THE HUBRIS TRAP

Hubris (Greek) - overweening pride or overconfidence; arrogance.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.

One of the inevitable pitfalls on the path to enlightenment and spiritual freedom is the Hubris Trap. This specific trap may well be the reason Buddha spoke his creative Word of "no-self." It is also the reason why many religions (esp Christianity) stress humility.

It happens to a student like this:

The student starts out as an ordinary Human person, a meat body walking around at the mercy (or lack of it) of a violent universe. There's nothing quite like thinking oneself to be a fragile organism to create a sense of mortality and insecurity.

Then the student discovers that he really is an immortal spirit. I don't mean reads about it, and "understands" it. I mean he KNOWS he is a spirit and not a body. That's quite a relief! He feels much better and keeps studying and practicing his exercises/solo auditing. Soon he finds that his understandings have turned to knowledge, to CERTAINTY. Another student may speak of a difficulty, and our first student finds himself teaching.

He becomes really, really expert. He teaches large numbers of students, publishes his wisdom in a series of books/websites, councils/audits the lame and halt to throw away their crutches, and pretty soon he's damnsure he's hot shit -- because he gets 130 emails a day telling him he's hot shit, gets snailmail letters from as far away as Pluto, and beautiful young girls want to meet him.

Before long he starts thinking he's extremely hot shit.

He is THEE being! Thee BIG BEING. The MAN. The DUDE. All eyes are turned to him. He has become SOURCE for thousands of worshippers. All wisdom flows from him and if something didn't flow from him, why then it must not be wisdom!

Sound familiar?

Sure it does, here's some examples: Sun Myung Moon, David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard.

In case #1, what the hell possesses this fool to think he has a right or obligation to marry thousands of couples to one another who have never even met before?

In case #2, David abused his influence on teenage girls by marrying them himself. Not as huge a misdeed as this sexually aberated society makes it out to be, but definitely it was a selfish disregard for public relations!

In case #3, Ron was well known for abusing almost everyone around him on board ship, being more of a tyrant than could be believed, given the brilliance of his knowledge of the mind. If he thought John McMaster should be in the water alongside the ship, he should have moved to behind John's head, become John and jumped overboard! Not order him thrown over the side by the crew. And let's not even go into him assigning all source to himself, now there's some REAL arrogance!

The worst thing is that hubris stops the spiritual student cold. There is no further progress made by a person who is enforcing a Self which cannot tolerate an effect upon it by others. Such a person gets no case gain from any further counciling. They won't allow it, because they won't allow another person to be Cause, Source, etc.

I know what I'm talking about here, I personally plowed face first into hubris about four years ago. I started thinking I was hot shit. I had to keep reminding myself that I was no bigger, no different than any other person. But I was also educated enough to recognize it as a trap, so I kept digging, didn't treat it as an end phenomenon of a process called "Point to God" (joke) or any such foolishness.

I recently (8/30/00) ran across an internet conversation between Ralph Hilton and Ken Ogger on this very subject. I would be very remiss if I didn't include it here:

Ralph posted the following question -

> I don't perceive that anyone on XXXXX or who is running a "Clearing
> tech" group is fully able to grant beingness to terminals of
> comparable magnitude. Sometimes it seems to me that some actually
> believe that there aren't any. Perhaps there are exceptions. I have
> yet to meet one. I met a few in EST but never isolated the key factor
> that Werner partially resolved and Hubbard didn't seem to get close
> to. Nor, obviously, a way of translating it into Scientologese.
>
> I've been looking for a simple approach to this factor. Any ideas?
 

It does seem to be a common denominator of tech finders who
evolved through Scientology rather than on some other line.

Note that it is common but not always present in gurus in other
fields such as science or computers.  So it is possible that
Werner was simply getting the usual percentage of humble vs
arrogant geniuses.

In Scientology, on the other hand, it takes tremendous arrogance
and certainty of self to even dare to question the most trivial
thing that Hubbard said.  So only the arrogant even begin
to think for themselves.

I'm probably just as bad on this line as Alan or Michael.
But I think it is very dangerous.  So I keep reminding myself
of Hubbard and how he ended up.

During the 1952-4 time period, he moved with a speed and depth
that was just fantastic.  But he got too full of himself and
stopped listing [listening?] to others.  And eventually he just went solid.
There are hardly any new ideas after 1954, it is mostly just
refinement, better ways to run the same things, rather than
further advances in basic theory.

You can't go it alone.  You've got to listen to others.  You've
got to accept others ideas as well as your own.  We cover each
other's weak spots.

And the real game is to figure it all out and set ourselves
free.  It is not a game of one-upmanship.  We shouldn't be
competing for the staring role in "The Battle of the Service
Facs".

Thanks again,
The Pilot

Finally I made it behind/beyond hubris. I found that I was all other spirits, all other beings. This was much more than being someone else's body (that's a rather limited view of pan-determinism). I had found my way to static and discovered there that there was/is only one being, which has multiple separate consciousnesses, each consciousness with one or more points of view. Each consciousness refuses to be the others, which keeps us separate as individual spirits.

This lie of separation from static is one of the most fundamental basics, very close to the mythical "basic-basic" so sought after. A narrow clinging to "self" creates all games conditions, and especially the overt/motivator sequence. Relinquishing "self" allows the person to forgive, both others and themselves. In one of his messages Ken Ogger remarked:

Christ was right. Forgiveness is one of the keys to getting out of the trap.

Once a person sees the unity at Static, it becomes the easiest thing in the world to forgive. For the other person is you too. An outstanding article on this subject by Flemming Funch: DYNAMIC 8.

From that perspective I turned and looked back at hubris with, first horror, then great amusement. The whole idea of promoting a "self", a personality as the "Great One" is a joke. It is like a toddler insisting upon its red toy and no other toy will do. How can I be better than you, if I AM YOU? Any toy will do. Want to be Source? Alright! Let's have you be source this week! Next week we'll have someone else originate wisdom. It doesn't matter who it's coming from, Hubbard, or Jesus, or nameyourprophet is no more source than you are. All you have to do is originate it, and it doesn't need to originate from your body. It could just as easily be spoken for you by a four year old girl with a dirty face and a ring of chocolate around her mouth. Yes: out of the mouths of babes.

We are all god/static/insertholiestwordhere. Arrogant surety of being hot shit is a partial truth, but the being who is such hot shit is looking out of every pair of eyes you meet -- not just out of the mirror...

Ouran
 
 

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