Life is Humbling

Have you ever noticed how life offers us endless opportunities to be humbled? What does it mean to be humbled? It means we are confronted face to face with the reality that we are fallible and impermanent, and that our importance and power are always relative. We will always have some power, but so much more of the universe, and even our little corner of it, is beyond what we can control.  To strive for more and more power in the hopes of finally becoming powerful enough is fundamentally futile. Even the most powerful Roman emperor at some point had to lay down on his death bed, and come to the realization that all that power he had couldn't save him from the jaws of impermanence. Moments of that kind of realization run deep and have a vein of sadness that runs through to your center.

Humility is a breaking down of a part of the self. When the thing you always felt defined you, crumbles and is revealed to be not so true, then our world is truly rocked. To be reminded of our relative significance or insignificance, is a checking in with reality. Look up at the stars the next chance you get and you will probably know what I mean. I am always deeply humbled when I look at the stars. That is the best way to describe the experience. Being humbled, even if we feel foolish or guilty in the process, is in reality a huge opportunity for spiritual realization, but only if you are trying to get to the bottom of things, not if you are trying to be somebody better or important. If you see being humbled as an opportunity to get closer to enlightenment, then although you have a broad view of yourself, you still don't understand what the “self” is. On the other hand if being humbled means a painful realization that you are not who you thought you were, then your view of your world and your “self” has been rocked.

When you are humbled you can automatically feel bad about yourself. You may even call yourself an asshole or some other derogatory name, but there is an alternative to this automatic judging. The alternative is to rest in the nowness of not knowing who you are. Find out what can be learned by not knowing. What does it mean to be curious about what it feels like to not know who you are? Is it possible to just move your awareness into your body and watch your feelings? Meditation is a great way to learn how.

Dying, in a way, is the ultimate humbling. We lose absolutely everything, even our minds and bodies. What could be more disillusioning than that? I once worked in a bakery. I was young and more agile then and when it came time to do tasks like taking the hundreds of baked loaves out of the steam oven I would go at it with speed and gusto. I would often work with an older woman who had worked there for several decades, and walked with a limp because of a car accident she had had many years before. She seemed to look up to me because I was so efficient and productive and she would do her best to keep up. She seemed to want to be seen as being as equally productive, and would try hard to earn that kind of respect. One day, she slipped and fell while we were working busily, and immediately started crying. We stopped for a minute, while she checked to see if she was hurt and to regain her composure.

As I look back on that experience, I realize that we are all going to have moments like that. At some point, we will fall and realize that we are not as powerful as we once were. We may even cry at the realization. We will be humbled. When we are humbled, we don't have to see it as something bad. We don't have to jump to conclusions about our self. The problem is that we almost always jump to conclusions about ourselves, especially when something humbling happens. Someone who is crippled by a car accident may automatically assume that no one will really respect them again. Why would anyone want to jump to that kind of conclusion about themselves? Why not just learn to be comfortable with not knowing who you are for a while? Why not say: 'I know I can't walk, but beyond that, I can not really know what is in store for me, and I can't know how others will see me. I don't even know how I will see me. How can I know?' Some will like you, others won't. Some will respect you, others won't. How is that different than the way it is now? By resting in not knowing, you may find that a whole new world has opened up. A world that was there all along, but only required a slight shift in perspective to see. I hope you remember to try this when the next storm appears and you find that the universe has given you the opportunity and the gift of being humbled.