SC 2010- 3: Humility

Various things in nature give us a feeling smallness and finitude... mountains, the ocean, high altitudes, the redwoods, the grand canyon... You and I are conundrums... At our core is the ultimate - the divine, and yet, this is wrapped up in flesh... finitude, temporalness and fragility.

Hamlet (Shakespeare) says it very well:

What a piece of work is a man or woman, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

We are the offspring of the Divine, the Ultimate, and yet, we are no more than dust particles.

And so we come to the third course in my 2010 spiritual curriculum... Humility.

Thoughts for the week- Psalm 131 and Psalm 8:

My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars... what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

Daily practice:

As I interact with folks each day consider their greatest soul asset and deficit... Each night as I do my moral inventory... reflect upon my greatest soul assets and deficits both in my character at this point and in the day in particular.

For wonderful write up on the topic of humility from a Jewish perspective see

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ethics/Caring_For_Others/Ethical_Behavior/Concepts_and_Ideas/Humility.shtml

"A Hasidic tale tells of a man who came to the Zaddik with a complaint. "All my life," he said, "I have tried to follow the advice of the rabbis that one who runs away from fame will find that fame pursues him, and yet while I run away from fame, fame never seems to pursue me." The Zaddik replied: "The trouble is that while you do run away from fame you are always looking over your shoulder to see if fame is chasing after you."


On the deeper level, the notion is found, especially in Hasidism, that humility is not the mere absence of pride. Rather it consists not so much in thinking little of oneself as in not thinking of oneself at all. When the Hasidim and other Jewish mystics speak of annihilation of selfhood, they are not thinking of a conscious effort of the will. To try to nullify the self by calling attention to it is bound to end in failure. Instead, the mystics tend to suggest, the mind should be encouraged to overlook entirely all considerations of both inferiority and superiority."