Reflection 123

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Humility

Now, you may say that what we’re on about is blasphemous, that it is pride, to find that where you are is none other than the mystery and majesty behind the universe, the Specialist in Being, as it were. How terrible to identify with that. It is fine to adore that which is supporting my life, but to claim identity with it is terrible.

Well, there’s another way to look at it. The real pride is when I say I run a separate little corner shop of Being Here, in addition to and independent of, or quasi-independent of, God, who runs a hypermarket of Being. Real humility says that my being is that Being. Real humility is to see in what and in whom lies my being. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” I’ll buy that one. You can read this as a kind of pride, but real humility is not claiming Being for the little guy in the mirror. The little one over there is an appearance. It lacks substance. It doesn’t stand up to close inspection. But come up to me Here, to the Big One, and you come nearer and nearer to the centre of pure Being. So Rabbi Ben Esra says that God is the soul of my soul.

And at the same time, this Reality is in a certain sense wholly other than me. That is to say, wholly mysterious and adorable and unknowable and extraordinary, the great Self-originating One from which all comes. This otherness is extremely important, not to be overlooked. I put that in, in case anyone thinks this is pretty blasphemous stuff. (Douglas Harding. Face to No-Face.)

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