"Sin of Lucifer"

We, people brought up in Soviet times, were inspired from childhood that pride is almost the main virtue of a Soviet person. Remember: "Man - it sounds proud"; "The Soviets have their own pride: the bourgeois are looked down upon." Indeed, at the heart of any rebellion is pride. Pride is the sin of Satan, the first passion that appeared in the world even before the creation of people. And the first revolutionary was Satan.

When the angelic world was created, the heavenly host, one of the highest and most powerful angel, Dennitsa, did not want to be in obedience and love for God. He became proud of his power and strength and desired to become like God himself. Dennitsa dragged many angels with him, and there was a war in heaven. Archangel Michael and his angels fought with Satan and defeated the evil army. Satan-Lucifer fell like lightning from heaven to hell. And since then, the underworld, hell, is a place where dark spirits live, a place devoid of the light and grace of God.

The rebel-revolutionary cannot but be proud, he is the successor of the work of Lucifer on earth.

Communism is a quasi-religion, and, like any creed, it has its own "creed" and its commandments. Their "relics", "icons", banners - banners and religious processions - demonstrations. Only the Bolsheviks intended to build paradise on earth, without God, and, of course, any thought of humility was considered ridiculous and absurd. What more humility, when "we are ours, we will build a new world, who was nothing, he will become everything."

However, God cannot be mocked, and history itself passed its judgment on the Bolsheviks. Heaven without God could not be built, proud plans were put to shame. But although communism fell, pride did not decrease, it just took on different forms. Talking to a modern person about humility is also very difficult. After all, a market capitalist society, aimed at success and career growth, is also based on pride.

Although you often hear in confession when you ask a question about the sin of pride, and the answer is: “Something, but I don’t have pride.” One woman writes to St. Theophan the Recluse: “She spoke with her spiritual father and told him different things about herself. He told me directly that I was proud and conceited. I answered him that I was not proud at all, but I could not stand humiliation and servility. And this is what the saint answered her: “The burial service was excellent. Do not let yourself be offended by them, so that they know that you cannot be grabbed with your bare hand. Vish, thought up to call as, moreover in eyes? Now I will sentence you: what better proof that you are proud than your rebuke? She is not the fruit of humility. And why should you cross such a sentence? .. It’s better for you, without contradicting it, to put yourself in depth, is there, in fact, this potion in you, extremely unkind.

So, what is pride and how does this sin manifest itself? Let us turn again to St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov): pride is “contempt for one’s neighbor. Preferring yourself to everyone. Insolence. Obscuration, debility of the mind and heart. Nailing them to the earth. Hula. Disbelief. False mind. Disobedience to the law of God and the Church. Follow your carnal will. Reading heretical, depraved, vain books. Disobedience to authorities. A biting mockery. Abandoning Christ-like humility and silence. Loss of simplicity. Loss of love for God and neighbor. False philosophy. Heresy. Irreligion. Ignorance. Death of the soul."

Trial and condemnation

St. Cassian the Roman speaks of pride, that although it is the last in the list of eight passions, “but in the beginning and time there is the first. This is the most ferocious and most indomitable beast."

Pride, in the series of passions, comes after vanity, which means that it stems from this vice and has a beginning in it. “The flash of lightning foreshadows a thunderous blow, and about pride it foreshadows the appearance of vanity,” instructs the Monk Nilus of Sinai. The search for vain, vain glory, praise, inflated self-esteem gives rise to exaltation over people: “I am higher than them, more worthy; they are below me." This is what pride is. Condemnation is also associated with this feeling. How, if I am above all, then it means that I am more righteous, all the rest are more sinful than me. Inflated self-esteem does not allow you to objectively judge yourself, but it helps to be a judge of others.

Pride, starting with vanity, can reach the depths of hell, because this is the sin of Satan himself. None of the passions can grow to such limits as pride, and this is its main danger. But back to condemnation. To condemn means to judge, to anticipate the judgment of God, to usurp His rights (this is also a terrible pride!), for only the Lord, who knows the past, present and future of a person, can judge him. The Monk John of Savva tells the following: “Once a monk from a neighboring monastery came to me, and I asked him how the fathers live. He answered: "All right, according to your prayers." Then I asked about a monk who did not enjoy a good reputation, and the guest said to me: “He has not changed at all, father!” Hearing this, I exclaimed: “Bad!”. And as soon as I said this, I immediately felt as if in ecstasy and saw Jesus Christ crucified between two thieves. I was rushing to worship the Savior, when suddenly He turned to the upcoming angels and said to them: “Put him out, this is the Antichrist, for he condemned his brother before My judgment.” And when, according to the word of the Lord, I was cast out, my mantle was left in the door, and then I woke up. “Woe is me,” I said then to the brother who came, “this day is angry with me!” "Why is that?" he asked. Then I told him about the vision and noticed that the mantle I left behind meant that I was deprived of the protection and help of God. And from that time on, I spent seven years wandering in the wilderness, neither eating bread, nor going under shelter, nor talking with people, until I saw my Lord, who returned the mantle to me, ”narrates in the Prologue.

That's how scary it is to pass judgment on a person. Grace departed from the ascetic only because he said about his brother's behavior: "It's bad!" How many times a day do we, in thoughts or words, give our merciless assessment of our neighbor! Each time forgetting the words of Christ: “Judge not, lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1)! At the same time, in our hearts, of course, we say to ourselves: “I would never do anything like that!”. And very often the Lord, for our correction, to shame our pride and desire to condemn others, humbles us.

In Jerusalem there lived a virgin who spent six years in her cell, leading an ascetic life. She wore a sackcloth and renounced all earthly pleasures. But then the demon of vanity and pride aroused in her a desire to condemn other people. And the grace of God left her for excessive pride, and she fell into fornication. This happened because she struggled not out of love for God, but for show, for the sake of vain glory. When she became intoxicated by the demon of pride, the holy angel, the guardian of chastity, left her.

