Humility.

Matt Kahn

4 hrs ·

One of my favorite words happens to be one of the most important attributes in conscious evolution. It is a word that can only be understood on the deepest level by allowing it to influence your choices. It is a clear benchmark of spiritual maturity that offers unlimited power and greater depth of character to any character you portray. It is a word called humility; a blossoming flower of heart-centered consciousness through which life’s most humbling fragrance arises.

Humility is the resolver of righteousness. It is the translator of pain’s wisest lessons, as it releases the inner will to fight, argue, or oppose the things that only exist in your reality to ensure your highest transformation. Humility doesn’t need to have the final word in any discussion. It’s too busy listening, as an act of love, to those who have much to say, while hiding from their own evolution through the argument of ideas.

Humility is the joy of appreciation. It is the inspiration behind every moment of goodwill. It is the power of cooperation that doesn’t require anyone else to be or act differently. Humility is the satisfier of insatiable desire. It is the grace that arises when encountering the magnitude of your true loving potential. Humility is the liberator of suffering — once life has opened your heart to something deeper than who is right or wrong.

Humility is the footprint of mastery; only leaving behind as evidence of its arrival the kindness, compassion, and goodness that it awakens in all. Humility is the force slowing down the pace of each pattern, so you may learn to receive the precious treasures of your long-awaited destiny that no amount of seeking can find.

Humility is an endearing smile offered in respect to your fiercest teachers, who often come disguised as frustration, loneliness, boredom, confusion, and despair. Humility is anonymous generosity. It is the transformer of embarrassment and the remover of intimidation that calls you out of hiding on life’s immaculate terms and conditions.

Humility is the integrator of ego. It gives the world the benefit of the doubt, without being seduced or manipulated by the influences running any character. Humility cannot be hurt, simply because, it is always willing to face or feel the inevitability of each passing breath – just to see what it is capable of surviving. Humility has absolutely no point to prove or any way to be thrown off course by the responses or reactions of others.

Humility is the inner laughter of immortality that extinguishes the futility and weakness of any threat or accusation through a dance of open engagement. Humility is the arrival of your highest self in form, once apologizing for existing or begging others for attention has turned you inward to discover a love that knows no other.

Humility is the palpable bliss of consciousness in action. It speaks its truth with perfection and precision simply by leading by example. Humility is the wisdom of sainthood that untangles any misuse of force through the power of restraint. It is the safety you desire that always dwells within you, once your words and actions are recognized as contributions toward the evolution of the whole.

May today be a moment in time to cherish, embrace, and honor the exquisite grace of humility, whether tucked away in the corner of your consciousness, or emerging at the forefront of each and every choice. May humility inspire your deepest courage, while softening every edge with the light of your eternal beauty. May it be honored as a one-sided spree of goodwill only intended to bring your highest potential to life – no matter how many people overlook the demonstration of your most honorable virtues.

What if, the next time you’re waiting in line, you invited the person behind you to go first? Only humility can do that.

What if, when opening a door for someone, you wished them a magnificent day, and then held the door open for a few seconds longer just to see if anyone else wishes to enter? Only humility can do that.

What if, when finding the perfect parking space, you passed it by to allow someone behind you to have it? Only humility can do that.

What if you did something outrageously kind or charitable for another and told absolutely no one about it? Only humility can do that.

What if you imagined your harshest critic or any sworn enemy and offered a “thank you” without needing to know why they deserve it? Only humility can do that.

What if you saw how those who make the most amount of noise with unconscious words and unsavory behavior are often in the deepest amount of pain? Only humility can do that.

May today be your opportunity to cultivate a higher vibration for the wellbeing of all by allowing humility to lead the way. Knowing how those who fight or argue are only fighting for the grace of their own loving attention. In the absence of self-love, they push against their own path of salvation that ultimately frees them from the very thing they fight to protect – a constant need to be right by making others wrong or less than the sum of the whole. www.truedivinenature.com

How global trade agreements yank us out of right relationship with the land.

