Tag Archives: dictator

August 28, 2017

600. Understanding Arrogance

By Marlen

Or how to let go of the idea I had about myself as ‘untouchable’ based on knowledge and information in order to truly live and express ME.

So this is a word that was opened up in group discussions and in a couple of situations I’ve faced in my life in the last couple of days, so, I’m now here to share about my relationship to this word.

First things first, how do I relate to this word? I have ‘been it, done it’ in my life where arrogance comes as this ‘know it all’ stance where I’ve seen how it was in fact fear that stood behind this ‘untouchable’ type of experience I created mostly through ‘what I believe, what I stand for’ and in creating an energetic stance to it as ‘unbreakable, untouchable, this is the one and only truth of existence!’ type of personality, I became very antagonistic – without even noticing it! – to anything that did not ‘conform’ to my views, or anything that wasn’t aligned to them, which means yeah I could have possibly picked up intellectual back and forths with just about anyone really, considering how such arrogance came through perceiving that ‘I got a superior understanding of reality, of who we are in our minds and in existence’ and the rest of points that come from getting to know a lot of knowledge and information about, yes, the reality that we live in and how we exist as human beings.

I’ve shared about this ‘arrogance’ construct with other terms in these blogs before like being in a ‘haughty position’ or being ‘in a high horse’ type of experience, which is the same thing: being arrogant and kind of looking everyone as ‘inferior to me’ because of not being aware of what I was aware of. In doing so, I really limited myself because I made it virtually impossible for me to discuss anything with anyone, because I was not willing to hear/read any other perspectives, I wasn’t being flexible at all – I just wanted to preach my creed so to speak and ‘convert’ anyone that I could – or rather that would allow themselves to be converted – which of course it never happened.

It was only through realizing that this way of approaching my process was not going to work in the long run that I had to try new things and that meant having to let go of my desire to ‘preach and convert’ others through knowledge and information and disseminating ‘my truth’ through blogs and vlogs with the sole intent to ‘wake others up!’ and ‘have them join me and everyone in this process.’ Of course that doesn’t work, but hey, I was there doing it fully and completely in such a militant stance that I was too blind to see my own absolutism and fascism in it – very common words for me to describe such personality as well in these blogs.

So, where I am and how I am in this context is definitely a long distance from what I just described. Currently I no longer feel the need to ‘wake others up’ or ‘change others’ because! I’ve learned through ‘the tough way’ how that obviously doesn’t work and going through consequences that I’m still having to literally pay for till today, lol. So instead, I focus on sharing my own experience, my own ‘walking’ with these tools, the learning curves, the falls, the standing ups, the mistakes and how to correct them and all that is related to taking all points ‘back to self’ essentially, because that’s basically where I realized I have my authority on at this stage, and so share my example as ‘what I’ve lived, applied’ in detail, and yep sharing it because maybe others will find this useful for their lives and that’s cool.

In terms of facing consequence, I’d say it’s at times unfortunately needed and it’s cool, because I can become so obsessed and be such a stubborn with things that sometimes it is only through reality knocking my door that I can open up my eyes and realize ‘oh fuck! I’ve done it again!’ and realize what I had been obsessed by – that’s the process of what I define now as having to eat humble pie and yep! Been eating it nicely.

Then comes the dimension where I’ve spotted arrogance in others. I saw this during a meeting with someone and I defined the person’s stance as being arrogant – being the kind of person that believes that everything they do is right, they are never wrong, that they are always transparent about things, that there’s nothing that is incongruent with who they are, and in that being able to rather blame others for being the problem in their relationship to him. And in that what he’s created and caused is that there’s a lot of people that simply cannot get along with him because there’s rarely an opening to question himself, his ways, his stance, but in essence being kind of absolutist because of not allowing anyone to question his ways, what he does, his preferences, at all. The outcome in such kind of personality is that if one would want to be his friend, one has to entirely accept him ‘as he is’ and that’s probably a doable thing for many that are ok with such ways, but I personally cannot relate to someone that is not willing to ‘open up’ and ‘question further’ about ourselves as human beings and have no opening to even considering any form of ‘change’ or self-betterment, so in that I simply realize ‘I don’t have to go there’ with this person and keep things as simple as possible in our interactions whenever they are necessary – if ever. This is just a self-honesty point for me to also make a decision to not try an ‘get along’ with someone ‘just because’ but I definitely like to get along with people with whom I can actually have discussions that lead us to learn more about ourselves and question/challenge ourselves, which becomes a bit too impossible with such hardened personalities.  I decided to rather focus on sharing myself and spending time with those that do have more of an opening and similar stance to life.

However, after I noticed that I was describing him in my head as ‘arrogant’ I had to of course look back at myself and see how I have existed as such arrogance as well and how I in fact created the same outcome for me where there was a time where I became very obnoxious, to be honest, I could only relate to people ‘walking process’ and I’d judge everyone else as a neophyte in life – a fancy way to say ‘ignorant’ – and in that I definitely walked through the consequence of isolating myself, because of not being willing to let go of my ‘immovable stance’ as arrogance which stood as constantly judging, constantly comparing everything and everyone to ‘how I believe things should be and how they must be done’ which I’d do constantly, consistently towards anything and anyone, all the time.

