Superior-Inferior

I have recently been meditating a lot on humility. It's one of those words that has some vaguely important meaning, but not really anything too specific comes immediately to mind, except perhaps the images of the aesthetics who have given up everything and go around with their ragged clothes and their bowls.

But humility is pretty deep. It's not just being gracious, or kind to those in worse situations that you; it's not just being nice to someone you don't like, and it's certainly not just being "spiritual." Humility is the essence of recognizing that each and every one of us are all a part of the same thing (and not getting all cocky and feeling superior about knowing that!)

The moment you start trying to make yourself different from someone else and there is emotional attachment, in that moment humility is lost and what it's really about is proving you are not inferior by subconscious acts of superiority. The moment you are zooming angrily around the guy who is not driving fast enough for you, no humility there at all... The moment you start thinking that you and your way of thinking, your way of doing, your way of acting, your way of anything is better, ego has moved in and essentially ousted humility.

It's like any time there is a difference that has an emotional attachment (and clearly, nearly everything does) it becomes the antithesis of humility. We aren't holier just because we are different and pointing it out surely underscores that, doesn't it?

And yet all that effort to differentiate, to be different, better, more, less, etc is kind of useless, isn't it, when you consider that if you were to take the entire planet down to the molecular level we're all just molecules of a huge whole and all the spacial relativity is really just an illusion.

For me it comes down to this - if I'm "trying" to be different, I'm wasting my time. If I'm "trying" to do something or be something because I don't want to be like so many others, waste of time. If I'm thinking I'm better at something than someone else (let's discuss driving...) it's an act of defiant opposition to humility and when I realize that, it actually feels kind of horrible.

Humility feels good. It feels like "I'm in your energy and you're doing something this way and it's cool to be in your energy so I don't need to discuss how *I'd* do it," and to know without ever having to think or express that "if you ever want to just hang out in my energy it's ok for me to do things the way I do them." That is kind. There is alignment, harmony, there is equalization, and that feels good.

It's kind of a hard lesson to wake up and see that you've spent years of your life being the warrior, "I have to be different than everybody else" and that it really just means that you've felt inferior and fought it with an excess of opposition and superiority. But then again - it is the process of life, too, and I think the more you can be thankful for it, the more you are given to see and understand.

Blessings.
- Darshan








© 2010 Darshan F Jessop