Pride

--is scary shit. Generally, things do not go according to my plans. Generally, I am not what would be considered traditionally 'successful.' with women, with work, with life. But every now and then, things align just right and everything seems to be going my way and I feel like I'm king of the world. And that feeling of, "yeah, I'm pretty good." scares the shit out of me.

Because I though that was a sin I'd gotten a handle on. I think the truth of the matter may be that I just don't general have situations that trigger it.

Its like today, after learning how to get out the sinew from a dear leg, which involves cutting stuff apart in a very surgical way, I was sitting, touching my wrist joint, noticing the similarity between it and the deer foot. Holding my penis while peeing, noticing the similarity between the thin outside skin and the intestine we were soaking and then drying, to use as cordage. And thinking: "yeah, I guess I could be a serial killer. You just cut stuff up like I did today." It's just something that human beings can do. Something horribly destructive, to life, but something that actually happens. Serial killing. Pride.

Yeah, it disturbed me. It's unsettling to see something dark within you. But it's there, within all of us. I would not recommend focusing on the serial killer in you, because whatever you put attention on, it's like that's what you are watering in the garden of self. But I would recommend becoming aware of the darkness within you. It does you no good to cover your ears and go, "la la la I can't here you your not there."

Know thy enemy.
Know thy self.

The awareness of your own very real vulnerability to Pride, or destruction, or whatever, is your best defense against it. It is the parts of ourselves that we aren't aware of, that end up running our lives in a bad way. It's hard to be prideful when doing so makes you nauseous, and you are constantly on guard for it happening. As soon as you let down your alertness, that's when you might get into trouble.

Here's an excellent example, that I keep an eye out for, and have developed a healthy fear of: spiritual people, who have some great experience/realization/training, and proclaim themselves above sin. Nothing I can do is wrong, they say.

That is fucking poison.

from another perspective, meant another way, it can be true, it can be nourishing. To realize, you can't screw it up. Life is a classroom and mistakes are lessons, so there is no real failure.

But the prideful belief that now, suddenly, for some reason, you have been elevated above the ability to sin, so now you can just do whatever you want...

Whenever it's a human mind, thinking that thought, it is an ego, playing games with its new favorite spiritual experience toy.

This sounds complicated, but it gets very simple when you just follow JC's advice and judge them by there fruits ("by there fruits ye shall know them" or some such.) Just look at all the crazies, some of which were distinguished spiritual personages, some of which were totally insane cult leaders who would excuse there bad behavior with with some derivative of what I just mentioned.

And then look at all the saintly people who were just good and kind and loving. There's no need to excuse there behavior. And they still made mistakes, but they were honest about them. they never claim to be perfect human beings, beyond the ability to be egoic.

I'm not so worried about the nut-jobs who use this excuse, but I am cautious because of the genuinely spiritually powerful people, who still fell into traps, of weird sex stuff or pride stuff or paranoia stuff or whatever.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7351/admiralackbar2jl1.jpg

You don't even have to go spiritual with this. It often happens with famous people too. The popularity fucks them up. The success fucks them up. The money, the power, fucks them up. Good people. People you'd want to be friends with. Sometimes great people.

I look at it, and I cringe at the realisation that many of these people are way stronger than me, and I used to cling to the fear that it could be me, like I'd cling to a security blanket.

Now that's beginning to morph into less of a fear and more of a humility and simple truthfulness about where I am, and where I'm not. What I know, and what I don't know.

what I am is something very simple and human. what I know is too little to put into words. and even the working knowledge I have, is extremely limited.

It's satisfying, and joyful. because, though I am not superhuman or omniscient, I can love people, and enjoy the beauty of life. And I can learn, and I can admit I don't know, or am wrong.

and I'm proud of that.
;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/its-a-trap.jpg

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc17/anton599/its_a_tarp.gif

(much anger at blogger for being a lb (little bitch) and not letting me post pictures and moves onto my blog. YOU HAVE A FUCKING "INSERT PICTURE" BUTTON DANMIT, IT SHOULD FUCKIGN WORK! YOUR GOOGLE, YOU HAVE THE BEST PROGRAMMERS IN THE WORLD WORKING FOR YOU. bastards.)