The Most Underrated Virtue In Consciousness Evolution
Some thoughts on humility
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There’s a lot of virtues you hear various traditions and teachers talk about when it comes to making progress on the self awareness journey. Honesty, commitment, openness, patience and trust are some that come to mind.
One quality I’ve grown to appreciate and understand more deeply over the past year is humility.
Humility opens doorways that can vastly expand your experience in ways I would have never imagined.
Yet, humility is not typically a word associated with progress in western culture. You don’t hear many cultural icons citing humility as a primary reason for what got them where they are today.
The opposite of humility is arrogance.
Arrogance is when we are overly confident in our own abilities or understanding. It can create a sense of superiority, self-importance, and entitlement.
Arrogance implies and reinforces separation.
Subtle Arrogance
A lot of times arrogance is subtle and camouflaged.
We can be internally arrogant within the confines of our own perception. This was the case in my own journey.
Most of the progress I had made in the outside world was based on this concept that it was all up to me. So I had applied this mindset to the exploration of consciousness.
I was committed. I applied immense discipline and focus. I tried to find the best teachers and guides. I tried to do everything perfectly. In short, I was vigilant about becoming enlightened.
As I started to notice big changes in my experience, I started to think I knew things. And because I attributed this growth to my commitment and effort, this came with a subtle undercurrent of pride.
This sense of knowing and subtle pride caused me to judge things on a superficial level. For example, I would see someone doing a practice that I had done earlier in my journey and my mind would immediately compare it to other practices. I’d encounter certain teachings and be quick to focus on their incompleteness in my own mind.
This pattern of arrogance existed within my inner world. It was never overt in how I actually treated other people, but it was there.
The problem with any form of arrogance is that is obscures our perception. This hinders our growth on multiple axis and dimensions.
Arrogance hinders both the both the breadth of situations we can gain wisdom from as well as the level of depth we can access.
This occurs on the dimensions of the consciousness and heart.
How Lack of Humility Impacts Your Consciousness
When we are overconfident in what we know, we evaluate things from the narrow lens of our arrogance instead of seeing a complete view of any situation.
You can think of everything unfolding around you as a raw information feed. When arrogance is present, there is selective emphasis on what we pay attention to and how things are interpreted.
For example, instead of being open and treating every single thing as your teacher, your mind is caught up in comparison and evaluations. Maybe you may think about how you already know something or know better. Because your attentional system has been hijacked by this inner activity, you never really get a comprehensive view of what you’re experiencing and the wisdom to be gained from it.
When we have humility, there is a deeper respect for all things we encounter. This creates the conditions for us to access wisdom from a greater breadth of experiences. Because we’re not artificially cutting things off by our knowing, we also can receive the wisdom with greater depth.
The Energetic Heart
The energetic heart is a latent mechanism of perception. Our current culture doesn’t acknowledge its true depth and power, but it has been a focal point of wisdom culture for thousands of years.
When it’s open, we can receive information from the broader interconnected field, people and content we engage with, and our true Self. This informations comes in the form of feelings, insight, and often both coupled together.
A heart to heart transmission is when you receive information from another being through the energetic heart.
Heart to heart transmission is often the way that many highly evolved teachers and beings uplift those around them, including students. You may remember ram Dass’s story of feeling Maharishi’s heart and being changed forever.
“It was like something opened that was very ancient and closed, and I started to sob and sob. I cried for about two days, and don’t even know what it was about. It was like I was home or something like that.” - Ram Dass
I can’t know for sure, but my guess is this phenomenon was a heart to heart transmission.
You may have even experienced a version of this yourself when you watch or read something and can feel its essence come into your being and shift you.
How Humility Impacts the Functioning Of The Energetic Heart
Arrogance causes the energetic heart to close and/or remain closed. It’s like there is a pipeline of information that’s coming towards us, but the door is shut so we don’t experience it.
Humility supports the conditions for the heart to remain open so that you can access wisdom at a deeper level. When it’s open, the information from the field can come into our being and shift us on a more fundamental level.
You may have been in situations where two people experience the same exact phenomenon like being in the presence of a great being, yet had two different reactions. One may experience very little, where another may experience something profound.
My first investigation in these situations would be the condition of the heart.
It’s hard to have reverence for the power of the energetic heart until it is experienced directly. It is such a different paradigm than processing information through our traditional senses and what we are educated on.
It is very real though and you can experiment with it in your experience by calibrating how you approach things and the resultant experience.
Lack Of Humility Limits Your Experience
You can see the limitations of a lack of humility all the time.
Many very intelligent people who pride themselves on how much they know never get to see beyond the little intellectual box they have crafted for themselves. Instead of accessing deeper wisdom and experiences, they live on the plane of intellect, never consciously accessing wisdom beyond what they’ve have been exposed too.
