Tracking
Through prayer we learn to see with the eyes of the soul. … It refines your eyes for the unknown narrative which is quietly working itself through your words, actions and thoughts. In this way prayer issues from, and increases, humility. The normal understanding of humility made it out to be a passive self-depreciation in which any sense of self-worth or value was diminished. Humility has a more profound meaning. Humility is a derivative of the Latin word ‘humus’ meaning ‘of the earth’. In this sense, humility is the art of being open and receptive to the inner wisdom of your clay. John O’Donohue (essay in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong)
In the early morning quiet with warming fire in the woodstove on this cold morning, I rediscovered this O’Donohue wisdom that I’d read sometime back. It shined light into the darkness that I’d been holding around humility. I understood that my story about humility held the limits of the “normal understanding” that he speaks of. A new story could now emerge in the light.
In the past couple weeks, I’ve made passing reference to humility here in The Pivot. The first was mentioning that I bristled when a bio-field scan suggested it as a priority. ‘What’s wrong with my humility?’ I bristled, ‘I have plenty…’. Then, as I wrestled with the teaching style of the leader in a class I’d just started, I recognized that a dose of humility might be an antidote worth exploration.
If not front and center in these early days of the new year, humility has certainly been highlighted in the soup of my reflections and musings with ever-gentle Muse nudging me along. Today, thanks to O’Donohue, I’ve come to better understand why the suggestion that humility needed to be addressed triggered my defensive reaction. Likewise, his wisdom further opened my heart and the door to create a new story.
Reading the scan results with fresh eyes and heart, I wondered if the language had changed since my first reading. There was no ‘problem’ with me that needed to be ‘fixed’. Rather I found an invitation to walk through a door opening as another closed. Endings and beginnings. Phases and stages. Dissolving and evolving. Life.
Muse and I chuckled as I read the scan’s introduction: As we start to recognize the greater forces at play in bringing us through a Choice Point, life often invites us to gain humility. As we end a cycle in our lives and begin another there is potential for some of our old world to dissolve (or collapse in some people’s experience). This is because nature follows cycles. As we are part of nature we can expect some aspects of our lives to follow the same kind of cyclic pattern. (NES Health - Personal Scan)
Muse nods with a smile as I recognize that these ideas are familiar. I am Nature. Nature is me. My soul speaking its wisdom and calling forth the new. Clay being placed before me for co-creating, discovering my part in bringing forth the new world that is gently cracking the shell to burst into new life.
I am not alone. Much of our world, our old stories, our systems, our thinking is dissolving and collapsing before us. What a time to be alive and co-create the new future rising!
This is my soul gently speaking her understanding of our connection to Gaia and to one another, indeed to all life. Soul has a better understanding of our true nature than either body or mind. The soul knows! And now I understand the necessity of humility to hear her voice.
Humility opens the way to let go of resistance, to surrender to the flow of life, to discover the freedom in non-attachment, and to relinquishing the quest to control that which is not mine to control.
The door of the old is not completely shut. Yet, as the door and light of the new are shining, an unknown, yet somehow familiar, narrative is taking shape within to guide the thoughts, words, and deeds of the days ahead. May that light shine gently and brightly for one and all. And may we each hear the voice of our souls.
Crestone Peak