Today I'd like to explore humility.
Every week I pick a theme and then base all my classes and
meditations that week around that theme. So when I started to explore
humility this week I was very interested in what I found. I searched
on google and came up with articles from across the religious
spectrum: Christian bible study groups, Jewish websites, yoga
philosophy, new age spirituality and even an ancient Mayan proverb
that mentions humility. And the main ideas were the same: being
humble does not mean putting yourself down or thinking yourself
worthless, being humble is acknowledging that we are all connected
and fundamentally the same – a small part of the bigger picture.
An easy way to understand this is to
start backwards with the ego, the opposite of humility. So start with
something you have accomplished that you are proud of. Take a moment
to recall something that you are proud of accomplishing, be proud of
that moment, remember how you felt in that moment. This is your ego.
Now think of all the people who helped you get there or helped you
accomplish this goal. Start with the obvious, teachers, co workers or
classmates, people who supported you financially, but also the people
who supported you emotionally, people who helped you without knowing
it.
In this way we are not diminishing what
we've accomplished, its still important and useful, but we understand
and acknowledge that we are not the only ones responsible for our
success. We all have networks of people around us that have helped to
create the circumstances that have enabled us to make our dreams come
true. Being grateful for these people and letting them share in our
success is one important part of humility.
I will share with you my experience in
this exercise: I am very proud of finishing my yoga teacher
certification and seeing it to the end. But I thought about doing it
on and off for a few years, and it wasn't until my husband really
encouraged me to do it, that I signed up. I also would not have been
able to do it without the support of my parents who took me back into
their home and supported me for 6 months in Canada while I studied.
Of course I owe much gratitude to my teachers and classmates who were
very supportive and encouraging and my friends who let me practice
teaching on them. And the more I thought about it the more people I
realized helped me in ways they didn't even know: my friend who did
the course before me and shared her experiences, my part-time
nannying job that allowed me work and study at the same time, my
family and friends that were interested in what I was learning, my
yoga teachers in my past that have all inspired me, my very first
yoga teacher who offered a free class and got me started, even my
family for immigrating to Canada and raising me in Vancouver a major
world hub of yoga.. my accomplishment is their accomplishment as
well. And in our own small ways, perhaps without even knowing it, we
are helping others along their paths as well. We are all connected,
all humans sharing the same earth. I think that is fundamentally what
being humble is about.
