Vachon Imagined

Pride is any pattern, thought, idea, or belief about yourself that you will not let go of. It is the wall between you and creation, between you and everyone else. It is the thing that cannot receive truth because it is too busy defending what it already believes.

Pride destroys relationships because human beings struggle to forgive without memory, to allow without defense. By our own nature, we cling to what we know. When people speak, you can often hear the beliefs they carry. When I was younger, I would frequently say, “My grandfather says…” before repeating a phrase or conviction I had learned from him. My mind was living in the past, projecting yesterday onto tomorrow.

You’re off the hook. That is simply what the singular mind—what pride—does.

You see it whenever people say, “God says,” “The Bible says,” or even “Yoda says.” These can be wonderful guides, but peace does not come from clinging to another person’s certainty. It comes through letting go of the mind that needs certainty in the first place.

The Bible, like all books, may contain truth, but it should not be mistaken for Truth itself. Every book enters a world already fixated on itself, a world eager to preserve, defend, and worship its own conclusions. Instead, we can learn to receive life as it is—living, changing, and unfolding—not as something permanent to be held, stored, and magnified until it becomes God.

Nothing in form is everlasting.

When we remember that pride is yesterday projected onto the present and the future, we begin to see relationships differently. It is rarely adultery, alcoholism, lying, cheating, or any particular act that destroys them. Those things may wound, but pride is what prevents healing. Pride is the inability to recognize ourselves honestly, to humble ourselves, to acknowledge our own blindness so that we may acknowledge and receive others as they are.

When the mind grows quiet and the body is no longer consumed with protecting itself, this becomes easy. Compassion arises naturally. Forgiveness follows without effort.

But when the mind remains active and defensive, people pay a price they were never meant to pay. They suffer for identities that were never permanent, protecting a body that was never meant to stay.

And all the while, life waits patiently on the other side of pride, asking only to be received.