Episode Transcript
Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. Today we will be talking about humility, not humiliation. humility and we're going to, as usual, we're going to take a little deep dive into what is humility, what is behind it, and then also look at some kind of spiritual solutions or spiritual laws that we can. incorporate into our lives to help us remove some of the negative aspects that we're experiencing, maybe humiliation in this case, or some maybe ideas that we have about humility that might not be correct. So what is humility? So I grew up in a, Christian background and humility or humbleness, humble or humility kind of had the connotation of being poor or unfortunate or having to be subservient or being abused. So it has that kind of a connotation, but humility in spirituality, humility actually is strength. One example I'm thinking of is Gandhi. Gandhi's an example, right? What was, what was the thing about Gandhi? He had no force, right? It was no violence, nonviolence. Martin Luther King, nonviolence. So humility, one aspect of humility is that I'm not using force. So does that mean that I'm letting myself get destroyed or something like, no, what it means is that I'm not forcing myself onto a situation. So sometimes we confuse humility with humiliation and there's a reason for that. I'm going to talk about that in a minute, but with, with humility, the way it actually is, is when someone is humble, they're actually quite strong and they're maintaining their dignity. And I wrote something down here that says, When you tell the truth, you maintain your dignity. So telling the truth restores your dignity. And maybe we've had situations like that, even as children, you know, maybe I'm lying and stuff like that. And my parents were saying, just tell the truth, just tell the truth. Why are we saying that? Is it saying, just tell the truth so that I can make fun of you or make you feel bad because you made a mistake? No, there's no humiliation there. Telling the truth actually restores your self respect. But what does this have to do with humility? So I have an example of something that happened to try to, try to give an example of this, of humility, but also we, we call in, in, um, In the meditation that I practice, Raja Yoga meditation, we say that we have like eight powers. There's eight spiritual powers. One of the powers is accommodation. So this example that I'm going to be giving is about humility and also about accommodation. So I was at work and we were doing meditation in my office because at lunchtime we were doing meditation, uh, cause I also teach meditation. So we're in my office and a bunch of the nurses were in my office having meditation and the lights are low and the, the music is playing and so forth. And at that, at that moment, One of the clerks came in, I work in a clinic, right? One of the clerks came in and started talking really loud and talking about how she was taking care of this patient and this happened and that happened and she had to call him three times and whatever. And I remember at that moment. I was like, what do I, what am I supposed to do? You know? So, but I, a couple of things happened. I realized that the other people in the room were watching me to see what I was going to do. So that kind of helped, you know, and I was trying to figure out what to do and I decided just to be very silent. So one of the things I could have done was yell at her for interrupting the class, right? Now that, that wouldn't have been wrong, right? It would not have been wrong to do that. I could not yell at her, but I could have said, Hey, you're interrupting the class. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. But I didn't do that. I said, let me be quiet and see what I can do without doing that because she was obviously upset. So I'm listening to her. And as I'm, I get very silent inside myself, go very silent inside myself. And then I actually kind of heard in a way like what she needed. I kind of got the sense that she wanted to be validated, that all she wanted was appreciation. So I said, wow, you know, I'm so glad that you came into the, into the room and I'm so glad that you told me this. Thank you so much for taking care of the patient. You did such a great job and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And then she said, okay, bye. And then she left. So what happened there? There was a couple of things there. It was humble in the sense that I wasn't forcing, I, I, I held back my correction or making her wrong or something like that. And I just stayed quiet. And then I was actually able to help, you know, so one of the aspects of humility is not forcing like a correction or forcing something. in the moment that maybe you don't need to. This is subtle because she wouldn't, if I would have said, you know, you're interrupting here, please leave. She would not have gotten her need met, right? I have another example. I was sitting at a table once, uh, in a room, these were all people who meditate, but I was sitting in the cafeteria in the dining room and one person was sitting there and she made a mistake. Like she misspoke a word. Like, she said something wrong, like incorrectly. And I didn't correct her. And I thought to myself, you know, I grew