Very often the Lord allows us to fall into the very sins for which we condemn our neighbors.

Our assessments of our neighbor are very incomplete and subjective, we not only cannot look into his soul, but often we do not know anything about him at all. Christ did not condemn obvious sinners, neither harlots nor adulterers, because he knew that the earthly path of these people was not yet over, and they could take the path of correction and virtue. Only judgment after death brings the final line to everything that a person has done in life. We see how a person sins, but we do not know how he repents.

Once I returned from the cemetery, where I was invited to serve a memorial service, and the woman who called me asked me to bless the car for her. One of my friends was present at the consecration. When the woman left in a brand new foreign car, already consecrated, he threw out the phrase: “Yes, it’s not clear that she was very bothered, earning money on this car.” Then I told him that this woman was in great grief, her son was killed not so long ago ... You can never judge the well-being of human life by appearance.

Pride and division

In our time, there have appeared many "scoffers" (as the apostle Jude calls them), who constantly find reasons for indignation with the church hierarchy. The patriarch, you see, communicates too much with the secular authorities, the bishops are all completely infected with money-grubbing and simony, the priests also think only about income and drive around in Mercedes. Special newspapers and websites have appeared that specialize in exposing the episcopate. Apparently, it seems to them that now the very times have come when “the bishops will not even believe in the resurrection of Christ.” Complete, as it were, the decline of piety and church life.

What drives these people? Pride. Who gave them such a right to denounce bishops and priests, and what do these denunciations give? They only sow enmity, confusion and division in the hearts of Orthodox people, who, on the contrary, need to unite now.

There have been unworthy people among priests and bishops at all times, and not only in the 20th or 21st century. Let us turn to the "golden age" of Orthodoxy, the age of holiness and the flourishing of theology. The IV century gave such pillars of the Church as Saints Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom and many, many others. And this is what St. John Chrysostom writes about this “golden age”: “What could be more lawless, when people who are worthless and full of many vices receive honor for something for which they should not have been allowed to cross the threshold of the church?.. Now the leaders of the Church suffer from sins ... But the lawless, burdened with a thousand crimes, invaded the Church, the tax-farmers became abbots.” Many of the holy bishops of the 4th century, including St. John himself, were sent into exile by "robber councils" of hierarchs, and some died in it. But none of them ever called for a split and division. I am sure that many thousands of people would follow the deposed saints if they wanted to create their own “alternative church”. But the holy men knew that the sin of schism and division is not washed away even by martyr's blood.

This is not how modern accusers act, they prefer a schism to submission to the hierarchy, this immediately shows that they are driven by the same pride. It lies at the root of any schism. How many schismatic, catacomb churches are now appearing, calling themselves Orthodox! "The true Orthodox Church", "the most true Orthodox Church", "the most, most true", etc. And each of these false churches, out of pride, considers itself better, purer, holier than all the others. The same passion of pride moved and drives the Old Believers. They were divided into a huge number of Old Believer "churches", interpretations, agreements, which do not have communion with each other. As St. Theophan the Recluse wrote: “Hundreds of stupid rumors and thousands of disagreements.” This is the path of all schismatics and heretics. By the way, all the Old Believers are based not at all on love for the old rite, but on pride and a high opinion of their exclusivity and correctness and hatred of Patriarch Nikon and his followers, the Nikonians.

But let's say a little more about the "cursors", they should remember the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage: "To whom the Church is not a mother, God is not a Father." The Church was, is and will be, despite the unworthiness of some hierarchs, who, as I have already said, have been in all ages and times. God will judge them, not us. The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Rom. 12:19). And we can correct the Church with only one thing - our personal piety. After all, we are also the Church. “Save yourself and thousands around you will be saved,” said St. Seraphim of Sarov. And he knew this from his own spiritual experience. These are the people who are the little leaven that leavens the whole dough. A small amount of yeast can raise a whole sourdough. But, by the way, according to my own observations, "scoldiers" with personal piety and morality, as a rule, have a hard time. But there is more than enough pride.

seduction

One of the most terrible and badly curable types of pride is charm.

Charm means seduction. The devil seduces a person, taking the form of an angel of Light, saints, the Mother of God, and even Christ Himself. A corrupted person is given from Satan the greatest spiritual experiences, he can perform feats, even miracles, but all this is captivity by demonic forces. And at the heart of it lies pride. A person became proud of his spiritual labors, deeds, performed them out of vanity, pride, often for show, without humility, and thereby opened his soul to the action of hostile forces.

Saint Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) in his Fatherland gives an example of what terrible consequences delusion can lead to: “They said about a certain brother who lived as a hermit in the desert and for many years was seduced by demons, thinking that they were angels. From time to time his father according to the flesh came to him. Once a father, going to his son, took an ax with him with the intention of chopping firewood on the way back. One of the demons, warning the coming of his father, appeared to his son and said to him: “Here the devil comes to you in the likeness of your father with the aim of killing you, he has an ax with him. You warn him, pull out the ax and kill him.” The father came, according to custom, and the son, seizing an ax, stabbed him and killed him. It is very difficult to get someone who has fallen into delusion out of this state, but there have been such cases. As, for example, with the Monk Nikita of Kiev-Pechersk. Having fallen into delusion, he was able to predict some events, he memorized the entire Old Testament. But after the intense prayer of the venerable Kiev-Pechersk elders, the demon departed from him. After that, he forgot everything he knew from books, and his fathers barely taught him to read and write.

Cases of demonic seduction occur even today. A young man who studied with me at the seminary prayed and fasted very intensely, but, apparently, with a wrong, unhumble disposition of soul. The students began to notice that he spent the whole day sitting behind books. Everyone thought that he was reading the Holy Fathers. It turned out that he studied books on Islam and the occult. I stopped confessing and taking communion. Unfortunately, he could not be brought out of this state, and he was soon expelled.