A general posture of skepticism or knowing may be helpful for protecting yourself, but it doesn’t really support expanding your experience to greater possibilities.
I had a great conversation with nueroscientist
that reflects this paradox. In our conversation, Mona shared how deeply she identified with being an intelligent scientist. When she encountered mention of supernatural phenomenon and spiritual experiences, she’d be quick to judge thinking she “was too smart to fall for that.”Ironically, it was this exact disposition that closed her off from having these experiences. This eventually changed as she opened to them.
This inverse relationship between being identified with our knowing and access to more profound potentials seems to be a common pattern.
Another place we often see the limitations created by the lack of humility is the unwillingness to fully embrace a teacher or teaching.
For many years, I dabbled around in many different teachings eventually coming back to focus on RenXue. Why did I do all this dabbling?
There’s likely a multitude of reasons, but a BIG part of it came back to my lack of humility.
Instead of fully opening to a teacher, I judged many things on a superficial level. I compared. I thought I knew better. I didn’t want to get boxed in to anything that asked me to conform.
I now see how all these reactions were a reflection of my own arrogance. They prevented me from receiving wisdom on both the consciousness and heart level.
I now believe true transformation occurs from depth. And in many instances, depth requires you to humble yourself and open to a teacher or lineage that has been at this much longer than you. As soon as I did this, many things clicked and I started to enter a new plane of experience.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with exploring many modalities and traditions. In certain circumstances and junctures, I can see how that would be really useful.
If you find yourself spiritual window shopping, I would just get real with yourself on what’s driving all this behavior? Only you can answer.
For me, my own arrogance definitely contributed to my lack of commitment.
Misconceptions About Humility
In our individualist, achievement obsessed society, humility almost seems to imply a meekness.
This is just a misconception.
Humility doesn’t mean abandoning your personal power. I believe that we possess all the tools we need inside ourselves. However, it would be foolish to not use all the available tools and teachers around you for your evolution. These are in fact, one in the same.
It also doesn’t mean abandoning discernment. Having humility doesn’t mean we just start accepting everything as truth. We can still maintain respect and openness, while imploring our judgement to move through the world.
In the context of consciousness evolution, humility means maintaining respect for all things which allows you to learn from them.
Yuan Tze, the founder of RenXue is the most evolved human I have ever been in the presence of. You can feel his presence penetrating you as you enter the same room.
In the context of his own evolution, he talks about how he considers himself like a kindergartener. He is the first to admit there is so much he doesn’t know.
Though I sense he experiences reality in a way that very few people could even comprehend, he moves through the world with the innocence and lightness of a child.
I can see how it is his humility and respect for the universe that allows him to actually keep discovering it.
How Can We Work On Humility?
Humility is our natural state.
In my experience, the easiest way to restore humility is to notice when it is lacking either in our actions or inner space.
These reactions to life serve as a pointing that something below the surface is creating this perceptual response which we can consider a consciousness pattern.
Once identified, we can use these moments to go into these consciousness patterns and uncover what’s driving them. For me there was lots of imprints related to needing to prove myself to feel safe and okay that created protective patterns.
You can use the exercises in this article whenever you notice a lack of humility to gradually work towards restoring your natural state.
The funny thing this journey, is that the more awareness expands, the more you realize how little you know. And within the space of not knowing or needing to know, there is a deep peace.
I’ve recently been rereading the Tao Te Ching. Here are some pointings on humility I’ve come to see are true.
The ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know. When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don’t know, people can find their own way.
Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Master is her own physician. She has healed herself of all knowing. Thus she is truly whole.
The gateway to all understanding: In order to understand, we have to remain in the darkness of not-knowing.
The Master, by residing in the Tao, sets an example for all beings. Because he doesn’t display himself, people can see his light. Because he has nothing to prove, people can trust his words. Because he doesn’t know who he is, people recognize themselves in him. Because he has no goal in mind, everything he does succeeds.
If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
One of the things I’ve come to love most about Hawaiian culture is the humility. I’ll spend time with people for months before I learn through someone else that the person is an accomplished (insert profession or hobby here). That’s in stark contrast to Silicon Valley where I felt I had to lead with the most impressive things about me to get anyone to care about continuing the conversation.
There is something about this clean slate of humility that forces one to feel into your energetic connection with someone, as opposed to what you can get from them.
This article hits home hard. I can sense the subtle arrogance in me at times. Only recently have I truly felt the energetic heart open up and you are correct, it has changed everything. I must have been so arrogant for most of my life I never felt it. The first time I felt it it happened at the end of a meditation session and at first I was like "Am I having a heart problem?" lol. No the answer was, I had the heart problem my whole life before that moment.