up in a house, if you said a word wrong, you would immediately get corrected. You would instantly get corrected. And so she, I didn't say anything. And I just let her go on. And then a few minutes later, she said, well, wait a minute. I said that before and you didn't tell me I said it wrong. And I didn't say anything. And she goes, why didn't you tell me? And then she goes, well, I guess you're right. You're right. You're right. Um, what happened there? It was like, I didn't want, my wish not to hurt her feelings was greater than my need to correct her. I would call that an example of humility to a certain extent. Because I'm not, when you're humble, you're not allowing the forceful personality traits that you have. forceful, correcting, insensitive, things like that. You're not allowing them to come up. So you're being quiet and maybe you have a chance to help or something like that, or at least be quiet. Like you're not making it worse. You know, in that situation, you're not adding to a situation, but you're also not allowing your negative traits to come up. That's humble. Also, if other people are acting inappropriately, like that lady just said a wrong word, that wasn't a big deal. But what if somebody's screaming in your face? Can I still be humble? Can I still not react? Can I still be quiet and can keep my dignity? Maybe give them what they need because I doesn't matter to me. Maybe they want to hear that. They're right. Okay. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. Now what I'm talking about now. Let me do a little disclaimer here. What I'm talking about is not when you're in a severely abusive situation. Not talking about that. When you're in an abusive situation where boundaries need to be set, I'm not saying don't do anything, let the person get away with this or that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about middle ground situations where. Maybe in the past I had been forceful or reactive or things like that, or maybe I would be unwilling to admit that I'm wrong or unwilling to see somebody else's point of view. Admitting that I'm wrong, honestly, genuinely, seeing someone else's point of view, allowing them to maybe experience themselves to be validated while I don't need to be validated. That's humility. I'm not forcing myself on anybody. I know it seems subtle, but it's very powerful, mainly for me, because in those moments, I'm not. expressing those, I'm going to call them negative, forceful negative traits. So one of the things, the other thing is why do we sometimes fight and why do we sometimes get forceful and why do we sometimes react and why do we do that? In another episode, we were talking about trust and we were saying that one of the ways that we can build up power is to give away our power, like give away our good feelings. Like if I feel happy, I can imagine that I'm giving happiness to the rest of the world and that will help me feel more secure. In this case, to be humble, I need to have a lot of self respect and a lot of self regard for myself. I need to believe that I am good And that I can withstand whatever it is I have to deal with. So I have another example of this. So I. Um, in, in the organization that I'm in this, this meditation organization, and by the way, it's called the Brahma Kumaris and the information is in the, is in the description of the videos here on YouTube. One of our seniors, and this is somebody who was practicing for many, many years, so maybe 60 years, very powerful person. Anyway, someone was in front of her like yelling in her face. And everybody was watching, there was a bunch of people around her and the person was complaining and blaming her and everything, all this negativity was coming at her. And afterwards, the other people that were around went up to the senior and was like, what were you thinking? Like, she didn't say anything. She just smiled like a natural smile, not like a fake smile, but like a natural smile while the person was talking to her. Didn't say much. And, you know, the scene finished and then afterwards they came up and said, what were you thinking about? What were you doing? And she said, I was just checking my own powers. So what was happening in that moment? She didn't feel the need to react. She didn't feel the need to fight. She just stuck with herself. I'm just staying with myself. So one aspect of humility is that you're staying with your own self. You're staying with your self respect. You're not allowing the negative personality traits to come up. Okay. Another aspect of humility is, I mentioned it before, telling the truth. about yourself. And that's where the fear of humiliation comes in. Maybe in the past, whenever I had an opportunity or it was called for, for me to tell the truth about myself, I was met with a reaction that was less than loving. Is that fair? Maybe if I had to say that I did something wrong or whatever, I was met with anger or I was met with disdain or I was met with an unloving attitude. And maybe that in that moment I decided, you know what, I'm not going to admit that I'm wrong or I'm not going to show my weaknesses or I'm not going to whatever. But humility also means that I feel strong enough in myself to tell the truth. about myself to whoever it is necessary. And it's