A Divine Light Struggling Inside This Flesh Machine
4/13/20261 hr
Underneath every arrogant person is a frightened one. That's the insight Desmond Tutu — Nobel Peace Prize winner and moral architect of post-apartheid South Africa — pointed us toward: arrogance doesn't come from too much self-love. It comes from too little self-knowledge. It's the mask we wear when we can't bear to feel small. And the pendulum swings — from "I am the greatest" to "I am worthless" — and back again. Neither is true. In this episode Raghunath returns from a week working with a recovery community in Dayton, Ohio, where men coming off the streets were asked one simple question: who are you...
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First 90 secondsKaustubha Das· Host0:00
We're in this weird place in the world now, maybe more acutely than, than at other times where, like, arrogance is either... Sometimes we kind of, like, admire it, you know?
Raghunath· Host0:10
Sure.
Kaustubha Das· Host0:11
People come on- It can come off sort of as confidence and discerning. Yeah. And, and, and it can play to our lower nature, uh, so we get behind the arrogant person. [lips smack] Um, but also it's actually the most repulsive thing, you know, arrogance in someone. It, it's a real turn-off. And, um, you mentioned that if we can understand it this way, that it can help us be sympathetic towards the arrogant person. And I think, you know, that must really play out a lot in, in 12-step recovery, right? Where, like, this person's gone and offended everyone in their life. [chuckles] And, uh... Or, or let them down in some way. But, but a lot of times, you know, addiction can play out in, in types of arrogance, and then you're saying then the pendulum swings.
Raghunath· Host0:57
Mm.
Kaustubha Das· Host0:58
But that, that person's sponsor has to be the person that says, "I understand you." [chuckles] Right? Like- Right ... I under- I understand that you're not arrogant, and I understand that you're not the image of yourself when you're feeling that self-loathing.
Raghunath· Host1:09
Mm.
Kaustubha Das· Host1:10
I, I understand who you really are 'cause I've been there myself, and I recognize what it's like to be controlled, um, by one's... We, we would s- In, in the yogic, you know, from a yoga perspective, we say controlled by your mind, right? Controlled by your senses, controlled by your mind.
Raghunath· Host1:25
Controlled by your passions, your lower chakras, you know.
Kaustubha Das· Host1:27
Yeah. That... Yeah. Yeah. We might say passions is maybe something