The Delicious Sense of Arrogance
El Delicioso Sentido de Arrogancia
A reflection on the allure of illusion, the beauty of irresponsibility, and the irreversible shift that comes with choosing reality.
The Delicious Sense of Arrogance
A reflection on the allure of illusion, the beauty of irresponsibility, and the irreversible shift that comes with choosing reality.
You can also see this as developmental. The human body-mind has its way of working, and there is a natural process of going into illusion and then coming out of it. But there is something of an adventure in the pretending to be something. It is like a child who believes in Santa Claus. There is a beauty to that. There is a beauty in not having responsibility.
The fun of victimhood
To experience life as "this is happening to me, I have no choice," or "I'm in illusion and I can't figure out how to get out of it," has a certain kind of fun. It happens to be a position of irresponsibility. It is the position of the victim, and not in a negative sense. "This is happening to me. I don't have an option. I'm trying to stop it and I can't." That is a position. It is an interpretation. It is a perspective. And it happens to be the position of being the victim of our experience, and therefore not responsible for it.
Freedom in the pointing
What I am saying is that you can experience this pointing as difficult or critical or judgmental, or you could experience it as freeing, because it points to an alternative. It is actually saying: it is up to you. But I also say that I respect the free choice of living an illusion, and I think it is a valid choice, because eventually you are going to choose otherwise.
Something has to go when we choose reality, and it cannot come back. So I might as well embrace what is here.
The flavor of illusion
I used to describe it as the delicious sense of arrogance: the feeling that I can relate to everything through my will, that I owe it to nothing and to no one, that my will is fully independent and autonomous. "I am the origin of my life and my choices. My experience. Yes, I was born from something, but since then it is me, fully independent." That is the flavor of the perspective of illusion. The delicious sense of arrogance.
What cannot return
Once that falls away, you cannot get back to it. You can play with it theatrically, in the way a human being plays a role. But you can no longer buy into it or experience it as real. There is no longer any sense that "I" am the origin, or autonomous, or independent, or the creator of anything in the way it felt before, when it was simply this body and mind claiming ownership of it all.