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Arrogance is what most people bring to their interactions with people and things.
Arrogance says: I know. But you don’t. Or maybe know a little, but not all. Or again, maybe everything you know is wrong, and will take you to ruin.
But your arrogance prevents you from looking in directions you haven’t looked, asking questions that are different from you are asking. Arrogance makes you ask the kinds of questions that can’t and won’t help you, because they are apple-polishing. You already have your direction.
You may attend a thousand dollar workshop and ask the questions that won’t help you… instead of asking: is this thing set up right? Is this thing is the right thing to do? Or maybe even: what am I thinking, what am I doing wrong?
People answer the question you ask, even if you paid them to answer the right questions.
If you asked me, I’d probably tell you that you are on the wrong path…
But…
This is what happened: To get the benefit from any of the work you do with me,you need to have a project. A project where you can win or you can lose.
Why. For the reason from a quote yesterday: ‘Knowledge is only rumor until it is in the muscle‘ ~ New Guinea Proverb
Knowledge is only rumor until it is in the muscle
Unless something is in your muscle, it is just hot air. Unless you implement, to get it into your muscle, you didn’t get anything.
You are first, second and third a physical being… and only after that third an intellectual being.
If you are arrogant, you are habitually arrogant. Arrogant with your whole being, especially with your body.
What is the opposite of arrogance? It is humility.
Humility is a state you put yourself by declaring that you don’t know anything. That you are incompetent.
It is not an accident that they do surgeries when the patient is asleep… or they would risk the patient telling the surgeon what to do.
I have tonight, OK, this early morning a bat in my bedroom. I am deadly afraid of rodents, and bugs.
So here I am sitting in my office, hoping that the bat will find its way outside: I left a window without a screen open for him.
Every previous bat invasion occasion the bat found their way. But what will I do if this one insists on staying in my bedroom? I don’t know.
And saying ‘I don’t know’ is humility.
I have the light open in my office where the window is open. Will the bat come in here? Can I get into my bedroom and turn off the window fan? Because the bat is there, I think, because of the stream of fresh air… it thinks it means an open window… Shall I turn off the lights in my office?
These questions are all arrogance. Everything other than: what can I do? signal arrogance.
Some of the participants in the Allowing Challenge are experiencing results they like.
But until and unless they know and catch the trigger, freedom will still remain an idea, not a reality.
The trigger is a state. Mine is confusion. Not being able to choose. It starts the machine that will take me to devastation.
Some of my clients seem to have a ‘OMG, I don’t know’ as the trigger.
It’s that shock that seems to stop your heart.
If their machine is a fighter, the way they ‘resolve’ the trigger is jump into some action, including saying what they ‘know’. So arrogance is a solution to not knowing. Not a good solution.
I am a resister, so I don’t jump. I can tolerate not knowing longer than fighters. But I have been still resisting… resisting it as wrong.
Werner Erhard said a curious thing some 50 years ago. He was talking to the Forum Leader Candidates, who were revolting because they wanted to advance from ‘candidate’ to designate.
He said: You know why I am the only Forum Leader? It is because I can stand in front of not knowing, in front of it not working longer than anyone.
What he meant is that he has a trigger, not knowing, or it not working, but he doesn’t react.
You do. And react fast. Many of you with arrogance. I know. But the problem is that you don’t.
Some of you react with ‘it’s not working’
Some of you react to fear ‘OMG, I am in danger!’
Or you react, as I said above ‘OMG, I don’t know!’ or ‘I am not sure’.
It is a physical bodily reaction. If you can catch it, identify it, then you can learn to not react.
I used to have a fighter mechanism, but I have tamed it. Now I only seldom react, jump the gun, go down where the machine wants to take me.
I wait until I can see what I couldn’t see, wait until I find what I didn’t know.
And observe the arrogance of people…
If you have an arrogance machine, and 70% of all people have an arrogance machine, then you may want to start practicing with saying ‘I am incompetent in this area’ and allow what you feel to be there.
It is a solar plexus tightening, if my own reaction to it is any indication. The middle of the front, just above the stomach, an area about two palms width. A circle.
It is hard to be with it, it is hard to allow. The longer you can tolerate it the better you can become at neutralizing your arrogance.
Why is arrogance an issue?
Because it uses your life. In fact it uses it all up.
There is no room for ambition, there is no room for growth, there is no room to get better, or learning any skills.
So you’ll live a life of quiet desperation… And who the heck wants that?!
The life of arrogance is like living in a roulette hall always betting on what you can’t know.
And, as is the case with some of my clients, not getting the help you’d get if you managed to ask without saying all the things you know.
A good coach will ask you what you know.
The old Lao Tzu poem comes to mind:
Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know. Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.
Of course if the people are arrogant, you need to be doubly careful not to trigger their arrogance.
When you realize what triggers you, the context changes. It is no longer about what’s wrong with you, and you can let the trigger go.
There is nothing wrong with you. Not knowing something is not something wrong with you, or even wrong by itself. It is just that, not knowing.
And when the context shifts to that, then you can actually ask for help, and share what you may know without it having to prove that you are not stupid.
I have been undecided. Once I distinguished that as my trigger, I can just be undecided and hang in there, and wait to see which direction I’ll go.
There is a grace and ease about it. I’ll be ready when I am ready. Not before. And it’s OK… When I’ll know I’ll know.
With the context shifting (that is the meaning of transformation, by the way) then there is grace and ease.
My relationship to not knowing has changed.
- I don’t think I should know.
- Or I should ALREADY know.
- I don’t know and I can ask,
- I can learn or I can be OK with not knowing.
And not a shred of arrogance.
Arrogance is a protection mechanism… But if there is nothing wrong with you then there is nothing to protect, is there now?
I wish I had known this all my life. But it is never too late.
PS: In the allowing challenge what people need to find is what it is that they need to allow.
Some need to allow wrongs that are all around us. Some need to allow that they are not the director of the Universe… Others need to allow not being in control, not being right.
And the 70% needs to allow that they don’t know. I am in that 70% myself.
I’ll go out on a limb and say: 70% of the reason why your life isn’t working, why you are not growing is your arrogance.
You may think it is the world, the system, your mother… whatever. But it is not true.
You may think it is because you are lazy, or stupid, or too scared.
But if you’d consider that it is you protecting something you think is wrong… you’d be 100% accurate.
Start with that.
In today’s workshop we’ll examine closely the bodily feelings of some of the main triggers of the machine. Definitely the trigger of all the people who are present.
I need to get it done in two hours, so I don’t miss my bedtime, or I won’t sleep tonight.
You can still register. I’ll record the workshop, but it is best to be there. It’s at 5 pm EDT…
Learn the trigger of your machinePPS: Does the ‘erase’ activator, can the erase activator help you prevent your machine going into a full cycle? Causing you to feel bad?
The answer is yes… But only if you manage to use it when the trigger is still active. And for that you need to recognize your trigger. A pressure most likely… an unpleasant pressure.