The sin of pride, sometimes beginning with petty vanity and pride, can grow into a terrible spiritual disease. That is why the holy fathers called this passion the most dangerous and the greatest of passions.

Fight with pride

How do they struggle with pride, contempt for others, self-exaltation? What is the opposite of this passion?

The Holy Fathers teach that the opposite virtue to pride is love. The most used about The last of the passions fights with the highest virtue.

How to acquire love for your neighbor?

As they say, it is easy to love all of humanity, but it is very difficult to love a particular person with all his shortcomings and weaknesses. When the Lord was asked, “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” He replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: this is the first and greatest commandment; the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

Love is a great feeling that unites us with God, for "God is love." Love is the only happiness, it can help us overcome all difficulties and defeat pride and selfishness. But not everyone correctly understands what love is. Love is often mistaken for the pleasant sensations we get when we are treated well, but this is not love. “If you love those who love you, what good is it to you? Do not the publicans do the same? (Matthew 5:46). It is very easy and pleasant to love a person, to be near him when he only makes us happy. But when communication with our neighbor does not suit us, we immediately change our attitude towards him, often to the diametrically opposite one: “one step from love to hate.” But this means that we did not love true love, our love for our neighbor was consumer. We loved those good feelings that were associated with him, and when they disappeared, love also disappeared. It turns out that we loved a person as a thing that we need. Not even as a thing, but as a product, delicious food, because we still take care of our favorite things, for example, we polish the body of our favorite car, regularly service it, buy all kinds of jewelry, etc. That is, even in a thing, if we love it, we put our care and attention. And only food we love for its taste, no more; when it is eaten, we no longer need it. So true love gives but does not require. And that is the true joy of love. The joy of receiving something is a material, consumer joy, but in giving to someone it is true, eternal.

Love is service. In this, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself gives us a great example when He washed the feet of the apostles at the Last Supper, saying: “So, if I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, then you must also wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do what I have done to you” (John 13:14-15). And Christ loves us not for anything (because there is nothing special to love us for), but simply because we are His children. Even sinful, disobedient, spiritually ill, but it is the sick, weak child that parents love most of all.

The feeling of love cannot exist without our efforts. It needs to be nurtured in your heart, warmed up day by day. Love is a conscious decision: "I want to love." And we must do everything so that this feeling does not go out, otherwise our feeling will not last long, it will depend on many random reasons: emotions, our mood, life circumstances, the behavior of our neighbor, etc. It is impossible to fulfill the words of Christ in another way, because we are commanded to love not only for our loved ones - parents, spouses, children, but also for all people. Love is acquired by daily work, but the reward for this work is great, for nothing on earth can be higher than this feeling. But in the beginning, we have to literally force ourselves to love. For example, you came home tired, do not wait until they do something nice for you, help yourself, wash, say, the dishes. A bad mood has overcome - force yourself, smile, say a kind word, do not take out your irritation on others. Offended by a person, you consider him wrong, you are innocent - force yourself, show love and go first to reconcile. And pride is defeated. But here it is very important not to become proud of your “humility”. So, educating himself day after day, a person will someday reach the point where he will no longer be able to live differently: he will have an inner need to give his love, to share it.

A very important point in love is to see the value of each person, because there is something good in everyone, you just need to change your often biased attitude. Only by cultivating love for our neighbor in our hearts, changing our attitude towards him, learning to see the good sides in him, we will step by step overcome pride and exaltation in ourselves. Love conquers pride, for pride is a lack of love for God and people.

How to learn to love God? Having fallen in love with His creation - man. Man is the image of God, and it is impossible to love the Archetype even without love, to disrespect the icon, the image of God. No wonder the Apostle John the Theologian writes to us: “Whoever says: “I love God,” and hates his brother, that one is a liar: for he who does not love his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he does not see? And we have this commandment from Him, that he who loves God love his brother also” (1 John 4:20).

Instead of a conclusion: "The kingdom of heaven is taken by force"

The path of struggle with passions is not easy and thorny, we often become exhausted, fall, suffer defeat, sometimes it seems that there is no more strength, but we get up again and start to fight. Because this path is the only one for an Orthodox Christian. “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will be zealous for one and neglect the other” (Matt. 6:24). It is impossible to serve God and remain a slave to the passions.

Of course, no serious business is done easily and quickly. Whether we are rebuilding a temple, building a house, raising a child, treating a seriously ill person, great efforts are always required. “The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). And the acquisition of the Heavenly Kingdom is impossible without cleansing oneself from sins and passions. In the Slavic translation of the Gospel (always more accurate, figurative) instead of the verb "takes" the word "needs" is used. And indeed, spiritual work requires not just the application of efforts, but coercion, coercion, overcoming oneself.

A person who fights against passions and overcomes them is crowned for this by the Lord. Once the Monk Seraphim of Sarov was asked: “Who in our monastery stands above all before God?” And the monk replied that he was a cook from the monastery kitchen, originally from former soldiers. The elder also said: “The nature of this cook is fiery. He is ready to kill a person in his passion, but his incessant struggle within the soul attracts the great favor of God to him. For the struggle, the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit is given to him from above, for God’s word is immutable, which says: “To the one who overcomes (myself) I will give a place to sit with Him and clothe me in white clothes.” And, on the contrary, if a person does not fight with himself, then he comes to a terrible bitterness, which leads to certain death and despair.