Lately I’ve been waking up more to what these global trade agreements are about (most immanent is the TPP which was negotiated *in secret* by our president and other heads of state– and which HAS YET to be approved by our congress– which we must oppose with everything we’ve got– for the good of our land, our nation, and our own people’s livelihood– unless I’m really missing something here). When I found this essay by Wendell Berry, a light bulb went on for me. These agreements yank us even further out of our right relationship with the land and with our own prosperity. The people of the involved nations rightly feel deceived by their heads of state (and we by our president):

And so we have before us the spectacle of unprecedented ‘prosperity’ and ‘economic growth’ in a land of degraded farms, forests, ecosystems, and watersheds, of polluted air, failing families, and perishing communities. This moral and economic absurdity exists for the sake of the allegedly ‘free’ market, the single principle of which is this: Commodities will be produced wherever they can be produced at the lowest cost, and consumed wherever they will bring the highest price. To make too cheap and sell too high has always been the program of industrial capitalism. The idea of the ‘global free market’ is merely capitalism’s so far successful attempt to enlarge the geographic scope of its greed and, moreover, to give to its greed the status of a ‘right’ within its presumptive territory. The global ‘free market’ is free to the corporations precisely because it dissolves the boundaries of the old national colonialisms and replaces them with a new colonialism without restraints or boundaries. It is pretty much as if the rabbits have been forbidden to have have holes, thereby ‘freeing’ the hounds.

— Wendell Berry, “The Idea of a Local Economy,”  from  the book by Kellert and Farnham, The Good in Nature and Humanity

Casting the net of light.

Let your hearts open now,” the Grandmothers said. “We understand that to see the suffering in so many places,” they said, shaking their heads, “is painful. And to see the hardened hearts of those you call ‘the haves’…” they laughed ruefully. “Those people are most pitiable of all. In their hearts they have nothing and though they clutch at everything, they end up grasping at emptiness.

“So,” they said “take the challenge and let your hearts open. Feel what you feel.
Let compassion well up in you and then serve wherever you can. Serve with your hands, your voice, and with your listening. But most of all, serve with a loving heart. Such service will bring you joy.

“Cast the Net of Light,” the Grandmothers said. “Hold it and let yourself be held by it. Pray for all the creatures affected by these catastrophes and hold them in the Net. That is your job. The holding, holding, holding of the light.

page 80, Casting the Net, Sharon McErlane

Celebrating and Sending Love by John O’Donohue

Celebrating And Sending Love by John O’Donohue:

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and his or her love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate; to those who are starving; to those who are trapped in prison; in hospitals and all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer.

~ John O’Donohue © All rights reserved, from Anam Cara, Chapter 1, The Wounded Gift

Wisdom indeed.

No Attachment to Dust

Zengetsu, a Chinese master of the T’ang dynasty, wrote the following advice for his pupils:
Living in the world yet not forming attachments to the dust of the world is the way of a true Zen student.
When witnessing the good action of another encourage yourself to follow his example. Hearing of the mistaken action of another, advise yourself not to emulate it.
Even though alone in a dark room, be as if you were facing a noble guest. Express your feelings, but become no more expressive than your true nature.
Poverty is your teasure. Never exchange it for an easy life.
A person may appear a fool and yet not be one. He may only be guarding his wisdom carefully.
Virtues are the fruit of self-discipline and do not drop from heaven of themselves as does rain or snow.
Modesty is the foundation of all virtues. Let your neighbors discover you before you make yourself known to them.
A noble heart never forces itself forward. Its words are as rare gems, seldom displayed and of great value.
To a sincere student, every day is a fortunate day. Time passes but he never lags behind. Neither glory nor shame can move him.
Censure yourself, never another. Do not discuss right and wrong.
Some things, though right, were considered wrong for generations. Since the value of righteousness may be recognized after centuries, there is no need to crave an immediate appreciation.
Live with cause and leave results to the great law of the universe. Pass each day in peaceful contemplation.
— Zen Koans

Nikki Firefly

Nature calls my heart.

How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world…Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we walk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them.


― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology