On Arrogance
BY SHEPHERD HOODWIN
Arrogance
was my primary chief feature until my mid-life monad. I'd been working hard on it & finally broke the back of it when,
every time I felt critical of someone else, I began to look for & find something similar in myself, e.g.,
"I remember when I did something like that."
How could I judge someone else for something I've also done or might have done? Doing this brought great release & relief. Impatience, which had been lurking in the background, came forward as my new chief feature & arrogance
became my secondary & started dissipating. However, when I get steamed up at someone else's arrogance,
I know that I still have work to do on it.
Those who are in exalted arrogance, as Yarbro puts it, also have exalted fear, since, by definition, chief features are caused by fear. Arrogance is defined as a fear of vulnerability & of being judged & found wanting. Those in heavy arrogance have usually gone thru some brutal things
as children (or in past lives) to have erected such walls around themselves.
Typically, those of us dealing
with arrogance had parents, peers, or other major figures who were stingy with praise &
approval & "generous" with criticism, giving us the feeling that we "can't do anything right."
The feeling is, "I can't stand any more of this. If I hear one more thing I did wrong, I'll die." The fear of death is a factor in all chief features. Arrogance is especially common among persecuted
minorities, particularly those who were made fun of a lot as children.
In stereotypical arrogance, the person protects himself, he thinks, by taking the offensive ("I'll put them down before they have a chance to get me first - the
best defense is a good offense"), although that usually backfires because it attracts retaliation.
This is a classic example
of internalization, similar to the way an abused child may become an abusing parent - he tries to empower himself by becoming that which victimized him.
Much of our learning on the
physical plane is characterized by playing opposite roles in this way until we wake up to the balance point, in this case neither victim nor victimizer, integrating the truths of both extremes &
leaving behind their distortions & excesses.
In healing arrogance, we find the ability to give & receive constructive criticism in a neutral & balanced way, without causing or taking harm.
More subtle manifestations
of arrogance include shyness ("I'll
stay away from the spotlight so that others won't see my flaws.") & being excessively self-critical ("If I catch all my flaws before they come out, no one will be able to judge me. I must be perfect!") The latter results in awkward self-consciousness, which can lead to more screw-ups for which to judge oneself. Sometimes all 3 of those approaches coexist & self-criticism is always at least operating in the background. So someone in exalted arrogance is hectoring
himself at least as much as he is hectoring you, although he may not be conscious of it.
We each have a subpersonality
that could be called the critic. It's an essential part of self. If we didn't have it, we couldn't take stock of ourselves & make improvements. i.e., if you're a performer & received
no accurate feedback on your performance, you probably wouldn't be able to polish it much.
However, in arrogance, the critic is overdeveloped & tends to go nonstop, exhausting the rest of self's ability to integrate
the feedback. The arrogant hyped-up critic chronically jumps to conclusions & its feedback
is often inaccurate & unfair.
A well-balanced critic has a sense of proportion & knows when to back off. It doesn't drown out the subpersonalities responsible for compassion & respect, e.g.
The core trait of arrogance is being judgmental, which is different from objective discernment because it distorts what's viewed by making it wrong or "other."
Discernment is neutral &
uncharged - it tries to take all the factors into account in a balanced way. A nonjudgmental person may view something that is obviously wrong, in the sense of causing harm to others, with dismay
or sadness, but without condescension.
There may be compassion for the ignorance & pain of the perpetrator as well as for the suffering of the victim & an awareness that everything we see "out there" is also "in here." There's a Hitler in everyone, as well as a Mother Teresa, in varying
degrees, of course. There is no "other," only "us"; we're all in this together.
Other traits of arrogance include the "I'm right, you're wrong" approach to communication & highly charged negative words. "You" statements in general can also suggest arrogance, such as presuming to tell someone
else what his problem is. Arrogance in discourse slams shut the door to communication. What's
left to say after someone has proclaimed the final word on a subject?
Chief features have stealthy
disguises. Stubbornness can masquerade as persistence. Self-deprecation
can seem charmingly humble. Arrogance can portray itself as "just being honest," often as the lone voice speaking the hard truth that no one else wants to hear; it views itself
as special & uniquely equipped to see it, in compensation for all the criticism it received that made it feel demeaned.
Arrogance
is divisive & isolating ("It's lonely at the top."), which is especially rough on sages, the most social of the roles. Arrogance can't conceive
of honest, spirited debate without disrespect & even contempt.
The event that started me
on my path of healing my arrogance was a painful one. I was 18, a member of a spiritual
group whose local leader was a famously heavy-handed, blunt, but highly perceptive warrior.
He had accurately & unkindly
taken me to task for something I'd done. Licking my wounds, I went to his superior, complaining
about his treatment of me. I took my defenses so much for granted that I didn't think to question them, didn't think to examine if he'd been right - I only knew that he'd been hurtful. She gently responded, "Gee, I don't know...I haven't known him to be wrong about such things very often."
