affection. But if she discovers that she is being manipulated by certain
people, she will absolutely explode and will be capable of arousing
resentment towards them. Although apparently she does not seek
reward for what she does, she still does not respond well to ingratitude,
in other words, when she does her utmost to help someone and she
receives blows in return.
For this reason, the manifestations of pride break out when the proud
spirit suffers an incidence of ingratitude or disaffection. Faced with
misfortunes and hurt feelings, the proud react by going inside
themselves, isolating themselves from human relationships. Then rage,
fury, impotence, stubbornness, fear, guilt are aroused. The proud tend
to hide their feelings and emotions, through fear of expressing what
they feel, for fear of being hurt in their deepest feelings. On the one
hand the proud repress their negative feelings because they do not
want to be worthy of pity, or that people see them as being weak and
take advantage of their weakness to hurt them. On the other hand,
they repress their positive feelings because they do not want vain
people's envy to be aroused and try to harm them. The tendency to
repress positive feelings makes them feel miserable. The tendency to
repress themselves, hide negative states of being and suffer in silence
can make them flare up in anger, rage and fury at specific moments,
after which they feel guilty later. The attitudes that most isolate the
proud from others are their mistrust of others and their belief that they
are self-sufficient to deal with any problem.
What is the most damaging manifestation of pride?
Believing that we are not worthy of receiving love, of being truly loved,
and therefore, it is not worth loving either. This is the attitude which
most makes the proud isolate themselves, which can transform them
into reserved, apathetic, timid, sad, melancholic, irascible individuals,
without the desire to live.
If we have said previously that vain spirits are unable to appreciate
when they are loved, proud spirits do not allow themselves to be
loved. So for one reason or another, the result is that through the fault
of this defect, most people, being able to be loved, do not feel loved.
The vain, because rather than receiving feelings, are expecting their
egoism to be satisfied. The proud, through shutting themselves off in
order to avoid being hurt, refuse to receive any show of affection
towards them.
Let us give the example of the behaviour of a man in the pride stage. It
may have been that since childhood he has had to do everything in
order to be paid a little attention and for this reason he has convinced
himself that there is no better way, which he cannot be loved by