"All human beings are arrogant and destructive of their own souls when they
refuse to listen, when they know better, when they don't want to hear what
could save them from themselves and from their acquired false notions about
life. Arrogance is a very touchy state, and you examine it as I tell you
about it, and you'll understand what I mean by that. When you're arrogant -
how many of you have been arrogant? Let's find out - so you know what
you're talking about.
You're arrogant. It means that you're, oh, you're very worried that
someone's going to knock you off that pedestal that you've put yourself on.
You're up there and you're telling other people what to do, how to live,
and you're perhaps yelling at them. You're worried, aren't you? In that
very act of arrogance, there is fear.
And the reason you had arrogance in the first place, whether it's an
outward thing or a resistance to Truth, the reason you have that arrogance
is because you're afraid. An arrogant human being, in any form or variety
of it, is a human being who is terrified. Snarling at people, criticizing,
having a sarcastic attitude; self-righteous hypocrisy is a state of fear.
There is always an opposite action to the proud, falsely proud, arrogant
human being. Arrogance and this fall that we talked about are just one inch
apart.
You see it in children better than you see it in adults because adults have
learned to fake it and be phony on the surface. You ever notice a child,
how he's laughing one minute, and the minute you give him a little piece of
candy, he smiles? He switches back and forth real fast. That happens the
same with the frequency in adults, but it's all internal.
And it's up to you, as you're hearing this talk tonight, to look inside
yourself as I'm giving you this talk so that you know that I'm talking
about you, so you can go out of here a different kind of person than you
were when you came in. The kind of a person who is so sick and tired of
lying to himself that you want to change it."
from a talk given 11/20/1987 V H's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 16, talk 383, track 1
Comments