Humility – 11.18.10

Student Question: This is a two-part question: 1) How would you define humility, and 2) How does one go about becoming humble?

“One short answer is the word itself: hum-ble. ‘Bal’ is Sanskrit for power. ‘Hum’ comes from the same word as ‘humus.’ To be exhumed, comes from the soil, the earth, the root, the foundation. So it is the power of the very foundation of our being,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And it is the opposite of trying to have the pseudo-power created by an artificial superstructure of prestige, position, intelligence, money—any of the artificial ways people try to get power in the world; this [humility], is the power of the earth itself. . . . And right now the whole meaning of this moment in history is that all the false powers are falling: the economic powers, the political powers, the powers that rule from egoistic positions, are collapsing. And the only true power that will survive and stand is the power of the Divine Light that will again be visible in the world. But to have that power, to be the embodiment of the power, means to surrender all of the other powers of trying to be somebody who stands out in the world, and to return to the Source.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, November 18, 2010.