Because I trusted
her, her words penetrated my defenses & burned like a laser, unleashing shame at my lack of perfection & fear that no one would love me if this were discovered. It also unleashed in me a desire to honestly look at my "stuff" & become a better person. I began to emphasize the self-critical form of arrogance & to seek out criticism from the local leader & others.
I made myself rigorously examine
any other criticism that I received. Every night before I went to bed, I spent time reviewing the day & exploring my behaviors
& motives. I was too much in my head about this & would have benefited from working with a therapist who could have
brought a fresh perspective - we can't see our own blind spots -but it was a good discipline.
Chief features are, by definition,
blind spots. If we've been working on "photographing" ours, we've at least gained some insight into its manifestations, but those are often just the tip of the iceberg. The vast body of the chief feature may lie beneath
the surface & be mysterious.
It can take years or even
a lifetime of work to fully penetrate it. As I work now on impatience, I can see it's influence, but it's still an utter mystery to me how I manage to run 5 minutes late for almost everything
no matter what I do - it must be magic!
I must be a powerful creator to be able to do that so consistently. :) (Michael told me that my inner clock is slow & that I could imagine speeding it up. I
haven't pulled that off yet.) Those 5 or so minutes are just enough to stress me out, which the chief feature thrives on. I'm currently working on accepting that this is one of my flaws & that it's okay, which is another stab at my remaining arrogance,
which doesn't want me to have any flaws.
Getting into a battle with
a chief feature, either one's own or someone else's, just gives it more power. A better approach is to pull the rug out from
under it. With impatience, that might involve deliberately missing out on something & discovering that it's not the end of the world. (It occurs to me now that I could budget what seems like extra time to get somewhere, "missing out" on what I could
have done w/that time & experience viscerally that life as we know it didn't come to an end.)
Similarly, wtih arrogance, a person might receive criticism from stillness, letting the terror burn away & find out that
he survived it. Erasing chief features requires bringing conscious awareness to dark places.
Humankind can be divided into
those who are willing to look deeply in the mirror & those who aren't. Such willingness is the key to true spiritual growth (as opposed to just acquiring spiritual information).
Sometimes, those in arrogance will freely admit shortcomings in themselves that they're comfortable admitting, as a red herring, to try to throw you off the scent of those that they're fiercely protecting. This is especially true for those who also do some self-deprecation, which isn't true humility or self-examination, but another form of false personality, the flip side of arrogance.
Self-deprecation says, "I'm
important because I'm so inadequate." It encourages the person to keep it alive, promising to save him from death by prodding him to stay on the treadmill futilely combating
his inadequacy.
Self-deprecation has no intention of letting go of the inadequacy, so any apparent self-examination comes to naught. Arrogance over-inflates the self & self-deprecation under-inflates it, but to the same end. Honest self-examination is willing to see the bald facts without making them more or less than they are & takes responsibility for doing something about them without making a big deal out of it.
It's futile to try to get
those in exalted arrogance to examine what lies behind their massive defenses. They'll just
turn it back on you. Projection is a common problem in relationships - we project onto others what we judge or deny in ourselves & then get all worked up about it.
Those in heavy arrogance are major projectors. Big snits on web lists are often "project-o-ramas" between those in heavy arrogance playing emotional badminton - no one is willing to look at himself, so the judgments just keep bouncing back & forth until they finally fall to the ground.
When someone is acting out
of arrogance, no one else is an equal. Other people are either greater or less, better or
worse, smarter or dumber - more often less, worse & dumber. If you start out on an arrogant
person's pedestal, watch out, because eventually, he'll knock you off of it & stomp you into the ground, often for irrational reasons, because the real reason is that he's playing out his internal greater than/less than scenario & it's not really about
you at all.
The thicker the defenses, the more likely the person is to attract increasingly dramatic conflicts - essence is trying to shatter the defenses so that it can get on with growing. This is growing thru pain. If the person willingly chose to examine his stuff,
he could grow more joyfully, but the subconscious is invested in keeping probing hands off the trauma(s) at the root of the chief feature, feeling that the pain would be overwhelming.
The chief feature is the scab
on the wound. Only when a person loves truth more than anything else & is willing to face anything in order to heal, can the defenses be overcome. In growing thru pain, this willingness might only come when events become so devastating & intolerable that the person finally decides that facing himself couldn't be worse.
It may be a shattering experience,
but the truth sets us free; a baby chick must shatter its shell to be born. If it doesn't set us free, it isn't the truth.
Usually, the first breakthrough
is the hardest. After that, self-examination seems less & less scary; it's not necessarily easy, but at least the dam
has broken (to change metaphors).
