Gentleness And Humility

Gentleness and Humility are important doorways to Peace and to the support of Peace. Gentleness must be conveyed in every area of life to antidote the violence of judgement with others and within. It arises from Humility, a remembrance of the vastness of life’s mysterious context and hidden intelligent power.
A colleague shared about going to another hypnotherapist for some help and the hypnotherapist tried to dictate what her problem was and only became more insistent when my friend objected. She had a hostility session, a power struggle session, instead of a therapy session.
A client who was horribly abused as a child objected vehemently when I asked if he wanted to connect with that part of his psyche that was still acting as if it was the child. To my surprise, he said, "No way! I hate him."
These two incidents highlighted for me the ways in which we attack another or ourself because of the arrogance of thinking our view is the true and only view and because of resentment. Can we convey our knowledge and expertise with gentleness and a genuine desire to serve instead of with arrogance and the need to be right? Can we look more deeply at our pain to heal it instead of resent it?
One of my spiritual teachers has said that Humility is Compassion towards oneself.
This made sense to me when I realized that it is a kindness to myself to reject fearful thoughts whose essential message is that I'm not good enough, or strong enough, or smart enough, or lacking in some other way.
Seeing this, it became clear to me that Humility is the source of true strength and peace. True strength enables us to reject fear and the temptation to act on fear which usually means to commit some form of violence against our self or someone else. Fear always has an arrogant aspect to it, whether active against others, or passive against oneself. It is a refusal to connect with or to share with -- a complete lack of generosity. The strength of Humility enables us to put peaceful generosity in action.
I find that thinking about a problem as being just a problem of fear makes it easy for me to indulge it. If I look to see how the presence of fear indicates that I am being arrogant and mean-spirited, it is much harder for me to allow the fearful state to keep my interest. For me, the thought of being arrogant or mean burns and inspires me to find a greater clarity and openness of heart.
It helps to open to Humility as the antidote to the arrogance if I understand that humility is not meekness but kindness and generosity to myself. It is a kindness to open to my true relationship with life rather than persist in my fearful fantasy.
Try opening to Humility by simply stopping for 30 seconds, and stretching your arms out and up towards the sky and breathing in fully and gently. Imagine how you would feel at the end of the day if you took this break to open and breathe every 30 minutes, or every hour, or every time you noticed yourself getting tense. Go beyond imagining -- do it and discover the power of Humility. Can you be this generous with yourself? Good luck!

Copyright, Jack Elias, October, 2003. All rights reserved.