I mean, in a way it assisted me to constantly be referencing or questioning ‘what would be common sense in this case or with this person or in that person’s life/situation?’ however the problem is that I would externalize this as in telling people what to do or how they were wrong about this/that in their lives and sometimes being so direct that of course I would not take their feelings/minds into account and yep, I’d end up blowing things out of proportion and causing conflicts, which led me to quite a few ‘breakups’ with people – all because of this arrogant stance within me.

Currently I’m deliberately opening up ways of communication with people where I now practice leaving my ‘preaching’ in the past and instead learn to relate to people, learn to get to know them in who they are, in their context, in their particular life – which is absolutely cool and a very enjoyable process, which has led me to kind of ponder ‘Hmm why wasn’t I doing this before?’ but the reality is that I wasn’t able to do it, because I was too fixed on this absolutist and arrogant stance ‘towards the world/people in it’ where I definitely would have remained in this bitter stance of ‘non-conformity’ which I eventually realized I had entirely caused by my own set of impositions by not allowing myself to actually live and learn from others, but rather wanting to have this ‘teaching and preaching’ stance towards them, which didn’t work at all and only backfired nicely.

In that I instead have used these key words to live whenever I see myself having this arrogant stance coming up again: humbleness, understanding and flexibility. These words in a way stand as the antithesis of my previous ways which were of control, of imposition, of antagonism, of fascism and totalitarianism as the dictator I had become for anyone that would know me.

And yes, I can also explain how this is not a ‘magical solution’ either – the words are there as a continuous reference for me, as the available solutions – but this point may come up at any given moment where I feel this ‘need to correct someone’ or ‘let them know about the ultimate truth in life’ or ‘explain how that’s such an irrelevant subject to discuss about’ or whatever else in whichever way it might come up where I wasn’t really willing to interact and ‘mingle’ with people in whichever context or ‘level’ they’re at in their awareness, but I wanted to come in as this very stiff and self-controlled robot that wanted to only point out what’s right, wrong and immediately disregard participating in anything that I deemed was ‘of the mind’ lolol… yep I was on my way to then become a bitter hermit to be honest, but I’m so glad I have realized what I was doing and have come to stir my direction towards the person that I in fact have seen I have the ability to live and express, which is an open, expressive, communicative and social person in fact! Who would have known!? When I was deeming myself as a hard-core anti-social and misanthrope – as I’ve explained many times before*

So, a practical ‘hack’ that anyone can apply here is to see whenever one is needing to ‘defend’ something or make oneself feel ‘superior’ about anything, or when one is constantly judging others as less than/inferior – we gotta ask ourselves: what are we in fact ‘In-Fear-of?’ because arrogance is an expression of fear, of an actual inferiority that needs to exist as a perceived superiority in order to be ‘ok’ within a ‘better idea of self’. So asking oneself ‘what do I fear behind my need to feel so ‘secure’ of myself in this stance of arrogance?’ van be a practical way to get to the core of it.

Like in my case, the fear behind my ‘stance’ as what I described above related to knowledge and information, was to actually have people question me, debate my views or deny them completely, which would then stir conflict that I actually didn’t want to face, or because I feared losing this idea of myself as the ‘know it all’ in my own eyes. But, I’m quite glad that I was able to debunk it little by little and yes, with people’s feedback in the internet and of my own mother who has been the one that over the years really emphasized that I should ‘lower the volume’ of my speeches in videos because I would come through as ‘preachy’ and ‘attacking,’ as being too superb and pedantic, which would mostly scare people away – and yep, it did, and for some others it might have worked… but it definitely is not an expression I want to continue cultivating related to who I currently am in my life.

I’ve found new ways to share myself where I have no intent implied ‘towards others’ other than plainly sharing myself, and that’s what I’ve been doing lately and it’s like allowing a breeze of fresh air flow through me, rather than being the very stiffened, armored, robo-like person that had to always ‘present’ herself in a certain way and be ‘untouchable’ in an arrogant stance, man, was that limiting.

So for now, I continually have to bake myself some humble pie which I like doing, because every time I am made aware of this kind of situations or where I catch myself doing it, I can ground myself even more. In a way this means I can ‘let go’ of an idea of myself in relation to ‘who I have to be’ or ‘who I am’ in relation to others, and that’s truly liberating, it enables me to truly expand, share, learn and enjoy others in a way I had not done ever before in my life and for that I’m grateful for Desteni and the tools that have enabled me to be living who I currently am – so! The least I can do is share myself back here J

Thanks for reading.

