through the process of buying into it, becoming connected to that collective mind, that collective psyche, with all of its calls and traps. There are a few individuals who seem not to have taken that bite, but they often describe it this way: after a while I did buy into it, but it was a much shorter process of identification. It often happened through adolescence, I believe.
Is identification necessary?
Is it almost necessary, to form some sort of ego foundation?
Yes, I believe it is a necessary journey. For some individuals the process of identification is very brief, but they are an extreme minority. Most of the greatest teachers, the greatest awakened masters, have gone deeply into identification. Otherwise there would be no enlightenment, in the sense of a process, a moment or a shift into awakening. What I would call enlightenment is simply the absence of the belief system of self, and that could happen naturally, without a process of shifting. But it is very rare. That is my point.
And it is not important for that to happen or not happen. What matters is not that we avoid it, or that children don't go through it. What's important is that there is more and more awakening, so that this movement into illusion and out of it becomes smoother and easier: for society, for individuals, for anybody around us. A couple of thousand years ago, awakening was very rare. Now it is becoming more common, not only in that it is happening to more people, but in that it is becoming more collectively available, a process that is shared and talked about.
I've heard so many mixed stories of where humanity is. Kali Yuga, and all the others.
This is my current perspective, the story of this human evolution. But the point was to reflect on your question about arrogance. To wrap up: keep seeing. Arrogance is a rabbit hole that goes very deep, and it can go all the way. It is the root of false knowing.