Pride & Intimacy

This week, I experienced a profound conversation with my mother and sister, delving into an unexpected topic. Our dialogue evolved around the intricate connection between pride and intimacy.

It's all started by the conversation about 'how do we prepare for death?' Which was my mam's ongoing self-exploration enquiry apparently.

The overall answer was:

Consciously processing the experiences you have not yet processed from your most significant aspects and moments of life.

To be honest, during the conversation, my mom called it a bit differently, I am paraphrasing a bit to simplify the story. In her words it was something like:

-'I need to clean my sins before dying' - she said calmly and frankly.

-'OK, sounds like a cool and exciting journey. And what is your biggest sin that you think you need to tackle first in your-get-ready-to-die strategic plan? ' – I asked.

-'Pride', she answered surprisingly fast and with an astonishing confidence in her voice.

I was so no expecting this. I was seriously shocked and profoundly touched.

This sudden dive into such a profound and vulnerable discussion felt like a supersonic rocket jump into the core wound of our family's soul. For the first time, my mom set her pride aside to open-up about this concept in a raw and intimate way with us.

Why, despite being probably her second name and the most divine superpower, she also considers Pride as her biggest sin? And how exactly will she navigate through the awareness forest of this quite interesting self-exploration about pride?

Now it was getting interesting for me.

She was always very openly proud about her pride. She liked that about herself a lot. She taught us being proud, strong and 'independent' too. It was the main silver-tread in the big scheme of her education system for us.

In the relationship with her, we have learned what the power is, how to hold it and how to use our pride as a tool to efficiently master that power. This is what she revealed was her goal and intention while raising us. She did this, because she believed it was the best way to make us happy in the society, the world we were living in.

She has accomplished this so fucking damn good.

At least for me, I had learned the very tricky and painful power of the magic sword we call Pride from the best. And I did apply those teachings in my life in many ways, consciously and unconsciously. I have hurt others and myself with that sword a lot.

Some wounds are still healing.

...

Thanks to this conversation, I realized I have also survived exclusively, and I found who I am only thanks to the same Pride superpower that my mam has taught me.

So, she was also right, that the way she raised me did help me to become who I am after all. Pride was indeed a very important skill to master on the path towards my own happiness.

So, I guess like everything, this is full of paradoxes concept.

...

I will obviously not go into the personal details of that phone call but let me try to share few insights we come up with during this shared co-sensing and co-evolution process between 3 of us.

...

So, the premise is that we were exploring mainly the pride concept. And the intriguing relationship between Pride and deep needs for authentic human connection. Lack of meaningful intimacy came up as the main source for ongoing contemplation for my mother, and finally I guess for all of us.

I was deeply resonating with this specific challenge as well in my personal life. The choice between pride and intimacy is a very hard one.

I know that at the first layer of thinking, we could tend to believe that obviously intimacy is better than pride. It feels nicer and more lovely. But the funny loop here is, the only way we can build safe, stable, coherent, meaningful and long-term intimacy is by truly mastering our authentic pride power.

So, Pride & Intimacy how those 2 dance together?

...

(Small break.)

It's funny. I just had a small laughing crisis.

Every time I start writing something, I actually have a 'starting point' emotion from which I start to write in order to efficiently and more coherently integrate and digest the insights of that emotion in my own nervous system. In a nutshell, it's a big part of my personal integration process mechanics. And writing is a very simple, enjoyable and wonderful tool to do that.

Anyways. I was using this break to simply share with you that for some reason I don't yet understand, the actual emotional reaction I had while connecting with what I was going to write about this topic, was laughing. Which is funny to me even more. Because it is a serious topic that made me suffer a lot until now and I am usually very poker-faced when I talk about those things, but this time is different.

Somehow, the emotion I have now is filled with more Joy, Bliss, Pleasure and lots of Fun. But well, since I have not yet written the post, I have no idea why I feel this way right now.

Hahahaha.

(End of the break.)

...

So, Pride.

Pride is a sense of one's own proper dignity or value; self-respect.

If you really take time about letting this information sink in your system, you might realize that Life without Pride is actually impossible. But, to create and experience more Life, we need to give up on our Pride. The problem is not here. Most of us are actually very willing to do so and be less ‘proud’ to feel more interconnected and intimate. We all want more intimacy with ourselves, with the other and with the whole.

If only we knew how to deal with our remaining fears and develop a proper sense of trust with each other.

And even if we don’t know how to do that, we all somehow end up giving up our Pride for something bigger than us. I guess, this is also how Love works.

This is where the grief process is actually inevitable. And the actual coherent balance between pride and intimacy depends on how good you are at efficiently mastering those kinds of grief processes.

Because we need to let a part of ourselves 'die' in order to transform our Pride into more Love through a coherent, meaningful and safe cocreation process. This alchemy between pride and intimacy is actually what builds the real authentic trust.

