Humility

 

 Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash

Carl Sagan, scientist and writer, was of the opinion that science has humility in its openness to reality, in its constant readiness to correct itself. Religion, on the other hand, claims to possess absolute truths. Such a claim underscores the hubris of religions.

Humility is an awareness of our limits and limitations. That does not mean that we ignore our strengths. Humility comes from a healthy and clear self-awareness. I am this and only this. You may be sitting on the highest throne in the country. But you must be aware that you are sitting on your bottom.

In fact, humility has little to do with top or bottom. It is not about you at all, so to say. As Rick Warren put it, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” There is no ego, in other words. There is only the clear, transparent self. And that self is aware of its oneness with the cosmic reality, with the billions of gargantuan stars and planets, with the littlest grain of sand on the seashore, with the frailty of the lily of a day. You vanish. Into the infinity of the cosmos. That is humility.

A Catholic priest who was a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher as well as author of many deeply provoking little stories, Anthony de Mello, has a story about a monk who was on his deathbed. His fellow monks gathered around his bed in his last moments and spoke about his greatness. They admired his scholarliness, austerity, self-discipline, perspicacity, and so on. But his beloved disciple noticed that he was fretting. “What happened, Father?” The disciple asked. “What worries you when they all have so many great things to say about you?” The monk replied, “But none of them mentioned my humility!”

Humility is not an easy virtue to acquire. It is an effacement of not only your ego but your self as well. True humility wipes out the distinction between you and the others. You become a mere little drop in the infinite ocean of being. A drop that is the ocean itself.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 434: When we realise that we are all tiny little dots in an enormous cosmos of stars and giant bodies, we will experience humility. And goodness will follow. #Humility