Statues of Pride and Arrogance

Arrogance is but an engorged tumor encumbering our souls. Don’t our shortcomings and mistakes originate from polluting our souls with our own hands and thus weaving thick layers of disease that blot out our souls’ light? Muhammad Bakır (rahmatullahi alayh) once said, “A person’s lack is as much as the arrogance in his heart.” Is it possible for a person aware of the deplorable nature of arrogance to not agree with this statement? 

“The infinitely small have a pride infinitely great,” said Voltaire. Pride is the castle of those who lack self-confidence. Pride is a struggle to hide one’s personality by one who has not yet attained a mature character. Pride is the vain struggle to cast long shadows showing oneself bigger than they are and attempting to cover up their flaws.

In moral psychology, one of the main reasons for pride to exist is to be unaware of one’s weakness. As with most cases of this vainglorious perception of the self, people afflicted with this disorder are caught up in an illusion of self-grandeur due to their wealth or status and ignore the authority of Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) and His walis. By doing so, they are effectively trying to establish themselves as the authority in a bid to place themselves as high on a horse as possible.

Their overbearing, patronizing attitudes feed their aggressive instinct. The existence of sycophants who are always around them and seem as if they are obedient to their commands gives them the feeling of being lauded for the self-importance they parade themselves with. This delusion works up their pride to astronomical proportions and deepens the unconscious existential vacuum they already suffer from.

How remarkable a statement this sentence of Cemil Sena Ongun is: “Do not suppose that poplar trees are valuable because of their sheer form and towering height. All arrogant, fruitless, and shadeless creatures’ heads sway high in the clouds.”

The dungeons of pride

Pride is a common ailment for a lot of people in this day and age. People suffering from this self-aggrandizing disorder are often absorbed in vigorous attempts to prove that they carry greater weight and hold more value than others. If they could be made aware of their situation and endowed with a sight that would let them see the aberrant nature of their demeanor as perceived through the eyes of another, even they would not like the depiction such a sight would provide. However, they mask their real personalities by building walls between themselves and others just so that they can keep up the facade. 

They use these walls as a buttress to preserve their disingenuous personalities. Year by year, they thicken these walls of feigned identity due to the fear they might collapse and lay their true self bare for all to see. This is such a vicious cycle that, one day, they might actually grow tired of the walls they so eagerly surrounded themselves with because these walls cut them off from the rest of the world; so they live out their lives in a self-inflicted solitude—without opening themselves to another human being as their actual, genuine selves. For a proud person, wearing their heart on their sleeves is not an option.

Prideful and arrogant people close their windows to others, the world, and, ultimately, eternity. Because they imprison themselves in their own minds, their ego inflates like a balloon pushing its limits, always dragging around the pent-up pressure that threatens to explode.

Relation between pride and success

One of the triggers of pride is success. Success feeds pride, and yet, pride is ironically the most prominent obstacle blocking the way for a person to attain achievements. Despite this stark contrast between the two concepts, somehow, people can still be proud when rewarded with success at the end of a task or endeavor. Therefore, people can be proud of today’s successful outcomes without thinking about how pride can wreak havoc on the road leading to future achievements.

The types of success we mentioned earlier are not limited to gaining material benefits, status, or positions of authority. A less conspicuous but far more dangerous kind of pride stems from succeeding in religious fulfillment, such as worship, prayer, and dhikr.

If someone gets up to perform salatu’l-fajr, looks outside to check other windows in the neighborhood, and realizes the privilege of getting up early for prayer, they may think, “People are sleeping, but I am gaining in the sight of Allah Almighty by worshipping.” However, by entertaining such thoughts, they secretly feed the festering arrogance in their heart. This is the exact opposite of gaining. 

There is a distinct difference between feeling sadness in one’s heart for people who do not perform salah and needing to advise them and building an enormous monument to one’s own pride by having a condescending view of other’s sins or laxity in religious duties. The first is obviously the type of attitude befitting a believer, whereas the second is allowing one’s nafs to have pride in succeeding in doing something others did not.