Just before I moved here to
Laguna Beach from New York City, I worked with an excellent therapist for a few months. Some sessions left me feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I figured that that was a good sign. She lifted up rocks & called attention to the worms crawling under them, asking
uncomfortable questions that I wouldn't have thought to ask & stirring things up.
Some people think that the purpose of therapy is to comfort you & sometimes that's a good & necessary thing, but that probably doesn't do much for challenging the hold of the chief feature.
People get into the most trouble
because of their strengths that are not yet tamed, not because of their deficiencies. Powerful people steamroll over you until they learn to center their power & release their stuck anger. Sensitive people are too easily hurt until they learn that other people's behavior is an expression of their own issues.
Brilliant people get stuck
in their mind until they open their heart & connect w/their emotions. When we rest on our strengths & don't balance them with opposite traits, our strengths distort.
Those whose arrogance is largely intellectual tend to have little use for emotions. They assume that their intellect is supremely rational & logical & that those who are emotional are irrational. However, the emotional center can be highly rational & accurate & the intellectual center can be irrational & wrong.
It all depends on how the
centers are used & whether they're in balance. Denied emotions go underground & subvert efforts to think clearly. In addition, no matter how good one's logic is, if it's based on faulty premises, it's false. The emotional center
may be better equipped than the intellectual center to sniff out false logic; sometimes an argument sounds reasonable on the
surface but doesn't feel right, because it isn't.
Appearing to win an argument doesn't make one right.
There's a connection between arrogance & unresolved anger. Anger is primarily a response of the body's fight-or-flight mechanism. When a threat, real or imagined,
is perceived & the fight mechanism is aroused, if the person isn't able to follow thru & fight, the energy often gets
stuck in the body. i.e., if someone abused you & you were unable to protect yourself, much of the anger you suppressed (to avoid being hurt even more) might still be in your body, awaiting release.
The more naturally powerful you are, the more intense is the pressure of this stored anger. Arrogance might be chosen, in part, because it gives the person a chance to let off some
of this excess steam. Arrogance gives him a continual opportunity to judge others & get angry about them.
Gestalt-style anger release, such as pounding pillows, is a good way to clear out the stored anger that almost all of us have. I did several months of daily intensive anger release during my midlife monad. When the anger climaxed, it shifted into pain release thru crying. When that climaxed, I invited healing by bringing in the quality that had been
missing. i.e., if my anger release that day was about not feeling loved by my father, I brought forth a loving inner father. I felt continually guided in this work.
Once we've connected well with our anger, it can also be released by more subtle, less draining means. e.g., we can ask in meditation to be one with our anger & sit with it until it dissipates.
Chief features are often a
factor in mental illness. Those declared to have temporary insanity when they committed a crime in a fit of rage often have a severe chief feature, not necessarily arrogance. Chief features are, by definition,
irrational, so they show up in a lot of irrational behavior or neurosis. Of course, there can be chemical & genetic factors as well.
When false personality is
firmly in control, the real person isn't available to engage with. It's not unlike dealing wtih someone who is drunk, who isn't really "home" & does things he'd never do
if he were sober.
In dealing with people expressing
exalted arrogance, it's often best simply not to engage with it. It's unlikely that you'll
get thru to them -their hearts are barricaded - & saying things that can't be heard tends to create more problems (although, on a list, you might choose to say something for the benefit of others or to plant a seed on
the chance that it'll take root in the future).
On our list, we can assume
that most people recognize arrogance for what it is, even if they're ignoring it. Many people here model excellent, respectful communication skills; anyone who wants to learn them can do so by observing them. If some people are continuing in attack
mode, they probably don't have eyes to see & aren't motivated to change. Their blind spot is in control & explaining it nicely to them probably won't make a dent.
Chief features are triggered
by stress & fear & none of us is always acting from them, so there may be windows of opportunity to engage meaningfully with someone in
heavy arrogance when he feels safe.
As fascinating & useful
as all of the Michael teachings are, there's probably no work more significant than that of erasing our chief feature(s).
The chief feature is the lynchpin of false personality. It can send us into our negative poles with a domino effect.
As hard as it may be to face
it, doing so brings great rewards; we don't find inner peace until we do & it takes far more energy to defend it than doing the work to dismantle it. The chief feature is the devil
& it keeps us in hell.
I highly recommend Jose Steven's
book on chief features (which I've taken to calling "chief obstacles" in my readings & which
Jose calls "dragons" here): "Transforming Your Dragons." Jose is a psychotherapist & Michael channel.
No chief feature is better
or worse than the others. Some people in arrogance do it in a mild &/or subtle manner
& some flame with it. he same is true for the other chief features. Almost everyone is working on at least one chief feature.
We're all human; we all have "stuff." And we're all capable of doing all the chief features from time to time, even if they aren't our primary or secondary c.f.
