The Faces of Pride. What are they?

Many people still don't think about what pride is, what causes it, and what the signs are that it has already taken hold in the soul and begun the collapse of health and destiny, numerous losses, and misfortunes. Pride arises when the need for love and faith in God disappears. A person who has lost the need for unity with the First Cause is like a tree that refuses its roots. Its crown may still appear lush for a while, but the tree is already dead.

There are many faces of pride, and as diverse as our lives are, so unexpectedly can the phenomenon of pride appear. We are used to a simple definition: pride is superiority, arrogance, contempt for people.

But excessive self-abasement is also pride. A person who thinks poorly of themselves or is dissatisfied with the world around them does not even suspect that they are intensifying their pride and creating many problems for themselves. And someone who selflessly helps people, but then, carried away, begins to corrupt them with this help, doesn't even realize that their wrong behavior is reinforcing pride in themselves and others.

The cause of pride is attachment to the world. The more we attach ourselves to various aspects of existence, the faster we forget that the source of our life is the First Cause, with whom we connect through love in our soul. Greed, envy, lack of restraint, complexes of superiority and inferiority, worship of prosperity or certain ideas – all these are signs that our soul, forgetting about love, is drawn to pleasure, and an imperceptible process of losing the main meaning of our life begins.

To cure a disease, you need to diagnose it correctly. To overcome pride, you need to understand how it arises and forms.

God is one; He is the source of everything. The positive and negative in our world exist according to laws. On the Divine level, everything is one, and the outside world is diverse. When a person can think dialectically and love lives in their soul, allowing them to be independent of both happiness and unhappiness, then they begin to overcome their pride, understanding that life, instincts, desires, and everything we have are only means for our development and knowledge of the Creator.

The more we understand and feel the danger of pride, the more we change our character for the better every day, learn to love, forgive, educate ourselves and others, the happier we truly become, not overshadowing the soul with external varieties of happiness.

Seraphim of Sarov said, «Acquire a spirit of peace, and thousands of souls will be saved around you». By saving our soul and improving our character, we can help not only ourselves, not only our children and grandchildren but all of humanity.

S.N. Lazarev, «The Faces of Pride»