The way pride, arrogance and overconfidence trip us up seems to defy LOA

Not really :)

I would say it's all about the purity of the emotion.

In the same way that yearning is impure excitement (it is excitement with lack attached), arrogance is impure confidence...it is confidence with insecurity attached.

The reason people can differentiate between someone who is arrogant rather than genuinely confident is because they intuitively sense the insecurity underlying the confidence even if the person displaying the arrogance doesn't feel it themselves in the moment.

This might be because they have grown used to feeling that insecurity along with the confidence (see the leather shoes analogy) but it will be their impure physical manifestations that will indicate the presence of it even if they don't realize it is there. Post-physical-manifestational analysis is always valuable for this reason.

Often the arrogant person compensates for their insecurity (whether they are consciously aware of it or not) through "showy" physical actions and it is those actions that often prove annoying to others because they tend to belittle other people (to make up for the arrogant person's insecurity).

I think it is this quality of the arrogant person to be seen to be better than others (to compensate for their insecurity) that makes arrogance a particularly unpopular quality :) If arrogant people didn't try to attract so much attention, perhaps like depressed or guilty people often do, it probably wouldn't have such a bad name :)

It is that insecurity aspect underlying the arrogance that attracts any bad-feeling manifestation, not the confidence aspect, so I wouldn't say that arrogance defies the operations of the Law of Attraction.

While the word "Pride" often falls into the same category as arrogance (i.e. it can have insecurity attached but not always), I personally wouldn't lump overconfidence in the same category as you are doing.

To me, the word "Overconfidence" is really a post-event judgement. If you tried to do something and it didn't work out because your skill level was not good enough to achieve it then you, or others, might label yourself as "overconfident". Perhaps if you were trying to appear confident (but there was insecurity behind it), they might sense it and call you arrogant as well but I don't think it's exactly the same.

Of course, all of these words are just playing with semantics and trying to map words to emotions can be unreliable and inconsistent.

Better to consider just the emotions themselves...

Whatever good-feeling emotion that you are feeling purely will attract purely in accordance with that emotion.

When you make the good-feeling emotion impure by mixing in something bad-feeling - like insecurity, lack, guilt or whatever you label it as - your physical manifestations are going to reflect that impurity also.

Hi Cod2

Other people seem to have analysed quite well the headline part of your question. This is really just a thought in response to your last sentence about wanting to change your behaviour. In astrological terms, I am triple fire so have plenty of my own ego issues i.e. I'm well qualified to comment on this! This is a really simple technique that came from The Pleiadians channelled by Wendy Kennedy.

Basically it requires you to notice your own behaviour, thought patterns and catch yourself when you are thinking egotistically. (If you aren't conscious then the egotistical thought processes run unhindered .... "I owned that person at that encounter", "I'm better than that person because ..." etc) However, at that moment of awareness it would be usual to berate yourself for being egotistical because most of us believe that being egotistical is a bad thing. However, at that moment of self awareness, instead of berating yourself, if you can congratulate yourself for noticing - your focus is then on your own self awareness (the solution instead of the problem). The Law of Attraction will then give you more self awareness instead of more of whatever the problem is. It really is a simple case of focusing on what feels better or in Bashar's terms you are not shorting the circuit with denial (a block) you are letting the energy flow into something that you desire.

For greater self awareness a daily diary habit is also great - you start to see patterns and it can feel really empowering (and quite amusing sometimes) to catch yourself with your ego based stuff and then channel that into something more positive.

It has to be said though that the ego can be a really good thing - it can enable you to deal with the outside world in a really positive and powerful way. Sometimes though we all have to rein it in a bit, in the knowledge that the soul part of us is really in charge.

