proud man

The Proud Man Lacks Truth and Wisdom

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“I ask, ‘How can you rectify a proud man?’ Act with love with him, nothing more. There is no other power that can soften a man’s pride. That’s how you will soften it and put it in its normal condition. In man’s life where love does not reign there, greed will be born.

“Christ says, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ … When you enter this way, you will act well, you will work well, and when you enter the Truth, you cannot stay indifferent, you will love all people! This is the Truth! And when you enter this life, you will think together with all people and you will take the nice from them from everywhere. …

“I am teaching you the the nicest thing: ‘Learn to Love God!’ This is Love!

“So I am telling you now if you are listening to me, according to the law of love, you will understand these things. With love, all things have meaning. And in Truth, all things have meaning. …

“Love is manifested through the law of Wisdom. Wisdom is manifested through the law of Truth. Truth is realized in life. It is a circle. You have to be reasonable in order to enter love and to benefit from all it carries.” ~Biensa Douno

A Proud Man

Today many will wonder what is wrong with being a proud man. There is nothing wrong with some reasonable pride based on accomplishment. But that is not the kind of pride Douno is referring to. He is talking about having way to much pride for minor accomplishments, or simply being full of pride with no accomplishments at all. In short, he is talking about hubris, the opposite of humility. It is the kind of pride that makes a person believe they could make a good president with no political experience whatsoever. This is the kind of pride that convinces you that when anything goes wrong, it is always someone else’s fault. This pride may give you some success in the overly materialistic physical world of today, but it gets you nowhere in the realm of spirit.

Act With Love

It is not just the proud man who needs the power of love. All of us do. And the ones who need it the most are very often the ones who get it the least. Orphans, immigrants, homeless people, poor people, and such are often ignored or forgotten by the majority of humanity. So we should all practice giving love and acting with love, not just to relatives and friends, not just to those we like or agree with, but to all of humanity. Then we should go beyond loving humanity to love animals, plants, and all of creation. Even the mountains and rivers are living things and need love.

Acting with love means more than simply saying you love everyone and everything, although that is a good start. It means that when you do things you ask who will benefit by it and who will be harmed by it. If you benefit from it, but others are harmed, doing it is probably is not an act of love. And if your act of love does benefit others, but you do it only to boost your ego and pride, you are not doing an act of love. The proud man may do good deeds, but he (or she) only does it for recognition. Continue reading “The Proud Man Lacks Truth and Wisdom” →

Share
human pride

Human Pride Supports the Great Illusion

Posted on by Harold Boulette

Fable Is Love’s World, Poem By Schiller

“Tis not merely
The human being’s pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance,
Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world
Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
That lies upon that truth, we live to learn,
For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birthplace;
Delightedly he dwells ’mong fays and talismans,
And spirits, and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of Old Religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piney mountain,
Or forests by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms or wat’ry depths;—all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of Reason,
But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.”

~ Friederich Schiller: The Piccolomini, Act. ii.”

Human Pride

Pride can be a good thing, but often isn’t. This poem is talking about one of the adverse effects of human pride: it hides the truth from us.

While we love to be individuals, to be unique, we love even more to be part of the group, to be accepted. We don’t like to admit that, but it is true for nearly all of us nonetheless. And fitting in with the group, with our neighbors, our family and friends, means accepting what they believe.

This Common World

The world of matter is what this poet is calling “the common world”. It is common in the sense that it is ordinary. It is also common in the sense that it is a shared experience. But as a shared experience, it must be shared similarly to avoid confusion.

Suppose you are sitting in a movie theater with one hundred other people. You are all watching a movie. You think you are seeing trees and flowers, houses and people, cars and trucks, etc. Actually, however, there is noting on the screen but abstract blobs of color constantly moving and changing. Yet if everyone agrees that at a particular moment what is on the screen is a red and black truck, nobody is the wiser. But if everyone is forming their own idea of what is on the screen, those images will differ greatly. And when people start talking to each other and realize that they are seeing different things, they will begin to figure out the truth. And the “real” world of matter functions much like that movie theater.