So, the statement about pride being our biggest 'sin' is an interesting one to contemplate.

...

Why Life without Pride is impossible you might wonder.

Hm, to simplify.

The pride ensures the integrity of systemic coherence between any entity and its environment. Hence, the interconnection between any part and the whole is managed, balanced, maintained and structured thanks to the proper functioning of our Pride mechanism.

When we give up our pride completely, we will probably get to our goal of immediate intimacy, but we will also certainty harm ourselves even more in this process. Because giving up the totality of our pride to something without our complete trust is highly unsustainable and potentially very stupid.

...

It's a bit like a cell with a nucleus and membrane. The membrane is actually even more important that nucleus for a cell to be a cell and to have a Life inside. The membrane is the Ego of the cell. The Pride is the superpower of the Ego to ensure that the integrity of what is inside (and outside) survives and thrives.

Pride is also what helps the Ego to expand further and become even more conscious of itself. This shift in consciousness and bigger Ego actually gives us the opportunity to experience the reality even more deeply and more intimately.

If there is no membrane and no ego, it's an open chaotic system. And there is honestly nothing spiritual nor pleasant about wondering in the chaotic void without ego.

Everything is unstable, unpredictable and volatile in an open system where the only natural law that survives is chaos. And no one has control over the chaos, except for the mysterious architecture and engineering of Nature and Life cocreating together.

Life needs the grounding, the stability, the structure and order. Nature is the best 'holding space' that provides all of that. It could be a tree, a bee, a human, a forest. But it needs to be something specific and defined in the matter and physical reality.

Life needs to be contained in a 'closed' system to be experienced and ultimately enjoyed.

Now, this does not mean that Life is like a closed and sealed bottle in the middle of the sea (even if this image would be very funny to explore at some point as a potential worldview, hahaha-ish. It’s a very sarcastic laughing here because it’s actually not funny at all to be honest. Many does have this worldview today and it has devastating results and painful distortions in our shared reality.)

The membrane is actually permeable. Things can get in and get out. There is an efficient exchange between what is inside and what is outside. It can breathe. It can expand and it can contract. It can exchange energy, information and even matter with the exterior and with others. But, to remain coherent over time, something needs to be deciding what gets inside and what gets outside of that membrane.

And the Pride has that function of deciding this in your system.

A closed system does not mean rigidity and permanency. A closed system means having a coherent and wisely structured 'box' in the field of nothingness to have some fun together with other living 'boxes' in a bigger box we call Earth. Nothing actually exists without this concept of imaginary membranes and self-created boxes of perceptions.

So, what does this have to do with the pride?

Pride is a key property of the closed system (or the membrane) that makes sure we don't fucking blow up the entire sandbox of our shared reality in the air.

It's important to understand that when at least one of the subsystems or parts has a completely dysfunctional membrane mechanism because of pride, the entire macro ecosystem is actually in danger.

Yep. This is why nuclear energy, even by being potentially the most sustainable way of maintaining reality today is also the scariest and the most dangerous to play with. Because to produce this kind of energy we actually need to crush the membrane of molecules and atoms. To contain this crush, a very complex system is required. And, most importantly, we need to trust the entire macro container to appropriate hold that explosion.

It's like a small box exploding in a bigger box. But we need to make sure the bigger box is safe enough and we trust it completely. Because if not, things can get messy very fast and very far.

So, in order to create Energy, we need to crush some Ego and actually destroy some Pride in the deep system, but at the same time make sure that the overall container where this crush is happening is safe and trustworthy during the entire process.

And, because building this level of trust is actually very hard and complex, these days, we apparently prefer to blow up the entire Earth instead of our Egos and Fears with our pride superpower. I guess we trust the Universe that much to hold us when we play such dangerous games with our own planet.

I am not sure for you, but I still prefer chilling with trees and animals in my physical body than being just a bunch of dust and chill with stars.

So maybe the Earth is a container we should actually collectively protect, not destroy. Anyways, we are going into the different forest right now. Let’s go back.

…

If there is one part in the nuclear plant that loses its capacity to hold its own 'membrane' with authentic Pride during the explosion, it can have a domino effect, where everything crushes.

The 'sandbox' of the entire nuclear plant or even city might blow up.

This is how important the concept of Pride actually is.

So, scientifically speaking if you lose 100% of your Pride, you will actually 'die'.

Now. Purely scientific reality is boring, and this is why it's not that simple. Because in the truth, it's another paradox. If you don't lose your pride (at least a part of it), you will not know what actual Life is and eventually you will also... die.

So, I guess it does hold some truth finally the fact that the pride is potentially the biggest sin after all.

I don't know about you; I am starting to feel excitingly confused with this train of thoughts.

So.

I can't lose my Pride if I want to survive and live, but the Pride is my biggest obstacle to experience Real Life.

OK. This actually is getting quite interesting, don't you think?

...

One of the key realizations for me during that call was how much our mother actually loved us. Let me explain.