Fall of Lucifer

Many Christian theologians spoke about pride as a mortal sin. However, the most complete definition of it was given by the Monk John of the Ladder:

Pride is a denial of God, a demonic invention, the humiliation of people, the mother of alienation, the offspring of praise, a sign of barrenness, the precursor of insanity, the cause of falling sickness, the source of irritability, the door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, opposition to God, the root of blasphemy, ignorance of compassion, cruel torturer, protector sins, inhuman judge. Where there has been a fall, there has already been pride: Pride is an apple that has rotted inside, but shines with beauty on the outside: there is extreme poverty of the soul.

The science of pride

From the point of view of psychology, pride is exorbitant pride, arrogance, arrogance, selfishness and arrogance. In its highest manifestation, pride is considered a spiritual deviation, which is accompanied by the following symptoms:

- touchiness, intolerance of criticism, unwillingness to correct their shortcomings;

- constant blaming others for their life problems;

- uncontrolled irritability and disrespect for other people;

- a person is regularly visited by thoughts of his own greatness and uniqueness, he exalts himself above others and demands that they admire him;

- inability to ask for forgiveness;

- the desire to constantly argue, to prove one's innocence.

Each of us has experienced one of these feelings at least once in our lives. This is explained by the fact that all people have pride, but for many it manifests itself within reasonable limits.

For example, to be proud of winning a sports championship or getting the highest score at the Olympics, according to psychologists, is normal (this is the difference between pride and pride). Sometimes pride and self-esteem are the most important components of a happy and successful life.

Dr. Medina believes that the manifestation of pride to one degree or another "depends on our ability to learn and accept everything new." The CaMKII gene is responsible for the appearance of this feeling. It is he who excites our ambition, arrogance and arrogance.

Fragment "Pride" from the work of Hieronymus Bosch "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things"

Ways to deal with pride

In Christian teachings, pride is seen as the opposite of one of the virtues - humility. This means that you need to humble yourself, “realize the greatness and infinite potential of every human soul”, “accept your insignificance before God”, thank him for everything good and bad that happens in life.

Psychologists advise:

- start to be interested in other people, pay attention to their achievements;

- learn to respect others and listen to their opinion;

- do not appropriate all the merits and achievements;

- try to help people disinterestedly, treat them with kindness and love;

- learn to adequately accept constructive criticism;

- share your positive experience, otherwise it will only increase the growth of pride;

- and most importantly: you need to be able to admit your mistakes, find the courage to forgive insults.

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Pride is a very multidimensional concept and one of the many manifestations of fear. In the form of pride, man's eternal striving for perfection is manifested. A person feels that inside he is endowed with divine perfection, but he uses this perfection incorrectly, striving to always be right to the detriment of other people.

There are two forms of pride: mental and spiritual.

Mental pride is a characteristic of those who think they know everything. As soon as we question their knowledge, pride appears and the person becomes stubborn to prove his point.

It seems that only he can be the only winner, and others will inevitably and always be losers. The strength and power that pride seems to give is just an illusion, because in reality the loser is always the proud.

If you realize that you will be stubborn in any situation, find out if pride is driving you. To do this, ask yourself what exactly motivates you to do this. In general, if a person has an opinion that is different from the opinion of other people, and if he is not a prisoner of fears, he easily accepts the presence of a different opinion and does not become stubborn. When stubbornness takes over, you are usually driven by one or more fears. Ask yourself the question: “What bad will happen to me if I allow another person to have a different opinion?” In this way, you will not let pride overwhelm you, and you will become aware of the limiting opinion that is unfavorable to you.

A great way to help you stop being stubborn is to say, "Can we both accept that we don't agree with each other on this?"

Mental work should be used to elevate yourself, and not to humiliate yourself and belittle the importance of other people. Simplicity and sincerity give much greater happiness than the desire to always be right, that is, pride!

Be careful with spiritual pride! Mental pride comes from the position “I know and think better than you,” while spiritual pride is fueled by the thought that “I am better than you.” The more a person is engaged in personal growth, and the personality, for those who do not know, is the mind and ego, the more aware he becomes, and the greater the danger becomes to fall into the network of spiritual pride. As a rule, under the influence of spiritual pride, a person feels his superiority over other people. Such people think: “Since you are not as developed as I am, then I am better than you ...”.

As you become more aware, be mindful. Even if you are on a higher rung than another person, this does not mean that his essence is lower than yours, the difference is only in its manifestation.

If you look at others as if they are inferior to you, it looks like comparing yourself to an elephant and mistaking others for mice. Is an elephant a more important animal than a mouse?

They say that pride is the biggest scourge of mankind. Pride is the source of the greatest strife in social life, rivalry between peoples, wars, intrigues, hatred and malice against other people.

Some people don't consider themselves proud and blame other people for it. If you also think so, it means that your pride is much stronger than other people's pride, even if your stubbornness is not open. When you think you are right and someone else is wrong, that is also pride, whether or not it was said out loud by you.

The proud rarely admit that they are overwhelmed with pride. They are so arrogant that any attempt at even a hint of pride remains unsuccessful and usually infuriates them. They don't want to know anything. They do not tolerate resistance and obstacles.

When pride takes over, you cease to be yourself, and you no longer manifest your inner state. You succumb to the influence of pride. And you lose a lot: love, relationships, health, happiness! Is this pride worth it?

Pride is the exaltation of your ego mind as opposed to your essence and individuality. As your personality develops, your pride will lose its grip on you.

Pride resists all internal changes. She is constantly trying to prevent us from seeing GOD in everyone, forgiving, expressing our feelings or emotions, being real, learning about ourselves, having any opinion.

If you are now experiencing anger and cannot imagine how you can, first of all, ask another person for forgiveness for being offended by him and, then, for not seeing love in his actions or words, this indicates that what's stopping your pride. Asking for forgiveness and showing love does not mean "losing" or "winning."

Everything always comes back to one thing - to love. Each manifestation of love solves all problems and changes everything in life. Love has the magical gift of healing on a physical, emotional and mental level.