The powers that control the realm of matter, both physical and spiritual beings, don’t want us to see beyond the illusions anymore than a stage magician does. So they train us beginning when we are infants to listen to what others see and say and form beliefs. This creates a common view and allows everything to keep moving along smoothly in this realm of illusion. But a common illusion isn’t reality. A shared fantasy is still a fantasy. Continue reading “Human Pride Supports the Great Illusion” →

Share
Hubris, pride

Pride and Ego Let the Devils In

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“The Pride of Nature indeed inclines one man more strongly than another, but it forces none that they must be proud; and if there be a force [or strong compulsion upon any,] then it is when man willingly for temporary honor and pleasure sale lets the Devil into his eternal essences; and then the Devil sees presently how that man is inclined by the Spirit of the World, and in that way tempts him accordingly. If man lets him but in, he is then a guest very hard to be driven out again; yet it is possible, if the man entirely and sincerely purposes to turn, and to live according to the Will of God.” ~Jacob Boehme

Pride of Nature

What Boehme is calling “the Pride of Nature” is not natural pride, or being proud of the accomplishments of Mother Nature. He is talking about ego. Specifically, a puffed-up ego caught up is materialistic desires. A person to whom the word “treasure” means a pile of temporary money rather than the eternal treasure of an immortal spirit and soul.

Need for Ego

Ego is necessary. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have one. But any tool can be harmful when misused and ego is probably the most misused tool we humans have to work with.

Without ego, we have no drive, no passion, no desire to accomplish. This may stop you from doing evil deeds, but it also stops you from doing good ones. You become like a piece of driftwood floating on the tides. Some governments promote the destruction of ego since it makes their people into sheeple—people who behave like sheep or contented cows.

God has little use for those people. He needs people who can accomplish things for the good of humanity and the universe. He needs people who want to help and be co-creators. Sheeple can’t do that. The key is to let the spiritual faculties control the ego, not destroy it. First, of course, those spiritual faculties have to be awakened. Continue reading “Pride and Ego Let the Devils In” →

Share
Hubris, pride

Hubris or Not Hubris, That is Another Good Question

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“So, with Dante, the first terrace of the Mount of Purgatory is devoted to the cleansing of pride and the production of humility. …

“The first thing that the self observes, when it turns back upon itself in that awful moment of lucidity … is the horrible contrast between its clouded contours and the pure sharp radiance of the real; … and the clear, onward sweep of that Becoming in which it is immersed. It is then that the outlook of rapture and awe receives the countersign of repentance. The harbenger of that new self which must be born appears under the aspect of a desire; a passionate longing to escape from the suddenly perceived hatefulness of selfhood, and to conform to reality, the Perfect which it has seen.” ~Evelyn Underhill

Pride and Hubris

Sometimes we have good reason to be proud of our accomplishments. For most of us, however, those accomplishments pale when faced with the realities of the spiritual world and the true purpose of Man. Winning a baseball championship, a spelling bee, or even an elected office may puff us up with pride, but such things are of no significance to God and His Great Plan. Those who think that God cares who won a football game are only fooling themselves. God doesn’t care who won the big game any more than he cares which necktie you wear today. Those who continue to think that such things as winning a ball game are matters of great importance are only filling themselves with Hubris, a false pride of accomplishment when the thing accomplished doesn’t matter. Most of us don’t realize this until, As Ms. Underwood says, we face our inner self while engaging in spiritual practices.

Sharp Radiance

Underhill is using metaphor when she talks of clouded contours and sharp radiance. But it is not by coincidence that so may spiritual writers equate materialism with darkness, shadows, or clouds, and enlightenment and truth with bright, white light.

Thanks to the modern science of quantum physics, we know that the material universe is actually a hologram. And a hologram must have a source of light. There must also be a reality from which the hologram is projected. That place of sharp radiance is the spiritual world. Continue reading “Hubris or Not Hubris, That is Another Good Question” →

Share