sometimes it means you have to be wrong in the face of your enemy. Let's say for instance, sometimes you have to like, I can't think of an example. I don't have an example right now. It's top of my head, but there have been times where I have had to admit that I'm wrong to the person that I've been hating. You know, this is, one of the things about spirituality, and I'll probably leave this as one of the final points, is that the digger you, the, the, the digger you dig, the deeper you dig, the deeper you dig in yourself. On one hand, you have to admit, and this is where humility comes in, personal power and humility. I'm admitting that I felt this way. I admit. That I really didn't want it to work out, or I really wanted that person to be hurt, or I really wanted that person to fail, or I really didn't care. I said I cared, but I really didn't. If I tell the truth about that to myself and maybe admit it to another person, I'm releasing the shame and the hiding and the humiliation factor. If I keep holding on to it. Or hiding it. And we all do this. I would imagine we all do this to some degree in one area or another. We've learned subtly, like, this is okay to be like this, but it's not okay to be like this. So we build up these, uh, little things that we're hiding about ourselves. I mean, there's this, there's this thing called guilty pleasures. You know, why do we have that word? I'm ashamed that I'm watching a video or I'm ashamed that I'm watching a TV show or I'm ashamed of whatever. Why am I ashamed of just being myself? I mean, that's not to say that you get carte blanche and you do whatever. I'm talking about middle road people here, people who are successful, people who live a good life. People, I'm not talking about. Like way extremes here. We're talking about people who are doing well, but we're looking to do even better. So today when we talk about humility, we're looking at, let's look at a couple of things to take with you for the homework for the, for this episode. Number one, do I always have to correct or be forceful or react in a situation? What would happen if I didn't? Maybe I could try it once. Maybe I could try to be silent and listen and see if I can maybe help or at least not allow the negative of my own personality to come up. That's a huge step forward, by the way, in spiritual progress. If I'm able to stop myself from manifesting the negative parts of my personality in the moment, that's a huge step of progress. Second thing is, when it's time for me to tell the truth about myself, can I take a chance and just tell the truth, no matter what happens? I mean, we've seen it. There's been movies. I can think of movies. I can think of situations where somebody has done something really bad. And again, I'm not talking about people who do, we're not people who do things really bad, but why am I still hiding? What's so bad that I have to not tell the truth about this? Oh, I wasn't really doing that. I was doing this or whatever, because something inside says that's acceptable. And that's not, why is it like that? It, it, whatever. I created that world inside my head. This is acceptable. And this isn't, what is that? That's not real. But when the moment, it's like a kid, like, I didn't take a cookie. I didn't take a cookie. Why are you lying? I saw you taking it. You know, I have the videotape. Let's play the videotape. I saw you. So we're only hiding from ourselves. So humility also means that I'm willing to tell the truth at the cost of maybe feeling humiliated, but that we fear humiliation. But the truth is when you tell the truth, you're free. Try it. Try it. One day, when you find yourself hiding a little bit, like that feeling like you don't want somebody to know or whatever, try to share it or show it or be open about it and free yourself. So I'm hoping that this talk is a little bit different, different from humility. Like you, you're thinking about it now differently. Humility actually is self power. You're in control of yourself. You're in control of your personality, you're in control of your behavior and you're also not afraid to tell the truth about who you are truly at any moment. That's humility and that's a very good example for others also. It makes you seem generous and truthful and powerful and this is how we want to be, right? So think about that this week. Is there an area where I can maybe not allow? negativity and then also maybe I can tell the truth and really take a chance and see, am I going to be humiliated or is something else going to happen? You'll see you, you, you will be free. And that, that thing that was holding inside that thing that was holding tight because it was afraid will release. It's like the weight will be lifted. So think about that this week and see if you can make a small difference, small change, small change makes a big difference, especially if it's comes from a, from a discernment, from a, from an awareness that you get, we're looking at yourself and then you make a change. That's when it's going to make the most difference. So until next time, remember the slogan for this podcast is. heal, empower, and serve. Every time we make a difference in ourselves, we're helping everybody around us. And that's the service. So take care until next time. Bye bye.
