Once there was a time when my life was based on Spiritual and Intellectual Pride. Any thoughts, doctrine, or input that was in contradiction, to my belief was dismissed as folly. If I could find the slightest fault with anything, if I couldn't agree one hundred percent with another's approach I wouldn't accept any of it, my rejection made me feel superior, unfortunately it also kept me in ignorance. They have a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous "There is one principle that will keep man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation, and boy did that apply to me. After my spiritual surrender, a new thought was born in me, there really wasn't much I knew about life, or God. After all what I knew, what I called truth, lead me down a road of desperation, and futility.
I had to become willing to take my life long beliefs, and throw them away. Something happened when I did this, Spiritual, and Intellectual pride left me for the most part, and I became teachable again. In the Tao Te Ching (translation by Steven Mitchell) chapter twenty says "I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty." I laugh with joy every time I read this, herein lies our ability to find Truth. The beauty here is the emptiness of the mind, or better yet non mind. Imagine if you will a warehouse, what part of the warehouse do you store things in? The empty part of course, but if there is no more empty space left then no more can be stored there, and so it is with our beliefs, and our mind, if our mind is cluttered up with beliefs we refuse to let go of, then there is no room for a new realization of Truth. The beliefs we hold on to in our mind may have been truths to us at one time. Truth does not change, but our perception of Truth will, if we are willing to free ourselves from Spiritual, and Intellectual Pride.
It's like looking through a dirty window, at first the images you see are distorted, and you think they're something that they're not. As you clean the window, the images become clearer, until you can see them for what they truly are. Spiritual and Intellectual pride are like sentries at the mind's gate refusing to let anything new in, or anything old out. As long as we let these sentries guard our minds we will remain stagnant. If we want to grow we must be willing to admit we don't know. There must be a changing of the guard, the gates must be opened. I think we all know Truth when we here it, it rings inside us, like someone striking a big gong, but if the gate to our mind and heart is guarded and closed by Spiritual, and Intellectual pride, the truth will never be heard.
© Lester F. Schone, Jr. 1998
Author: Lester F.
Schone, Jr..
Copyright © 1999 [Modern Mystics, Inc.]. All rights reserved.
Revised: February 08, 2003.