As I said above, pride always hides this or that fear. Fear that we are not loved, fear of being rejected, fear of condemnation, criticism, fear of not being up to par, fear of losing a person or object.

To deal with pride, you must first recognize it, and admit to yourself that you have a fear of rejection. With this understanding, you will be able to feel how much you suffer at the thought that others will stop loving you.

It is impossible to get rid of the pride that has been present in you for several generations and lifetimes in an instant. Pride can be overcome only gradually, by daily small victories, with the help of actions that are driven by love.

The best tool that will teach you to deal with pride when you meet a person who wants to be sure to be right is not to be stubborn yourself. Accept that at this moment this person knows the truth, which is very important to him. Tell him: "I accept your point of view, even if it differs from mine."

When you realize that during the conversation you have allowed pride to take over, I advise you to talk to this person. If you need to ask for forgiveness, do it. Tell him that you realized that you wanted to be right at all costs, and that you were driven by pride. Confess to him that you have decided to pull yourself together, and ask him to be patient with you, because it is impossible to part with pride in an instant.

If you meet a person who is overflowing with pride, try to see suffering and fear in his behavior, and most likely your mirror. Perhaps this person will seek to change you, intimidate you with his behavior or powerful sharp statements. But don't pay attention to it, because in fact he is more scared than you. Do not try to answer him in tone. Such checks of the Space occur constantly.

You may be shocked as you read these lines to learn how much pride is driving you, but I do not seek to overwhelm you or make you feel guilty. Rather, I would like you to become more aware, allow you to see the pride in yourself and make the appropriate decisions. If you realize that you have pride in you, you will need to deal with it, because it is precisely this that prevents you from loving and, perhaps, being truly loved. See if pride is worth your health, inner peace, relationships, happiness, love? Are you ready to continue to pay such a high price?

FAULTS OF arrogance

• Pride leads to loneliness. A proud person does not know how to forgive and ask for forgiveness, depriving himself of friends.
• Pride leads to moral decline, making a person spiritually weak.
• Pride deprives a person of the opportunity to look at things soberly, preventing him from achieving his goals.
• Pride narrows the mind. Prideful people crave power, but rarely achieve anything.
• Pride makes a person callous. Such people, for the most part, will go over their heads for the sake of their goal.
• Pride creates a wall between man and truth.

MANIFESTATIONS OF PRIDE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Family relationships

A false understanding of pride often does not allow the closest people to openly declare their feelings and desires, which in some cases leads to the breakup of even the most prosperous families.

Story

Unshakable confidence in the invincibility of his army and exorbitant pride led Hitler, blinded by his greatness, to inevitable defeat in the war with the Soviet Union. The same applies to Napoleon.

Literature

In Dostoevsky's work "Crime and Punishment", the main character - Rodion Raskolnikov - believes that he has the right to shed "blood in good conscience", thinking that everything is allowed to him. Blinded by pride, he goes to kill.

Art

Marina Tsvetaeva repeated the tragic fate of many great people who fell victim to their pride. “Pride did not allow Marina Ivanovna to get along in an emigrant environment. Tsvetaeva, unfortunately, did not find understanding, and upon returning to her homeland, she hanged herself in Yelabuga at a moment of despair and loneliness.

SIGNS OF arrogance

• Avoiding that you might be wrong.
• Persistence is that you are always right.
• Patronizing treatment of other people or looking down.
• Having a sense of self-importance.
• Humiliation of self and others.
• The idea that you are better than others.
• Boasting.
• Attributing to oneself the merits, labors or efforts of other people.
• The desire to put the opponent at a disadvantage.
• Managing people to achieve what you want.
• Control over the situation without sharing responsibility.
• The constant need to be the center of attention.
• Haughty attitude and behavior.
• Turn up your nose or look down on people.
• Vanity, often look in the mirror.
• Showing off their talents, clothes, wealth, appearance.
• Not allowing others to help you or work with you.
• Attracting attention to yourself.
• Talkativeness or constant reduction of the conversation to yourself.
• Touchiness.
• Excessive sensitivity or insensitivity.
• Excessive preoccupation with oneself.
• Thinking about what others think and say (only) about you.
• Using words that the other person does not understand and you know it.
• Feeling of worthlessness.
• Not forgiving yourself and others.
• Unwillingness to change and even to think that it is necessary to change.
• The placement of people in order of importance on the hierarchical ladder and, depending on this, the attitude towards them.
• The idea that you are more important than others in connection with your work.
• An obsession with work, a desire to be praised, doing many things at the same time and your desire to show that only you can do it.
• Distrust of other people, God.
• The state of being preoccupied with the impression and opinion people make of you.
• The thought that you are above the Law or a special son or daughter of God.
• Creation of an idol from oneself and others.
• Work beyond measure beyond the limits of your body.
• Change your demeanor depending on who you are talking to.
• Ingratitude.
• Ignoring "little people".
• Inattention.
• Unawareness of one's pride or any problems (spiritual blindness).
• The presence of an irritated tone.
• Raising the voice in anger or annoyance.
• The thought of teaching someone a lesson. Talking to or about a person in a derogatory tone.
• Conflict and disobedience to the will of God.
• Not submitting to the will of God.
• Lack of self-respect.
• Recklessness or insanity.
• Having a “What could you do for me?” relationship.
• Dishonesty towards oneself and others.
• Inability to work with others, inability to compromise.
• The desire to always have the last word.
• Unwillingness to share their knowledge in order to be able to control.
• Inattention to one's inner world, to one's physical body, or excessive concern for it.
• The idea that you have to do everything, because no one else supposedly can do it better than you.
• Mentioning the other person's mistakes in a judgmental tone.
• The need to save other people from their problems.
• Prejudice against people based on their appearance, clothing, skin color, etc.
• Pride in position.
• Too much self respect.
• Sarcasm and trolling.

