It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously. Oscar Wilde
Humility is a difficult subject at best, we for the most part associate humility with humiliation or being humble as being less than. I have come to the understanding that
it’s not about thinking less of yourself, it’s about thinking of yourself less.
For when we are in the service of our fellows are we not in the service of our God, and when we are in that service are we not divorced from self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity and in that moment is that not when we make our conscious contact with our creator who lives from moment to moment, eternity to eternity life everlasting. The magic word in Alcoholics Anonymous Action, and more Action, for faith without works is dead.
Teachers one and all, the least likely most of all, the beggar, the fool, and they that take themselves most serious fall from a higher wall.
I would speak to you of an unlikely teacher who taught me the meaning of humility.
A good man who spoke in a church conference about when he was in high school he pleaded with God that he would be a humble man. If you would ask any one in the church who had the most humility, surely it would be him and of this there would be a consensus of no doubt. On a late Sunday afternoon I was waiting in my church hall way when my unlikely teacher appeared and we quickly engaged in conversation. What struck me as odd as he kept his distance; he stayed eight to ten feet away, his body language was most loud and trumpeted disdain. I told him I was working on a post that described emotional and sexual addiction, and started to explain the physiology of the hypothalamus and the phenomenon of peptides and receptor cells. He quickly put up his hands and said I know none of these things and quickly ended the interaction. A new member came over by me and sat down; he quickly closed the distance to say hello and how glad he was to see her. For the man I speak acted as if what he thought humility looked like. He knew that I was in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous a program beyond his scope of understanding and thus the disdain and when I attempted to teach him of something beyond his familiar comfort zone his hands went up the body language said I am not willing to learn, and I am not willing to learn from the likes of you.
“Humility is like underwear, essential,unless it shows then it’s indecent” Helen Nielsen
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem
“That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.” Thomas Szasz
When every man or women becomes your teacher, no matter whom, surely the wise and how less the fool. Â We all have different gifts and experiences. When we find ourselves in a recovery meeting and the person for whom you have the greatest disdain starts to share the same thing one more time and you think you would rather set yourself on fire than to listen, and to subject yourself to their inane rant they just might be ready to reveal something painful you needed to hear,”anytime we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us,” our awn defects of charter often times are being painfully revealed in another human being, and for the very least an opportunity to practice love and tolerance has disguised itself as a teacher of humility.
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Joseph
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