The difference between True Humility and Playing Small

What passes for humility in our modern culture is often not humility at all, but a distorted version of reality. Two ways we see this playing out are :

1. seeing ourselves as small, or insignificant compared with others, or as somehow not valuable enough..

2. a calculated external downplaying of ourselves while believing the opposite inside, trying to be seen as humble....

We are often conditioned to believe that we should not appear to be too big or shine too brightly. Yet we humans have aspirations to shine.

This is not true humility for it ignores the fundamental truth of us as human beings. The truth is we are not only human but also divine in our essence. Our very humanity is an expression of the Supreme Reality, of Life.

So when we take ourselves to be without much value we are playing small without knowing the truth. And if this is encouraged as humility then we get stuck in a sense of limitation and lack.

Of course we also see its exact opposite play out too - when we think of ourselves as greater than everyone else around us, because of what we have achieved, our wealth and power, our status, or even our shining virtue!

Even after we glimpse our true source and true nature, we may feel superior to everyone else. This is arrogance, the opposite of humility. They are both rooted in an incomplete knowing of oneself.

True humility comes from knowing that each one of us is of the same divine essence. True humility is about extending recognition and respect to ourselves and to others.

True humility is the willingness

- to see our true strengths

- to see our true weaknesses

- to know that all humans have both

- to know that we are all ever evolving

- to celebrate and act on our strengths, without using them to feel superior

- to fearlessly face our weaknesses and learn from them, without using them to feel inferior.