One of the scholars of Hindu Dharma in the 19th century, argues that the concept of humility does not mean “crawling on all fours and calling oneself a sinner.” In Vivekananda’s Hindu Dharma, each human is held humble to the Universal, recognizing and feeling oneness with everyone and everything else in the universe, to live without inferiority or superiority or any other bias, is the mark of humility.
To live opinion and judgement free of your fellow man.
I think at the very core humility means being able to recognize how little you really know about your capability to go to the very edges of life and how you might behave when left powerless. How you can be compassionate and empathetic to others. To know that you are no bigger or better than a beggar on the street or a junkie on the floor of the basement or a murderer on death row.
No matter what you think you have accomplished – your essence, your humanness makes you no better than anyone else. This type of humble has you recognize that you can not judge because you know, given the ideal set of circumstances, you would also be left to beg, shoot and kill another. To be humble enough and aware of how immensely difficult life can turn out for anyone and everyone at any given time.
It is with these thoughts that I am contemplating a different taste of humility. The type of humiliating humble that slams you to the ground and leaves you feeling hopeless, helpless and sometimes badly stained. The flavor of humble that has you cursing down the highway, screaming up at the sky, wondering why life is so unfair.
The humility that catches you in the corner and holds you hostage, pinned up against the wall because you were so wronged, viciously slighted, burned by another and there is no way you are ever going to get revenge. The shade of humility that makes you feel small, shameful and worthless.
Worthless? Really? Can it be so? Can it be that another can make one feel worthless when worthiness is something that bubbles up from inside? How can we forsake the feeling of being worthy when we are tethered to the divine?
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks states that in Judaism humility is an appreciation of oneself, one’s talents, skills, and virtues. It is not meekness or self-deprecating thought, but the effacing of oneself to something higher. Humility is not to think lowly of oneself, but to appreciate the self one has received. In recognition of the mysteries and complexities of life, one becomes humbled to the awesomeness of what one is and what one can achieve.
Humble people are confidant because they have had some kind of experience or a huge realization about what is really important in this life. They’ve had things taken away. They have been beaten and worn down to the core. People are drawn to humble people because there is a quality there that is not selfish. There is a sharing mindset. A coming together.
In the mind of Lion Grey, humility is the act of realizing that without others life would not have any meaning at all.
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