SPIRITUAL arrogance

If you are interested in development, spirituality, are engaged in spiritual practices, the likelihood that you are possessed by spiritual pride to one degree or another is extremely high. These signs are very subtle, not exhaustive, but quite thought-provoking.

• One of the insidious signs of spiritual pride is an illusory unawareness of pride in oneself. Sometimes a Person who has achieved the first results in spiritual growth begins to tell others that either He does not have problems with the ego, or begins to demonstrate what an effort He makes on himself in order to weaken the grip of the ego. This is a manifestation of vanity generated by the ego itself. All Humans are tested for a sense of self-importance, which is vibrationally opposite to a sense of Divine Dignity.
• Lack of Gratitude to those who helped you in the appropriate period of Life on the Path with advice, deed, Energy, etc. "Forgetting" what was important at the time. The illusion that you have achieved this by your own work.
• Theorizing your worldview. Lack of Practice, lived Experience suggests that your ego is out of control.
• Spiritual pride is the absence of responsibility. Responsibility means the following: all your words must be lived by you in a literal sense. Responsibility for your thoughts, words and deeds to other People means that you have lived, tried out what at the moment is a suitable, effective means for you. You can recommend this to the neighbors, but with the proviso that this remedy is not a panacea.
• The desire to resist, to defend their point of view. Loud arguments, trying to convince the interlocutor is akin to a struggle for survival. This is a sign of the presence of mental blockages - dead beliefs and dogmas.
• Rejection of the new. Fear of Change, fear of the dying of the old and the birth of the new, the unknown. Getting used to the fact that everything is enough and no changes are needed, the fear of getting lost under the onslaught of the Wind of Transformation is a common sign of spiritual pride. Merging with the Consciousness itself is perceived by the ego as its own death.
• Condemnation of other points of view, methods, lifestyles and worldviews of other people. Judgment is a defensive reaction of the ego against the expansion of the worldview. The ego is desperately trying to convince the Human Consciousness that other people live incorrectly, incorrectly and cannot teach anything “useful”.
• Focus on quantity, not quality. This is a trick of the ego - wasting Your Energy due to the lack of a clearly defined goal, or Your Goal is conditional, prone to volatility. Scattering your efforts on many projects, the impossibility, but the desire to embrace the boundless, is spiritual greed, one of the qualities of spiritual pride. And it has nothing to do with Service. Take care of each of your projects like your own child, decorate it, love it, pay attention.
• Belief: information is given for the elite, not for everyone. The appearance of new terms, the complication of simple and accessible, the desire to look spectacular - all this is a low-vibration manifestation of the ego out of control.
• The focus is not on Service, but on making your efforts pay off. The primary task, the first step towards Spirituality is selflessness. If you learn to be selfless, then your efforts will be paid off. And there is no paradox in that. It is paid to those who give from the Heart. Otherwise, the Person may be irritated by the fact that He is asked to help for free.
• Give from lack, not from excess. Sometimes a Person talks about how others can earn money without having found a material basis under their own feet. Or he does charity work, while he himself, out of laziness or disbelief, does not try to live in abundance. All this is spiritual hypocrisy - one of the manifestations of spiritual pride. If you yourself do not know, cannot, do not know how - do not offer, but try to learn, to be able, to be able, to achieve. And then, out of prosperity, give back to the Neighbors, be it money, information, or the Energy of Love.
• Feeling like a teacher who knows people. In the fourth dimension of Awareness there is a Gift for absolutely all Awakened people - to know, to predict the actions of the ego. Knowledge of the psychology of the egoic nature, the ability to analyze it does not mean that you have reached the heights of Wisdom. This feeling of “knowing everything about people” brings satisfaction to the “teacher”, because there is an illusion of being aware of everything. In fact, this illusion comes from the fear of the unknown, veiled under the psychological mask of "knowledge of human nature." For such a Person, the terrible word that can come out of His mouth is “I don’t know.” In reality, neither the Higher Self nor the Mentors, devoid of duality, can know and predict people. Why? There is a Space of Options, Free Will and Choice. Friends-Mentors and Higher Selves do not have the emotion of fear of the unknown: for Them, every decision of a Human is always a Miracle! They know that there are no mistakes, there is a unique Experience! Say: How can you know a Human? Did you know Him yesterday? But this morning He woke up with new thoughts, feelings; He was enriched with Knowledge, Experience; certain situations, meetings, etc. happened to Him. So on the basis of what did you conclude that you “know” the Person? Based on past experience? Based on the fact that you managed to calculate His life moves several times? Dear ones, this is one of the greatest illusions of spiritual pride.
• Feeling that the received Knowledge is enough. In this case, there may be a desire to expand the received Knowledge and spread it without studying the New. There are religious and ideological currents that have a narrow specialization.
• Emotional reaction to what is the Lesson. Anger, resentment, irritation, etc., arising from pressing on a painful point, is only a catalyst for the Beginning of the Lesson. Those who are possessed by spiritual pride try not to accept the Lesson, not to work on themselves.
• Emotional-mental dependence on the feeling of "need". For a Person whose Consciousness is possessed by spiritual pride, the feeling of Love for oneself is alien. That is why it is vitally important for Him to recognize and feel needed - in order to accept himself through the reflection of others.
• Feeling of one's own specialness, exclusivity. Everyone is unique, but here it means that this Person claims that He is unusual, and all the rest are typical and uniform. Sometimes a Man speaks about his special extraterrestrial nature or that His Family is rather ancient and mystical. Dear ones, You are all aliens, and Your Family is the whole Family of Light!
• Spiritual fatigue. Man thinks he has known and seen enough; Nothing surprises or inspires him. This is a blockage of Creative, Mental, and also Heart Energies.

