Real Self is Happy to Be Humble

smcculley
Apr 8
3 min read

Real Self is Happy to Be Humble

Humility is an attitude or characteristic that is essential for taking one of the first steps in searching for the miraculous. Afterall, who would search for anything beyond oneself if pride drove us to believe our own existence to be the pinnacle of achievement? The state of humility can be seen as the courage to recognize the limitlessness of the universe and our place in it. We are born, live for a few decades and then depart in the blink of an eye.

To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. — Walt Whitman

We begin with the courage to see and accept the inner empty space of nothingness while at the same time being inspired and grateful for inconspicuous, mundane moments that make up most of our lives. The sense of scale proceeding from that small point begins to open out into boundlessness as we grow to understand and join in the interconnectedness of all things.

Presence is content to recognize itself in the simplest object or impression such as a small, inconspicuous flower in the gutter. — The Teacher

In my life – and I suspect in many others – this sense of wonder during ordinary moments has been brought about not only by instances of serene beauty and joy, but also by the perpetual flow of pain and suffering that inevitably come as an interconnected part of the human experience: the humility of awakening to the “inconspicuous flower in the gutter.”

I have observed cycles of humility and pride chasing each other around in my inner world. Like a lizard having lost its tail, it quickly regrows or regenerates another one. When I lose my tail, this experience may bring about feelings of vulnerability and humility, a sense of loss. My Teacher says that “the higher self is happy to be humble.” I have verified this by watching the lower self, scramble to quickly regrow its tail and build its façade all over again with pride and vanity. If I am awake enough, I can see this regrowth of illusion, imagination and identification with form – not shield or buffer vulnerability – and use the idea of scale to recapture or reclaim the state of happy humility, a growth of something more real.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles. — Walt Whitman

The effort of choosing reality over illusion – presence over imagination – is a moment-to-moment quest and arouses in me the growth of compassion, tenderness, and empathy towards others. The state of humility is not something that can be directly worked on but is a result of removing what is nonessential. Simone Weil puts it in the simplest of terms, “All that I call ‘I’ has to be passive.”

Conscious of the infinitely small and the limitless, in his poem, “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake encourages the reader “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour.”

Humility requires patience and acceptance of oneself which Whitman expresses so beautifully in this excerpt from “Song of Myself”: