Why You Need a Humble Spirit
Diving into spirituality can be an inspiring and fulfilling experience. However, it doesn’t take much for spirituality to consume you and inflate your ego. You start wondering if you’re more special and more important than everyone else.
A humble spirit is necessary to continue your spiritual growth. But what is spiritual humility and why is it important? Spiritual humility is understanding that you’re a material being connected, but willfully independent of the universe. You can’t help but elevate yourself until you understand your limitations.
Learning spiritual humility will help you heal your broken connection to the divine. It’s not easy because you’ll need to confront your ego, but you must do it if you want to experience true spiritual growth.
What a Humble Spirit Is
It helps to think of your relationship to the universe a bit like a family.
Everything in the universe is connected by an inseparable tie, but everyone in that family is a distinct and independent person. Adults care for dependents, but as children grow up, they become more willful and desire to break away.
At some point in everyone’s spiritual journey, they will behave differently according to their current spiritual growth. Someone new to spirituality will be dependent on the universe or their religion for guidance. They won’t question anything with severity, but they’ll expect a lot in return. There’s no humility, but there is obedience.
However, once someone is more comfortable with their spirituality, they begin to test their connection to the universe. Anything which doesn’t serve them is rejected, though some will begin making grand bargains with their conception of God.
If their petitions aren’t answered, they’ll go their own way entirely.
In real families, adolescents who rebel and depart forever do so because they feel hurt or see themselves as radically different from where they came from. But not every rebel does so justly, and this is where the importance of spiritual humility is key.
Someone who has a humble spirit is aware that they can’t have everything they ever wanted in life. There are restrictions, some moral and others material, which prevent them from taking from others for their own benefit. They recognize, in essence, that they are not gods and do not set the terms of cosmic engagement.
How to Be Happy with a Humble Spirit
Facing your ego isn’t an enjoyable experience. That’s why a lot of people put it off for as long as possible.
But the longer you put it off, the more difficult it’s going to be to develop spiritual humility.
To address this issue, you need to brainstorm your deepest desires that you’ve failed to receive which still bother you. This might be something as simple as your first crush rejecting your feelings or something especially painful, like trauma.
These wounds will have left a lasting mark that has made you feel bitter at the universe. Why couldn’t I have what I wanted? You think. It’s not fair.
This pain is even more difficult to live with when you see other people with better lives than you.
But you need to know this: your desire to get even with the universe is what caused so much of this suffering to happen in the first place. Maybe you’re not responsible for your suffering, but someone or some natural force that sought its preservation victimized you to elevate itself.
Recognizing that you can’t do the same thing is how you develop a humble spirit of your own.
Another way to describe this process is shadow work. The unconscious pain you experience can be brought to the surface and you can confront how it’s negatively affected your ego.
The negativity can warp your sense of self and how you look at the universe, creating a perspective of self-grandeur that can make a person believe they have the justification for doing whatever they want.
All limits are self-imposed and they exist to respect other independent souls in the universe. It’s the better decision to make, but it takes a spiritually strong person to do so.
Humility is a Spiritual Gift
You may wonder what good is it to bother with spiritual humility. But forfeiting your choice to have whatever you want doesn’t come without its own benefits.
Like a family, those who grow to understand what sacrifice means for their loved ones can experience the true depth of familial love in how they care for the people around them.
The same is true for your spiritual connection to the universe. A humble spirit permits you to grow in your relationship with everything and everyone around you.
It’s a comfort and a continuation of a great spiritual family. You stop feeling alone.
Parents give so much to their children, but they don’t regret it and often say they received back more from their children than they ever gave. That’s the power of love — it changes your heart and gives you a perspective that someone who is only out for themselves could never have.
It’s peace. It’s tranquility. It’s a detachment from the material world and a unification with all there is.
A humble spirit allows you to feel safe and secure, even when the world around you is terrifying. You can depend on others and trust in the universe to provide a better future for you, either in the immediate physical sense or in your next life, whatever form that may take.
And that’s how you continue in your spiritual growth. Your connection to the universe is determined by your willingness to be part of it instead of conquering it.