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Path-Of-Love
Published:
Sep 9, 2006

Humility
Journal Entry: Sun Sep 3, 2006, 5:33 AM

We will be focusing on humility today. Being humble is hard! It’s a challenge for all of us.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

"Love is not boastful or proud." How are you doing on this one? Are you seeking more humility in your life or are you on a pride ride?

Pride is the dandelion of the soul. Its root goes deep, only a little left behind sprouts again. Its seeds lodge in the tiniest encouraging cracks. And it flourishes in good soil. The danger of pride is that it feeds on goodness.

Pride and humility interact against one another, and they have a yin/yang relationship. The more pride you have, the less humility. The more humility you have, the less pride. This flux is constant and one way or another the balance of the two adds up to 100%. You might be 65% proud in the moment, which means you can only be 35% humble right then. So, the more proud you are, the more you have diminished your humble spirit. When we can demonstrate more humility we have diminished our pride. So, it will take some work, but we can practice humility more often with those we love.

You can increase your humility through some shifts in your thoughts.

Decrease your desire to impress.

Don’t be selfish, don’t live to make a good impression on others.

That’s what pride does. Pride is all about impressions, making others think what you want them to think. The root of pride is selfishness, we think more about and are focused more on ourselves. You’ve heard about people who have an “I” problem. “I, I, I…” Humility is making a decision not to live to impress.

Pride creeps in. So we find ourselves thinking, “How will this look to others? Will this decision or will this purchase make me look good?” “What kind of clothes, what kind of car, what kind of home is good enough for me?” It’s hard to care about someone else and love them if we are always focused on how impressive we are. No one likes to be around someone who is self centered. Love is to share, not to hold inward.

Winston Churchill was once asked, "Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?" "It’s quite flattering," he replied "but whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big."

The beginning of humility is decreasing your desire to impress.

I've always had a turn for the prophetic. Not super useful since I only realized them after the fact, but it's a little thing I have had all my life.

I think that the way I write things through momentary inspirations has something to do with it. If I start to think on an idea, I can't think it through, or it's gone. I have to get it written down in the moment or it feels forced if I try after the fact.

It's like- It has to have a uniqueness about it. As though I can't repeat the same thought or idea without corrupting it. Some artists are meticulous in their continual refinement, and I don't think that's bad. It's just different. The great masters are that because they had attention to detail, patience and special gifts. I can't draw for a piece of toffee, but I think I can write ok though. It's just that I don't know what I'm writing about at the time, not really.

They call it 'stream of consciousness', but I don't know that it fits exactly. More stream of non-conscious. Ulysses by Joyce is often cited as a premiere example. I've never read it, but I think this is a good time to tackle it. I very much respect those that can accomplish this, especially in the non-punctuated forms.

Portfolio updated- I'll keep adding more as I come across them from backups.

When a person moves around a lot as I did, it's hard to keep hold of those most precious things. Not a pity party here, by any means, but I have nothing from my childhood. No keepsakes, or little stuffed animals or the like. And that's ok. As I got older and some semblance of stability was able to be realized on my own terms, I built up some possessions. Trinkets mostly, but even those had to fall away as I moved to America, twice.

One thing that I'm glad I have is most of my old hard drives. I never throw away a data storage device. I'm meticulous at backing up my digital information, and the advent of the internet proper offered some more security. Except Photobucket. Fuck you Photobucket. But anyway, I'm going through and hooking up these old drives and having a bit of joy finding little treasures buried in millions of trash files. It's rewarding to have the memories they trigger come to me and remind of where I came from, and how I got to where I am now.

I have in the past struggled to not make it all about me. I love reading journals, sneaking a glimpse into people's lives through these keyholes. Often it's just to get a little chuckle, but surprisingly often there's words that make sense to me, help me move forward. And I think- "Damn, how did they know that this is what I'm thinking/feeling?". But it's 99.9% of the time not inspired by me, even though is speaks to me on a personal level.

And that's the mark of a successful post- that someone can relate to it, without it being specifically meant for them. Most of what I wrote in the past was targeted at individuals, sure, but at the same time, a lot of it was just momentary inspiration, perhaps born out of a non-conscious coalescing of information that drove thoughts and feelings, which eventually materialized as expressions.

*chucks a rock into the VR pool.

VR has the gamification aspect, and I do enjoy it. It's designed to make you want to engage and it's a source of gratification.

But it's more than that for me, and others. Over time, we build relationships, discover new information and modes of thinking and even find pathways opened up from here into realms we'd never dreamed of. I'm thankful for that. It's brought (some) meaning to my life, and as much as I abused it in earlier times, it's foundational to who I've become in later life.

It has provided opportunity to re-ignite the voyage of self-discovery. There are few places like this on the internet, though I'll admit to not looking particularly hard for them. I tend to get stuck on a track and follow the rabbit hole, but as a platform from which to jump into many rabbit holes, it serves something of a unique purpose. It doesn't subscribe to a singular philosophy, or push ideologies. Individual members do, sure, but the the defining achievement here (imo) is the variety of directions that are able to be followed. And the chance encounters that can lead to deeper understandings and ultimately, truth.