What is the bane of your existence? What kills your life? Your joy, your fulfillment, the love in your heart?
It is everyday arrogance.
What is everyday arrogance? It is simple, and so everywhere, all the time, that it is invisible.
You see something. You hear something. And you know what it means.
That you know, without looking, is everyday arrogance.
The fact that you know what is your job, how people are, what was the question, where you need to look, what is missing: without looking, is everyday arrogance. Already knowing…
Jumping to conclusions…
If you have a chance, watch the movie ‘Defending your life’. The expression ‘Little-brain people’ is from that movie. Te movie is in my paid subscribers area. (If you are my student and you don’t have an account… what do you think I know about you that you don’t?)
You’ll see that the ‘little-brain people’ can only look and see one thing at a time, while the big brain people can see the big picture.
The little brain people’s brain is not smaller, by the way. It could see a bigger picture. It is a habit, an approach, an attitude that robs the little brain people of seeing more.
And, or course, you think you know the truth when you see something at the penlight of your narrow cone of vision… and you know it is the truth… like the five blind men knew what the elephant was. The five blind men who went to visit the elephant.
Reality is big. Your approach to it is small.
And then, everyday arrogance, you live as if your evaluation of reality were correct. Consequently you live a small and miserable life.
And you are right about it.
I had a conversation with one of my students about her answers… she said: I am not interested in love.
Obviously she knows what love is, and love is romantic love, relationship, saying I love you… Very narrow cone of vision… and she didn’t look further.
She didn’t say: I am looking at love and I am noticing that love has never even entered the picture, my life. For me love has been seen through the filter of ‘am I accepted or I am not’, not ‘do I accept or I do not’
Love is accepting another exactly the way they are and exactly the way they aren’t. Love is also a commitment to accept. Accept them even when you don’t like what they are, how they are, and you KNOW how they should be.
Everyday arrogance.
Same is about health: if you are overweight, you only hear: the way to lose weight.
It is not what somebody say that matters. It is what you hear. And your arrogance limits what you hear.
I write an article how you can allow learning to be getting through to you… and I get back the same narrow minded, narrow cone of vision stuff back… Exasperating.
I used to watch people who came to me because of what I wrote. Once they got to talk to me, they stopped reading what I wrote. They knew they didn’t have to: they knew that now they know it by just talking to me. Occasionally.
I will finally make that video on how to enter theta state, as soon as I come back from grocery shopping.
I am glad I waited. Now I really know how little goes through.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it: did it make a sound?
This is a koan, a paradoxical riddle. A question to ponder… by people who don’t have a narrow cone of vision. Those with the everyday arrogance already know the answer.
Knowing the answer keeps you the same, robotic, unfulfilled, and stupid.
PS: Here is an interesting way to look at this through Rob Brezsny’s eyes:
Uh-oh. Or maybe I should instead say ‘Hooray!’ You are slipping into the Raw Hearty Vivid Untamed Phase of your astrological cycle. The universe is nudging you in the direction of high adventure, sweet intensity, and rigorous stimulation. If you choose to resist the nudges, odds are that you’ll have more of an ‘uh-oh’ experience. If you decide to play along, ‘hooray!’ is the likely outcome. To help you get in the proper mood, make the following declaration: ‘I like to think that my bones are made from oak, my blood from a waterfall, and my heart from wild daisies.’ (That’s a quote from the poet McKenzie Stauffer.)
Depending on your cone of vision… you will say Hooray or uh-oh.
