Quiet Arrogance

The root cause of our psychological and emotional “headaches” can be summarized in one word: arrogance. But the kind of arrogance that I’m speaking about isn’t a loud and obvious form of arrogance, it’s a much softer, quieter and more insidious form of arrogance. “Quiet arrogance” is more covert and therefore far more dangerous to a person than the more open and blatant forms of arrogance are because quiet arrogance works  its stealthy way into a person’s psyche in a way that can completely by-pass his emuna.

The arrogance that makes us upset and angry and even fearful is the arrogance of expecting that the world should run according to our demands. We bristle when things don’t go our way and according to our expectations. In short, we lack the emuna to believe that G-d has a better reason than we can fathom for things to be happening exactly the way they are happening. The tiles that you picked for the kitchen look “awful.” Someone was ready to invest money in your idea and backed out at the last moment. The “wonderful” match that you found for your daughter was suddenly broken off with no logical explanation as to why.

Arrogance feeds on our belief that we possess “the truth.” Before we speak or act with arrogance we are under the delusion that our perceptions are the only correct way of viewing the situation. Our attention narrows, at that moment, and with tunnel vision we are only seeing that which we want to see. At that moment, we forfeit our power to see a much wider emuna-field of possible explanations, and reasons and necessities for why something cannot go in the way that we want it to go.

Not only does the arrogant person believe that he is the sole possessor of the “the ultimate truth,” but he deems it to be his solemn duty to show his “ignorant” contemporaries the errors of their ways. On a deeper level, though, the arrogant person is actually afraid that he will die without his arrogance.

Please allow me to explain…

Arrogance whispers into a man’s mind and says: “You know you are really nothing without me. Face up to the facts: no one could ever really love you or respect you the way you are. You are inherently so pathetic and weak.  Let me speak for you and then people will respect you and even envy you. I’ll make you invincible and great. You will be superior and enjoy a vindictive triumph over all those who tried to keep you down.”

Now here’s how with a bit of emuna coaching we can turn that arrogant voice on its head…

“Let’s go back to that (arrogant) voice and listen to it again, only this time centered in an emuna-state-of-mind. Just play the voice back very slowly at one fifth its original speed.”

In an emuna-state the person hears the exact content of the voice but G-d changes the meaning of the voice to the person in a very dramatic way…

For example:

When the voice says “You are nothing without me” the person smiles with feelings of positivity and optimism. The person’s emuna is telling him that if he will have “nothing” to do with his arrogant ego anymore that he will surely succeed. His emuna is telling him that if he will make himself “nothing” to this arrogant demonic voice, then “he will become part of the greatest ‘Something’ that there is” namely G-d Himself (and what could be better than that!)

In Hebrew, the holy language, we spell the word “I” and the word “nothing” with the exact same letters but just rearranged in a different order. The main difference is that in the word for “I”, ani (in our case, the arrogant ego) the letter yud (which stands for G-d) is at the end or “outside” of the word.  But in the word for nothing, ayin, G-d’s letter (the yud) is placed right in the middle of the word. In other words, when we become “nothing” to the arrogant ego that separates us from G-d, then G-d comes back center stage into our lives.

The antidote to arrogance is emuna. When we live in a state of emuna we always feel G-d in our center. We feel His love guiding us to think, feel, speak and act in the right ways. Gone are the psychological “headaches” of the past and we move confidently and happily into a bright future.