January 16, 2010
Self Righteousness and how it takes its form in our lives…
Self righteousness has so many ways that it operates… It operates with the deep need to be right all the time… A deep need to tell people what we know… A need to correct people… A need to tell people things that they do that they never even asked us about… We have the need to have the last word in a conversation… It’s Self-righteousness operating when we give a cold shoulder as a punishing act… I am punishing you because you did this wrong and that wrong to me… Any time we emotionally abuse someone we do this with a self-righteous demeanor and stance of why we did it… That’s self-righteousness: Self is the authority for our lives.
Think about self-righteousness and how distasteful it is in our lives. How we can see it? Lets say there’s a pressure group, like you’re in a 12-Step meeting and people get up and say I think this is the greatest 12-Step meeting in the world. “This is the only place you can be if you want real recovery. I have been to a lot of meetings and this is the best meeting, there are no meetings like this one. If you really believed that there would be no need to keep saying it over and over again… It’s that self-righteousness that is proclaiming this… It’s the attitude of “we’re right and everybody else is wrong”. Inside, the real worry and concern is, you have to do this to get the message, you have to sell it and throw it in peoples face… I have to sell myself on the things that I’m telling you I believe in… That is the epitome of self-righteousness, when we have to sell ourselves to someone on something we don’t even know if we really believe in, but if we can convince you of what were trying to believe, then we’ll truly believe, too. This is just the faulty form of self-righteousness.
In personal relationships, there is no room for this attitude… You have to be a partner… We’re looking for self-righteousness in any area in our lives where we feel the need to be right, have the last word, or have our part. Stop Self… The way to do this is, back off, pay attention with other people, and let them have their say, with out having to add to it. If you hear people proclaiming: This is the new vitamin it will make you have so much more energy. Or, this face cream, it takes ten years of your face; it’s the greatest thing in the world… I heard this new message… or this new church… this new band… I know! I could of come up with something better than this… Oh! you have to go to this gym everybody works out there who’s anybody… Always this kind of stuff about how “this is the best place.” We don’t have to tell everyone what he or she needs to do… We shouldn’t feel the need to convince everyone of what we’re doing being the best thing to do.
Look out for extreme individuality… That’s where self-righteousness comes in and makes our world real small… Your life always narrows down real small with a lot of pain… We find ourselves only looking at personalities in life and we have an opinion about everyone and everything we see… This is called the juggernaut of self-will… It’s my personality, only looking at what I want. It’s so small-minded. Self-righteousness is exactly what authorizes us into deep depression; we’re the only ones that exist when we’re having a bad time… We don’t see anyone else’s troubles, we only see our own.
It operates in so many ways… So, ask God to help you see self-righteousness and be ready to have God to take it from you… Without reluctance, just let it go… Say, “I don’t need to be right.” Ask God to show you how it operates in you. You may see it in some of the ways written here, look for it in your day treat it, now! Don’t let it go undetected. Ask God to show you how to do that, it’ll come to you exactly where your self-righteousness operates, how it operates in you and how you can disengage from it. The liberty is this, when I don’t act in self-righteousness, the world doesn’t get small anymore… Always think of the bigger picture in life, “Self cannot see Self” But God can…
If you want to know that you are no longer in Self Will, just ask yourself this simple question: “Am I at one with everything around me right now?” Isn’t it strange that the one true act of self is to be one with everything.
Much love,
K.C.
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Photo Credit: Jamie Harris