I already rambled a bit too much about my deep mommy’s issues and how much I lucked the tenderness, love, intimacy, emotional safety and relational consistency because of her extremely super powerful sense of pride and prejudice.

I have already been in a reality where I thought my mother did not teach me how to be a 'normal' woman and a part of me was blaming her for my own relational dysfunctions and emotional immaturity. I always knew I was wrong to think this way, but it was easier to blame her then taking responsibility for my own shit and grow up.

But the truth is, the frequency of Love she gave me is beyond the sweetness of emotional ecstasy of our highly sexually intimate coexistence. She might have not shown me how to cultivate the pleasurable deep intimacy with another human being with sweet talks and kisses, but she showed me the path of how to make sure I can have an extended pleasure with consciously unfolding Emergence of Life and with the entire humanity.

She just wanted me to experience Love and Life more fully, more deeply, more widely and wildly.

I just misunderstood her. Her wisdom was not emotional. It was actually deeply physical, and profoundly grounding. She initiated me to something bigger than me, than her and than us. She trusted her inner power to the point where she knew I would be safe and protected anywhere if she can teach me how to never let down my own authentic truth and my sense of pride for no reason.

I was just too blind to see her true Love & Power contribution in my life until now.

Offering this to a child is actually harder than emotional stability and hugs. Not every parent will have the courage and the knowledge to accept this educational challenge for their kids. At least, not to the depth my mother was capable of.

Teaching a child self-reliance, resilience, sovereignty and the cruel beauty of the real world outside is probably one of the most challenging ones to do without deeply traumatizing that child. There is no parent is this world that has a conscious intention to hurt or to traumatize their children. This being said, all parents do.

…

My mother knew the price to pay to teach me the real frequency of the 'embodiment' process. She knew that at some point I might blame her for not loving me enough, for abandoning me or for not hugging me more. But she also knew that I am her child, and I would not be satisfied with the superficial layers of our conditioned and shallow existence. I would need more out of this life. I would need the depth of the real transcendental journey and whole range of multidimensional experiences.

And the only way I would get it was in the wildness of the real world and not under my mam's squirt in the comfort of our house.

This is also Love.

She actually 'scarified' our intimacy and our mother-daughter bond in order to help me better understand how to be more intimate in a larger whole. With more beings. With Nature and Life, themselves.

She did not give me the advice on my personal life challenges and was not by my side when I most needed her, but she encouraged me to connect with something wider and taught me how to ask the Forest and Nature for support instead.

She showed me the limits of human thinking. She said that my own inner fire knows better than the collective conditioning and unhealed wounds of our current society on how to guide me on my journey. I guess this is why I still listen to the fire more than empty words of our corrupted belief system.

She sang to me the melody of the silence that was necessary for me to truly hear the words and the amazingly beautiful song of the entire world.

She didn't clean my tears when I cried my sorrow, but she showed me how to befriend the wind to dry them on my face with its warmth and natural gentleness instead.

She showed me that she is not my Source.

The Earth is.

She showed me that she is not my Creator.

I am.

My playground is not the conditioned 'sandbox' of our reality nor my home or family.

The infinite Space is.

My power is not my Pride.

My Love is my Power.

And I can have the full freedom of choice of how, where and with whom I want to experience my Pride, my Love and my Power in order to have even more fun and pleasure in Life.

….

What all of this has to do with intimacy?

Well. Everything has something to do with intimacy.

One of my favorite ways to describe intimacy is 'see-into-me'.

When you learn to 'see-into-me' truly, your consciousness expends exponentially.

If you deeply 'see' the apple, you will be intimate with it.

If you deeply 'see' your mother, your consciousness will expand to include hers.

Same for any human, object, project, idea, etc.

If you deeply 'see' the entire world and humanity, your awareness might expand to include the Earth into your personal sense of intimacy as well.

And the actual super magic tool to be able to expand your consciousness or include and exclude whatever you want around your intimacy, is your Pride.

And, also, your courageous wildness to completely crush it from time to time. To eventually include even more as a part of yourself. And ultimately to be even more deeply intimate with the whole.

But.

Like in everything there is the opposite to that side of the coin.

Your pride can prevent you of being intimate as well. It can destroy relationships and be literally the biggest and the most pain-in-the-ass 'sin'.

How does pride harm relationships and get us further from intimacy?

When we forget that pride is based on our own dignity and self-respect, and not on the beliefs and opinions of the external reality (or our unprocessed wounds). This is where pride destroys the interconnections instead of making them stronger and more resilient.

When we use the pride to justify our fears and insecurities, it makes us less intimate with ourselves and with others. This what destroys the connection. And ultimately makes us suffer deeply.

When we use the pride to face our own fears to 'see' and 'feel' more of the whole, we actually build more intimacy and coherence with ourselves and with our shared reality.

This is the real magic of being intimate with Pride.