Believers are excellent examples with their personalities and lives. They should embody high values such as dignity, benevolence, truthfulness, and a trustworthiness that inspires a sense of safety in others and lets them know that they will not come to harm either by their hand or by their words. We should not forget that a believer must be dignified but not arrogant. He must be honorable but not prideful. He must be modest and not haughty. Indeed Rasulullah (alayhissalatu wassalam) stated: “One will not enter Paradise if one has a mustard seed’s weight of arrogance in his/her heart.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Birr, 61). Dignity, honor, and modesty are admirable traits of believers.

Difference between pride and dignity

Awareness of this distinction matters more than an initial comparison of the definitions of these words reveals. Otherwise, we can misjudge a dignified person as being prideful. 

As it’s commonly known, when the first human being was being created, Shaytan stated: “He said, "I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay.” (Sad, 76; Al-A’raf, 12). Therefore, he belittled the creation of mankind and thought himself superior. Conversely, being dignified means standing against abasement, having confidence in oneself as a believer, and being honorable.  

A dignified person has nobility and has attained peace within themselves by living a steadfast life. The depth of civility they have embraced and internalized within their soul determines the fundamental boundaries of their nobility. 

A person of noble character has a world of their own where they live safe and sound. In such a situation where a person has established their social world within a host of larger, peripheral worlds surrounding it, understanding each layer to be an independent space of its own and adeptly situating his world in an appropriate position within such a platform of civilization is vital. The individual in question can’t be said to be guided by pride simply because they lead a social life and are moderating their relationships within honorable and principled boundaries without feeling indebted to anyone.

The windows of a dignified person’s world are open to everyone. Such a world is spacious enough to welcome all who come to its threshold and gentle enough to comfort and soothe all who seek relief in its vast expanses. The ability to look through these windows and see the beauties of this world, even entering it, requires being in the same capacity and depth as that person or at least taking a step towards encapsulating similar qualities within one’s inner world.  

How can we rid ourselves of this internal malformity?

Starting with Hacı Bayram Veli’s (quddisa sirruhu) wise words, “Arrogance is like a stone which is tied to your waist, you can neither swim with it nor fly,” we can make progress towards moral and spiritual maturity by trying to get rid of the heavy stones that we tie to our waists with the words we utter and behaviors we exhibit to inflate our pride. 

How can we open the door and run to our freedom when we are trapped in a prison of our own making with the honeyed words we whisper to our pride despite the occasional sigh of frustration our conscience manages? 

The Turkish poet İbrahim Şinasi once said, “A small hill thinks itself a mountain in lowlands.” First, we should be conscious of our knowledge, love, and practice of worship, how well we can meet the criteria set forth by divine revelations in our social relations, and whether we are winning people’s hearts in the end. Crossing the perilous stretch of ground in this journey of self-realization, we may lose our footing and take a hard fall if we consider ourselves sufficient or free of flaws at any point.

Yes, we can build a small hill with our existence and good deeds. Still,  remembering historical and current examples, it becomes immediately apparent that many mountains dwarf the most outstanding hills we can raise and serve as reminders to help us with giving up our pride. If we read biographies of the prophets and the revered awliya, we can come to the humbling realization that we have no true merit to justify even a sliver of pride we may have afforded ourselves. We must compare ourselves with people greater than us to see how we have a long road to walk both in the journey to purify our inner world and human relations.

If we, too, attend to our nafs to create our own shadow by billowing our pride, at that moment, the sun will not rise; its light will fall short of us because of the ominous shadows that cast us in their grim image as much as we cast them. To extricate ourselves from the dark, gloomy firmament of shadows, we must be able to rise to the level of a being without one rather than try and stand ever taller in the hopes of outgrowing them. In other words, living without shadow is purifying oneself from the effects of the nafs as a result of receiving special training under the guidance of a wali. We can reach this level with the humility that the blessed awliya have taught for centuries. This is how to avoid transgressing against the righteous and rightful order of existence. 

We should not forget that no matter how high the mountain is, the road passes over it. Do not aspire to be a mountain; never give in to pride! Be a road that carries other travelers to their destinations, and you will find that your meandering path will eventually lead you over the mountains.

Ahmet Alemdar