Special and Important —-> Entitlement

Special and Important —-> Entitlement

By Steve Beckow

Posted on September 5, 2024

Credit: Shutterstock

I’m just allowing the ideas to flow because … I can’t stop them!

We spend so much of our life recovering from early childhood trauma and we often do it by reinforcing our own propaganda and that of family and friends, that we are somehow special and important.

Then the moment that we start to believe we actually are special and important, a real pain for other people sets in: Entitlement.

Well, if I’m so damn important, then I must be entitled to this or that.

I’m watching my own entitlement come up. But now I’ve changed my vote from the troll under the bridge to loving kindness. (1) That means that now I’m not donning entitlement as if it’s a suit of armor and striding forth among … I guess, the peons of the world.

Hey, isn’t that the cabal’s territory?

So I’m no longer coming from entitlement. That doesn’t mean entitlement doesn’t go off in me. It does. It means, as Jesus through Pamela Kribbe once described so beautifully, (2) that I can now watch entitlement go off as an objective observer and not latch onto it and ride it to my doom.

I do see the linkage between early assurances of specialness and importance and the rise of entitlement.  Interesting.

We have an additional tool. By now we understand how deeply we need to reach within ourselves to actually change our vote on something.

But we’ve been getting more and more practice as the lovelight energies rise. It’s getting easier and easier to change our vote.

So here, now, again, we change our vote on the notions of importance, specialness, and entitlement.

Let’s consider an alternative for those whom won’t change their vote without having an alternative to go to (optional behavior):

***

I’m again in a flow of ideas. There is no way of connecting this thought with the last. It’s just … next.

The Peter Principle warns us that we can be promoted to our level of incompetence. If you took a writer like me and made me manager of a  department full of writers, you would have promoted me to the level of my incompetence. That would be total foolishness. I’m a writer, not a manager.

I have a new “principle” to add to that:

We … alright, alright … I … often take solutions that work at one level and assume they’ll work at larger and larger levels. I keep expanding and applying them until I reach one where they utterly fail. What works at one level may not work at another.

Hitler’s blitzkrieg worked in western Europe with its network of highways, compact distances, and forgiving weather. But when he expanded it to the whole of Russia east of the Volga, the logistics of it escaped him. He envisioned a war of a few weeks duration before the Soviet state crumbled.  In fact the inappropriateness of his blitzkrieg model in Russia led in large part to his final defeat.

Here’s an example from my humble doings. I speedily produce a compilation of articles in perhaps a day. But in pondering the start-up of what promises to be a very large humanitarian organization, this same addiction to speed will not help me. At that level of creation, speed may not be a desirable feature.  It may cause the whole thing to collapse and fail.

If I assumed it was desirable and tried to speed through the creation of an organization, I might produce a train wreck. I learned that preparing for the last Reval false start.  Seeing this resulted in me focusing in, taking things one step at a time, and alleviating my stress.

For me to be able to go with that level of self-control, I must have made the change of vote from troll to loving-kindness. Otherwise – Bah humbug! – the thought of not speeding wouldn’t even occur to me.

Footnotes

(1) See “Squeezing the Orneriness Outta Me,” July 10, 2024, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2024/07/10/squeezing-the-orniriness-outta-me/

(2) The quote is so long that I’ll reproduce it here rather than in the body of the text:

“There is a third way – a third way to experience your own human emotions. The first way was to totally identify with your anger, as in the previous example. The second way was to crowd it out, to suppress it and to condemn it.

“The third way is to allow it – to let it be and to transcend it. That is what consciousness does. The consciousness of which I speak does not judge – it is a state of being.

“It is a way of observation that is at the same time creative. Now, many spiritual traditions have said: be aware of yourself, that is sufficient. But then you wonder: how can that be? How can the mere awareness of myself bring about change in the flow of my emotions?

“You have to realize that consciousness is something very powerful. It is much more than a passive registering of an emotion – consciousness is an intense creative force.

“Now imagine again that something in the outside world evokes a powerful emotion in you – for example, anger. When you deal with it consciously, you observe it fully in yourself. You do nothing about it, while at the same time you keep observing and watching.