HOW TO OVERCOME PRIDE

Modesty

In relation to yourself imitate Jesus and Socrates. Consider why Jesus said, "I no longer call you my children, I call you brothers."

Self-confidence

It is the feeling of insecurity and insecurity that makes you mentally lift yourself above the crowd and prove your superiority again and again. Believe in yourself and you will stop looking ridiculous in the eyes of others.

Awareness

Find the strength in yourself to realize your excessive pride and admit your weaknesses. Weaknesses do not need to be hidden: they are what make you a person, and in some cases will help you become a winner.

Interaction

As you know, pride is an attempt to prove one's case, the desire to be always and in everything right. Learn to listen, and most importantly, hear the opinion of your opponent. Look at the situation from a different angle, do not think straight, soberly evaluate all the pros and cons. Don't be afraid to change your point of view over time or be wrong about something. Only fools are always right, smart people tend to make mistakes.

Sympathy and empathy

In order to overcome pride, the first step is to get rid of the habit of judging others. You don't always know what's best. Do not waste time on moralizing and labeling people. Each person is unique in their own way and has the right to choose their own path in life.

Help

The proud are distinguished by the unpleasant ability to condescend to the "little" person and throw him a handout, calling it charity with pathos. Give and help sincerely: perform spontaneous acts of kindness without asking for anything in return and without expecting gratitude. You can do this anonymously.

REQUIRED QUALITIES:

• Humility, patience and humanity.
• Kindness, love, striving for spirituality.
• Sympathy, compassion, forgiveness.
• Modesty, simplicity and meekness.
• Trust in people, selflessness and responsiveness.
• Honesty, justice and mercy.
• Honor, harmony and joy.
• Spirit of cooperation, mutual assistance and gratitude.
• Glorification of our Creator of all through communication with ourselves and others.

Differences between pride and self-esteem

But very often you fall into error, confusing it with arrogance. So how is self-esteem different from pride?

Pride arises from feelings of unworthiness or an inferiority complex. In the depths of his soul, a proud person does not believe in his dignity, so he has to balance it with pride. Self-esteem comes from the realization of one's unconditional worth. Pride compares itself to others. According to some signs, criteria, whether it be intelligence, the amount of good deeds, the amount of property, etc.

A person with self-respect "competes in perfection" only with himself, urging himself to overcome his ignorance and shortcomings of character.

Pride divides people into better and worse, or superior and inferior. That is, for an arrogant person, the "matrix of people" looks vertical - and in it he certainly surpasses someone.

For a person with self-esteem, people are "divided horizontally" - into near and far. Souls are like warriors, those who recognize each other unite, and those who do not recognize each other disperse.

Pride is dependent on external factors - opinions, events, relationships. This makes a person a material slave and a hunter for worldly goods and human honor.

Self-esteem is free from attachment to external advantages. His wealth is the wealth of thought and spirit. As one of the sages said: “If you are in a hurry to succeed in acquiring worldly goods, if your heart is attached to property and position in society, then one day you will meet a person for whom all this does not matter, and then you will understand how poor you are” .

Pride manifests itself in defiant behavior, which, according to the proud person, imitates self-confidence. Self-esteem is manifested by calmness, goodwill, interest in others, in the interlocutor.

Pride does not disdain bad deeds for the sake of reinforcing opinions about itself. A person with self-respect can sacrifice personal interests for the greater good, for the sake of truth.

The proud man is anxious and hasty. A person with self-esteem is confident and calm.

The question of what pride and pride are, what is the difference between them, can confuse even a philosopher. A search in dictionaries and everyday experience of a social person may lead to the conclusion that pride is a very positive feeling. Pride is opposed to it and considered a negative manifestation of arrogance and vanity.

Words that sound the same?

Words that are similar in spelling and sound are paronyms. They are so similar that they may seem to have the same root, but unlike really related words, their meaning varies greatly. Based on the meanings indicated in the dictionaries, it is usually concluded that positive pride and negative pride are words similar to each other. This implies that their meaning is very different /

But what is the difference between pride and pride? It is generally accepted that pride is a natural and positive emotion in achieving success. A person may be proud of a job well done, winning a sporting event, acquiring knowledge or things. Speaking of pride as a positive feeling, they give examples of joy for their own child who entered the university, or respect for another person who has achieved some success.

Pride, on the other hand, is denoted as the tendency to consider oneself better than others, extolling one's own personality, but belittling the dignity of other people. At the same time, it is often confused with arrogance (the tendency to judge a person’s merits by their position in society), and with vanity (the desire to receive recognition or praise for owning something), and with self-affirmation (the desire to raise self-esteem by judging something else). Of course, these qualities can hardly be called positive personality traits.

But is it rare that parents, proud of the achievements of their child, consider themselves the cause of this? They have such a high opinion of their pedagogical talents that they do not notice the achievements of their son or daughter's peers, especially if they themselves have little interest in the area in which other children achieve success. Exalting the virtues of their child, who won a small victory, they form in him vanity, and the desire for self-affirmation, and arrogance.

Pride in one's country can lead to chauvinism. In this case, too, there is rarely a question of respecting the neighboring state or other peoples. The victory of the football team is equated with the exaggerated value of every citizen of the country who is rooting for the team, although the real success belongs only to the athletes.

There are many examples. They all come down to this: where pride is found, pride is always present. Positive emotion at some elusive moment becomes its opposite. How big is the difference between pride and pride, and does it exist at all?

The concept of pride in religious teachings

Almost all religious and philosophical systems agree that pride and pride, which are similar in sound, are not so different in the spiritual sense. The presence of the Creator, whose existence is recognized by all world religions, makes any human achievement exclusively the will of the supreme being. From this point of view, the difference between pride and pride is completely imperceptible.