*some other blogs that explain in detail the points walked in relation to arrogance are:

514. Debunking My Intellectual Arrogance

581. Living Reconciliation

561. From Provocation to Self-Challenge

547. How to Live Humbleness

27. It’s always only been me

 

 

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March 15, 2016

435. From Control to Flexibility

By Marlen

 

Being a control-freak or wanting to impose a form of control is definitely an underlying pattern that I played out in the previous situation I shared on ‘hissy-fit’ and transcending it. In essence a cool question that comes up is ‘what am I fearing?’ when seeing that we try and control something. Example, when thinking or being scheming what someone should say, how a situation should develop, how others must behave, what the weather should be like, what someone can/can’t eat or drink, what ‘must’ be done and what ‘must not’ be done… all of these points seem quite exhausting to deal with on a constant basis, and the thing is that it exists as a point of control ‘outside of ourselves’ without realizing it’s in fact first a point of control within ourselves as the mind that is dictating what we are supposed to want/look out for or be careful with. Every time I see this pattern unfolding, it reminds me of certain family members again, wanting to keep a certain image in an almost political way where there is constant PR processes going on, where one would want to control situations and events to what one considers is appropriate and generates no disturbance to our status quo – all entirely fear based.

This point of control is definitely rooted in fear, where we want to keep a certain idea, state or condition of something to please – again – certain idea or belief of oneself, or what others should become to please oneself, how an environment should be to please oneself. I faced a lot of these patterns when living with roommates in a house and having quite a lot of ongoing irritation, anger and frustration for things simply being out of my control at all times, which means: me not being able to impose my will and how I thought things should look like and function around in all ways. I am aware I tend to be dominant, and there is no point in now going into feeling bad about it. There can be constructive ways to use this ability to be in a constant ‘overseeing’ mode of reality in order to be more present, more aware of what’s going on, yet without wanting to control the environment or a situation. Though in this also realizing that me trying to have things work entirely ‘my way’ or have little to no inconveniences is definitely not a possibility in this world where multiple variables are constantly interacting with each other. Hell, not even a ‘god’ could have ultimate control on reality.

So, what word have I been using and practicing to letting go of or managing this pattern of wanting to control? Flexibility and consideration. Flexibility is being able to adapt to whichever outcome emerges that is unforeseen, unpredictable or ‘out of the plans’ and so being able to adapt, move, change in order to integrate such situations while being directive. Otherwise, when fixating to how something ‘must’ go, we are prone to constantly be fighting against reality, constantly creating the most unnecessary frictions and conflicts. So it is better to rather make it a point to make peace with it anyways, with whatever ‘out of the plan’ conditions emerge instead of fighting it or trying to have something or someone work in a particular way. So for example yesterday I said I would not complain for how hot the day was. In the end I was able to do this for the most part, except for the very end when I said that it was a very damn hot day, and started scheming the ways to avoid going out at the same time of the day under the same heat.

Is that the way to go through life? It’s like a constant fighting. Also I see that when others do this ‘PR’ process or ‘damage control’ in a way of ‘everything is fine’ it has bothered me, because I see the flaws behind that but it happens to be that I have done exactly the same, it is another form of control instead of facing the music for what it is and work with it bit by bit.  The question is then what is there to ‘save’ or ‘rescue’ from a mind that thrives of judgments, superiority and inferiority traits, delusional beliefs….? Nothing really.

Whenever I then see myself wanting to control something within an environment or toward another, I rather ask myself what do I fear losing or experimenting or exposing and why? Is it really relevant?

 It is true that not everyone in this world is ready to be fully honest and have this marvelous openness right away, but if one does the little bit of enabling things to unfold as they usually do, without trying to control, we will realize that this is where the actual ‘self-test’ emerges, where we can act and live according to what we face in the moment, challenging or not = it is our reality, we can only arm ourselves with the tools of self-support to develop self-trust over time, realizing that no matter ‘what’ or ‘who’ comes my way, I know I can support me to walk through it and get to a resolution or create solutions that can be supportive in both or more ways.

Sometimes instead of wanting to immediately ‘control’ someone as in preventing them from doing something, it’s a matter of rather communicating the potential outflows or consequential development of something, sometimes even finding third party accounts or stories that can assist a person to consider the same point and so, open up the conversation in common sense to that everyone is aware of the points of responsibility to it all. This is then turning the point of control based on fear – just like parents do with their children when preventing them to do something out of fear, instead of explaining to them how things work, the consequences and so having the child decide and go through it all to learn from it – that’s how you build a sense of responsibility. There the point of control as in preventing others sometimes from ‘fuck ups’ is then turned into a learning process for everyone involved, where even if ‘mistakes’ are made, at least each person would know ‘I did it to myself’ or ‘I created this and I knew what the outcomes would be.’ This way one is instead of controlling, providing certain perspectives or input into something, so that each one can still make their own decisions while one can remain ‘at peace’ because of having explained the reasoning behind one’s attempt to control – or if already prevented – to explain or give a perspective as to why one would or would not do a certain thing with arguments that can be understandable in practical reality terms.

 

I consider that it is best to make some choices being aware of the uncertainty they entail – we cannot predict or control what is going to happen in something – rather than preventing oneself from moving at all because of wanting to control reality, to wait for a better moment to act, to have the perfect conditions for something –that possibly won’t ever arrive by the way – one can instead embrace the unpredictability, while remaining aware of the developments, potential consequences and make decisions based on common sense – considering what is best for all involved – that can lead to the most supportive and potentially effective outcome.

Being flexible there implies not trying to impose oneself onto others, not trying to control their lives, but rather making sure that I can instead share my perspective

 

Control

 

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