In re-reading the blogs I wrote on the Prideful Character, there is one aspect that has surfaced several times that I haven’t explicitly opened up – and that is the point of ownership. It came up in the blog ‘Day 146: The Credit is Mine!’ as well as in my last blog ‘Day149: I don’t need no-one’s help’ where I mentioned feeling that I did not ‘own’ the correction to a point if someone assisted me to see it.

An example of the role of ownership within the Prideful Character would be where I was ‘in charge’ of a certain project for a while, and then at some point needed to hand it over to someone else. I would experience major resistance, because I would feel like it was ‘my point’ that I didn’t want to give up. So – where is the self-interest within such scenarios? Because, obviously, in those moments it was necessary to re-arrange responsibilities for the effective running of the larger group – so if I within myself fight such a change, then it is due to points of self-interest.

The Prideful Character, as has become clear, runs on the need for praise and validation – so that self may ‘feel’ valuable/worthy/good enough. So, what I would do in relation to the Prideful Character when I was assigned a task – I would define myself according to that task – feeling that ‘I am now responsible’ or if I would do the task well, I would give myself ‘positive scoring points’ based on that task/project. So, the projects would become a source of praise and validation that I would give myself – thinking that – others must see me that way as well. So – when asked to hand over the project, I would experience resistance in that I felt I would be losing this source of ‘value’ – but what’s more – I would feel annoyed thinking that, ‘now I will have to spend my time creating a different project that will give me a sense of value’ lol.

And that’s an interesting point – where I felt I had invested my time/effort into a project and so didn’t want to give it up – because, hey, I finally feel satisfied about my ‘performance’ in how I am handling this project, I am finally feeling good about myself in terms of this project and so I feel I am deriving ‘value’ from it – lol, in other words – my investment is finally starting to pay off and now you want me to hand it over?!?

All of the above runs in the background of course, on a conscious level I would just experience that sense of ‘ownership’ towards the project – where I would feel it’s ‘my project’ and then the resistance in not wanting to hand it over.

The reason I find this point to be so interesting is that during my economy studies there was one point that I just didn’t understand or couldn’t grasp in ‘how it would make sense to base an economic system on that principle’ - and that was the point of ‘the capitalist’ and the principle that those who own something get to earn profits from it – because, well, to own it they invested a lot of money in it, so now they should earn returns on it in the form of profits. Somehow this point evaded me – who came up with this logic?? Because once you own something, you’re not doing anything per se, you’re just ‘busy owning something’ – yet that would give you the right to an income through profits.

And here I am, lol, throughout my life living out this exact same logic without even realizing it – where it would only become apparent when I was asked to hand over my project to someone else, as I’d then throw a hissy fit inside myself – and even then it was not always clear ‘why’ exactly this was bothering me. Yet here it is, the capitalist in me, clinging to that which I have invested my time, my effort, myself in – because I was deriving a continuous flow of ‘earnings’ from it as a sense of value. It wasn’t even the project in itself that I didn’t want to ‘lose’ – it was the ‘returns’ that I expected to receive if I continued to ‘own’ that project.

It’s fascinating that in anything we do – we’re not working with the inherent value of that which we’re busy with, acknowledging and honoring the inherent value of contributing time and effort towards a particular project because we see how it assists others, how it makes a difference – no, we’ll only acknowledge the imaginary value we assign to ourselves for participating in that project – making it about ‘how good a person I am’, ‘how good I feel about myself’. And in the same way – we won’t recognize our own inherent value – we feel the need to ‘derive’ it from something or someone else – the need to ‘own’ something so that IT may GIVE me value.

It is quite saddening to realize that we had to create such consequence on a global level for the outer reality to reflect and show us just one point: that we never accepted ourselves, that we never appreciated ourselves and that we never honored ourselves as life, as the only real value. Learn more »

When working with the tools introduced in SRA2 course of Desteni I Process, you’ll be pushed to see those aspects of yourself that you have lived out as yourself to such an extent that it is hard to identify them.

For me, the point that was revealed in this way was ‘Pride’. Someone had mentioned it to me before, that pride is one of my defining characters/characteristics – but I couldn’t relate to it AT ALL. Even when writing about it, what I was able to uncover was very superficial. It was only within using the tools I had learned in SRA2 and someone pointing at one sentence showing how that was a statement/expression of pride, that I could suddenly see it. It was literally as though I was blinded to that part of myself – but once it was shown to me how I lived pride in one specific moments, I could suddenly see it all over my writing, my behavior, my relationship with myself and others – like a veil lifting and for the first time meeting this part of myself – and then being astounded at seeing it to be one of the main characters I participate in and live out that in fact creates conflict and separation, but which I assumed was simply ‘a part of myself’ or that I had justified to such an extent that I couldn’t see it for what it was.

My understanding and ‘opinion’ of pride has always been that it is harmless. In Christianity, pride is one of the seven deadly sins – pride is even called ‘the root of all sin’. But why? What was so terrible about pride that it gained that status? For me, pride was about ‘being proud of myself’, especially when I had accomplished something successfully – then I’d be proud about what I had achieved and feel good about myself. What’s so bad about that? Others were proud of me when I had done something well, and would say ‘well done’ or ‘I’m proud of you, girl’. So, why shouldn’t I be proud of myself? Isn’t it *just* me congratulating myself, giving myself a pat on the back? Lol.

It seemed to be that pride was something desirable – it’s something I believed was how I was supposed to reward myself, in the same way I would be rewarded by parents and teachers whenever I had done something ‘right’ or ‘good’ or ‘well’ – then you get to be placed in the limelight, on a pedestal for a moment – with everyone admiring and congratulating you for what you’ve done. It was so much part of my world that I never questioned it, let alone regard it as ‘the root of all sin’.

But there is another ‘meaning’ of pride that is referred to when talking about pride as a sin. In that context, it seems to be more about a person being self-centered and looking down on others – where pride stands in the way of cooperation and communication, of working together to find solutions that are best for all.

So, in my blogs to come I’ll be exploring the dimensions of how I have existed and Pride and what the relationship is between pride in the two meanings of the word as I introduced in this blog. Learn more »