blessed are the meek

…for they ain’t no shrinkin’ violet

In looking for a theme for this Sunday’s Multi-Faith Music & Meditation Service I settled on the virtue of humility (Funny, I just tried to capitalize it but it wouldn’t let me!). I had just attended our Course in Miracles group the previous evening and the topic was about the difference between grandeur and grandiosity. The Course says grandeur is of God and therefore it is in us. It’s the Divine Presence within. Grandiosity or self-inflation, on the other hand, is something we engage in when we believe we are apart from God and we feel we have to cover up for the resulting sense of littleness. It is rooted in defensiveness and fear.

This got me thinking about humility as a virtue and what it really means. When I took a moment to try to feel what I thought it was, it felt like a withdrawal from the world, like a pulling inside. It was kind of like wrapping myself in an invisibility cloak à laHarry Potter. It felt kind of cozy and pious and it felt completely wrong. Interesting that that definition of humility was still hanging around in my consciousness. If humility was a bonafide virtue, this was not it.

Someone at the meeting had brought up the now well-known quote often wrongly attributed to Nelson Mandela and correctly attributed to author Marianne Williamson. Here’s the passage from her book Return to Love:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

You would probably not read this and think “Oh, I get it; she’s asking us to be humble.” But I would now contend that, in truth, she is.

We have to begin with what is true about ourselves. We acknowledge that we are creations of God and that therefore, as Williamson put it, “we were born to make manifest the glory of God.” Once we have accepted that as true, the plug gets pulled on that over-inflated small self of the ego. That’s humility’s true function – deflating what is false. Once that has begun to happen we can allow the radiance of our true Self to shine, manifesting the glory within us. We can SHOW UP in the world in all-caps.

Think about the life of Jesus. Would you have called him humble? Most definitely. Was he a “shrinking violet”? Um, no. How about Gandhi? Buddha?

These were beings who were able to let the full-on Radiance of God pulse through them because they had first allowed humility do its work on them. The Buddha put it this way: “With the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging.” To be enlightened is to awaken to and identify with that Radiance. Because of this, Jesus could say, “The Father and I are one. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

So come shine with us this Sunday evening if you are able. You just have to Show Up.

Peace and Blessings,
Roger