“You no longer identify with the anger, you do not lose yourself in it, you just allow the anger to be what it is. This is a state of detachment, but a detachment that takes great strength, because everything you have learned seduces you into being drawn into your moods, inside the emotion of anger or fear. And to make it more complicated, you also get drawn into judgment about that anger or fear.” (Jeshua: The Third Way,” April 20, 2024, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2024/04/20/jeshua-the-third-way-3/.)

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/

The Way In is the Way Out

The Way In is the Way Out

By Steve Beckow

Posted on April 17, 2024

I received a dressing down two days ago, which was well deserved, which I acknowledged. However, the occasion presented a wonderful opportunity to look at myself and I’ve been doing that ever since.

It’s been very rewarding.

There’s no way I could say what happened without being egregiously self-serving.

I complained at an establishment and got push-back instead.  I was behaving from entitlement.

I decided to really use the occasion to see what it had to teach me.

I heard – and hear – in myself a vocal tone that is and was not right on beam. It was edgy, potentially hostile.  I then recalled that I’m ever on the watch for villains, tracing back to my Dad, the back of whose hand one could never predict.

Never let your guard down, he’d say to me. With him, by age seven, I never did.

You can hear it in my voice. Not like I was aware of it until today.

***

By the law of attraction I drew  someone to me who would mirror me, someone who had as much of a chip on her shoulder as I did.  AND she was the manager (read: Dad, teacher, school principal).

For me, the matter quickly became: How far am I willing to take things? I was not willing to take things any farther. This was not my fight. Not the hill I choose to die on.

But it told me so much about the cycle of conflict, I am down-on-my-knees grateful.

(A) First of all, it showed me that like attracts like. This person facing me was a mirror image of me in some situations.

But it’s never just one universal law that’s operating at a time. It’s all of them.

(B) For instance, the law of karma is operating as well: we reap what we sow; what goes around comes around. I’m meeting my karma, my reflection.

(C) Out of it, I came to see my act as a rescuer and protector. I couldn’t protect Mom when I was 7. I couldn’t save Mom from dying in a housefire when I was 22. Not going to let that one happen again.

I’ve been rescuing and protecting women – and metaphorically chasing firetrucks – ever since.

The rescuing and protecting is neither here nor there.  The Coast Guard does it all the time.  It’s my relationship to what I’m doing that remains unseen, unquestioned.

In common speech we say I’m “run by” a need to rescue and protect.  When triggered, I switch into my resisting, rescuing and protecting persona without blinking an eye. (1)

I could get a job in resisting, rescuing, or protecting. Then I’d be right in alignment with my environment and assignment. Otherwise it’s not a socially productive act.

***

Another thing I noticed was that our bodies after a time mirror our attitude. But I didn’t just get it as a passing idea. I experienced and “got” it.

For example, you can see my skepticism mirrored in my arched left eyebrow. I’m saying, “show me.” Vancouver Sun journalist Alan Fotheringham once said, by age forty, we’re responsible for our own face. You can see large elements of my history in my arched left eyebrow, most visible when I’m listening to someone.

If we’re to understand and escape the cycle of conflict – you and me – we’re going to have to get to know ourselves.

As Sufi sages have said, we don’t become a knower of God (seeming to be out there), until and unless we become a knower of the self/Self (in here).

The way in is the way out.

---

Download There is No Greater Gift than Listening – Vol. 3. Leaving the Cycle of Conflict here: https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/There-is-No-Greater-Gift-than-Listening-V3-Leaving-the-Cycle-of-Conflict-R9-.pdf

---

Footnotes

(1) Remember the silver lining behind a vasana. Now we’re doing what we do automatically; what Werner Erhard called “at effect.” Later, when we see and complete our vasana, we’ll still be left with the skills we gained but we’ll now be, in Werner’s terms, “at cause” with the vasana.

I will still be a rescuer and protector. That has to be part of my mission or I wouldn’t have scripted domestic abuse into my soul contract. But I will now be at cause – that is, at choice with it – rather than being at effect – that is, run by it.

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/