The primary act of manifestation of pride, as a high self-esteem and comparison of oneself with the Higher powers, belongs to the antagonist of the supreme deity. Being a creation, he imagined himself equal to the Creator (like Lucifer, for example). The lack of humility and recognition of himself only as a product of someone's activity led him to fall, that is, to deprive him of the protection of the Creator. Similar moments are present in every religion.

Humility is called the main virtue of a man of religion. It is interpreted as the ability not to humiliate yourself in front of arrogant proud people who try to humiliate everyone around and enjoy their goodness, success or strength, but to recognize only the will of the Creator. From the position of spirituality, a person who is aware of his existence is not able to humiliate another. But a manifestation of pride (pride) of religion is also considered a judgment about another as a proud person: after all, in this way a person begins to consider himself better than him. The meaning of humility lies precisely in not making any good or bad judgments about others, leaving it to the judgment of the supreme deity, and pride and pride merge together.

Should you be proud of yourself?

To a secular person, such a position may be incomprehensible. We are brought up in a spirit of constant striving to be better at something: tie your shoelaces more carefully, get an excellent grade in school, get into a prestigious university and get a good job. The presence of the best, modern, expensive things makes a person successful in the eyes of society. Therefore, questions arise about what kind of feeling an arrogant and conceited person experiences: pride or pride owns his consciousness?

Opinions are often expressed that the pride that drives us to gain recognition is not such a bad feeling. Thanks to pride, new technologies are developed, qualifications are acquired in professional activities. For the sake of the moment of experiencing a positive emotion, people are able to work tirelessly.

To get the title of Olympic champion, athletes train to the limit of human capabilities. When one of them achieves a brilliant result, the media and fans repeat only that this is entirely the achievement of the champion. There are also examples of how an insignificant accident leads to injury, and sometimes to the death of an athlete. But these are also the consequences of his pride in his strength or dexterity, the desire to reach even greater heights and get another portion of fame and experience a new bout of self-satisfaction.

Are religions that consider both pride and pride the same mortal sin really wrong? Achieving success in some business, you must always keep in mind the inexplicable fact that not everything depends solely on the efforts of a person. And even in legitimate pride, there can always be a little negative desire to look the best in the eyes of others, surpassing everyone who is not now on the podium.

They will say about someone, they say, proud. Is this good or bad? Is it about pride or pride? Indeed, at an almost subconscious level, Russian speakers feel that the first is good, and the second is bad. It's not "behemoth" and "hippopotamus", which denote one animal, there is definitely a difference, but quite subtle. Those who want to better understand people and express their own thoughts need to understand the nuances of the Russian language, as well as the subtleties of concepts.

In ancient times

In Ancient Greece, for example, people had nothing against pride, but pride, as too self-confident human behavior, was considered a challenge to the gods. They called this concept "hubris". It was believed that there would be retribution for such behavior - luck would turn away from the proud.

Like many things, the Greeks personified pride. She was represented in their myths as the goddess Hybris - "the mother of satiety."

In different languages

It is interesting that foreigners also note the mixing of these words in Russian. In European languages, different words are usually used for these two concepts.

In Polish, the first is "duma" and the second is "pycha". It's funny that in German pride is designated in the same way as the hero of the novel "Oblomov", Stolz, and in French "pride" is superb (something superior). In Serbian, Slovenian and other Slavic languages, there is nothing to be done, pride is “ponos”, from the combination, apparently, “carry yourself”. "Gurur" is pride in Turkish, and pride is "kubir". It is important that the latter is an important word for Islam, because it is believed that it was because of arrogance that Adam committed the first sin, gave rise to all human troubles. In Catholicism, only pride is considered a sin, while Orthodoxy believes that pride is just as bad as pride. Since ancient times, humility has been cultivated in Russia, reaching the point of self-destruction.

one root

From elementary school, a Russian person has been taught to find prefixes and suffixes in words ... The studied words clearly have one root. The same with meaning - one concept, in general. A state in which a person feels a certain detachment. According to the kinesthetic sensation, these are straightened shoulders, good posture, a look slightly from above. Close to this is the state of confidence in something or someone, but always in oneself.

The difference is in the details

There is certainly a subtle difference. The main difficulty is that the adjective "proud" goes back to both words, and here one has to understand the subtle meaning from the context. For example: "She will not call first - proud." Does her pride stop her? He offended her, so she considers herself unworthy of taking the first step, “running” after him, since he does not appreciate her. Or is it a matter of pride? The girl herself is not right, but still wants the other to humiliate herself, “run” after her, take her guilt…

Pride earns the respect of others, but pride is condemned.

It stands for negative superiority. A person is not ready to accept even the most sincere help, does not want to seem weak, repeats: “I myself will figure it out without you.” Offends others. At the same time, he himself may suffer from the inability to “humiliate himself”, to accept something from others. Angry at himself, at others for being so generous and kind.

There is another semantic connotation - also negative. Pride is often based on nothing. There is nothing to be proud of, but a person “builds” out of himself. Here we are talking about arrogance, and there is no true respect for either oneself or others. A person forgets that he has achieved everything, according to common sense, not only himself. He was helped by people, circumstances, experience, weather… the whole world.

We can say that pride is false pride, negative, hypertrophied and groundless. This is a manifestation of selfishness. Pride cannot be experienced "for others", its source is only in one's own exaltation, although sometimes at the expense of others.

different degree

As "generosity" and "squandering", "thrift" and "greed", the studied concepts differ mainly in the degree of manifestation of the trait. Pride is normal and even good, it implies positive emotions, but pride is already condemned overkill, often without reason. That is, even if the pride is positive and legitimate, for example, it crosses the line for one's relative, it also turns into negative pride.

The difficulty lies in the coincidence of the form of the adjective, which makes each time to figure out which concept it goes back to in this context. However, pride and pride are different, if not like black and white, but like white and gray.