1) When people FORGET that we are all souls and think that they are merely physical bodies, they begin to be ruled by body senses. 2) In this FORGETFULNESS, people begin to consider others as male and female, feel separated and more important [EGO] than others who are now viewed as mere objects or instruments through which they can satisfy their passion or accomplish their goals. 3) In this EGOISM, they develop LUST (intense desire especially for flesh, or assets, power, fame .... etc.) 4) If met with obstacle, this LUST becomes ANGER. 5) If fulfilled, this LUST becomes ATTACHMENT and GREED both of which will further make one feel more important [EGO]; and cycle of vices repeats with more force finally plunging the world into a moral downward spiral. [In all these five vices, there are negative side-effects: In ATTACHMENT and GREED, one has FEAR of losing what has been accomplished. And if one sees others accomplishing more than himself, ENVY sets in]. Pride or evil is like a knot on a rope, it is not the part of original make-up. When you feel you are more important, evil appears. When you feel at even with others evil disappears. This is the chemistry of pride.

Pride and overconfidence are matters of Ego. I think when a person is awakened the individual shall no longer need to be prideful or even full of arrogance. The person whom becomes enlightened shall walk confidiently but not be overconfidient because there is always progression. A good reading is this I shall share one of my cherished things from Mabel Collins'"link text

If not just google light on the path. She covers it and to date it still helps me with matters of ego.

You said:

The way pride, arrogance and overconfidence trip us up seems to defy LOA. Here I am, thinking myself invincible, marveling at how I just owned someone [emphasis mine] at some encounter, wondering if I am indeed the greatest person ever born ---- suddenly BAM, I am brought back to the ground...

I really do not believe that the Law of Attraction is about thinking yourself "invincible", and it definitely is not about "owning people". I am guessing from your puzzlement that perhaps you are not really understanding what kind of frame of mind brings positive results in Manifesting. I am no expert at all on the LOA- that is perhaps more @Stingray 's milieu. But I do know that humility and a sense of happiness and joy bring much more satisfaction to life than arrogance and/or overconfidence. In fact, we aren't supposed to expect anything one way or another when manifesting. It is this absolute disengagement from the results which brings results.

Your frustration at this lack of success tells me that perhaps you are not really in a good place when you are trying to more forward. You must be in a good place to get to a better place. "Pushing" the results i.e, hanging onto the desire, tells me that you must be pushing for the good stuff to come. But if you are pushing, then aren't you really in a state of anxiousness about the outcome? And look, insecurity and powerlessness are on the EGS.

Here is what Stingray wrote in the Manifesting Box Experiment:

It's the same with writing requests. The things you ask for when you are unhappy will be different to the things you ask for when you are feeling happy. And often, those unhappy things are not going to make you happy even if you get them. Vibrationally speaking, you can't reach a happy destination from an unhappy journey.

I have often seen myself "pushing" for results...and each time, I can track that pushing back to fear and insecurity! I am never going to get anywhere with Manifesting if I am coming from this negative position. When I do, I always fail. People sense when I am pushing, and they resist me.

I have thought about your question all day. I have had to think of it in terms of what I have been taught about these feelings. You are looking for them on the Emotional Guidance Scale, and have not found them there. If you dig deeper into yourself, you may find that you are indeed afraid. If you try to lose the fear, and instead, detach from any results, you may have better luck.

I would go back and read more about Manifesting, links to which can be found on @Stingray 's user page.

Isn't it interesting that I have to be happy in order to get more happiness?

Good luck,

Jaianniah ♥

perhaps our accomplished
self-awareness allowing
accurate pre-reflections,
makes this individual

Law of Attraction misses one very important part. Yes, it says that you must believe that you aready have what you want to attract, but it completely misses the point of the purpose of beliefs.

Beliefs serve us in many ways. One is that we use them to manifest, but the other is that they serve as a compass pointing to mistaken beliefs. The biggest mistake that our culture has - the one that is the core of all of our social problems - is the belief in spiritual inequality (good v. evil).

We are all energy creatures. Energy isn't unequal. We operate at different frequencies, but one frequency is no better than or worse than another. when you get that, you can no longer see yourself as wiser or more stupid than another. You are simply in different places in the mindscape.