The Humble, Spiritual Path

It feels like I've been on the spiritual path for a long time--most of my life. My beliefs have been challenged and have been changing. Ideas about myself as a being have been evolving. I've been searching for answers, searching for the right practice or path or understanding about reality. I have kept chasing something seemingly outside of myself, hoping that this outside thing, this concept, this teaching is going to fill and fulfill my spiritual life.

Maybe you can relate. Maybe that's why you are reading this.

What I want to share is subtle, and I hope I can articulate it. How I see the spiritual path now is a continuous orientation to all that is.

This orientation is not born from a teaching, although teachings have led me here, and teachings are valuable. This orientation has not come about because of 100,000 prostrations or praying with a rosary or being silent for months and months, although these practices can also be said to have value. I also do not perceive this orientation as fruition of an 'achievement,' or a stage or even something like enlightenment.

This orientation feels more like humility.

Humility seems to be about having an accurate perspective regarding one's own self. We imagine humility as not-having over-inflated self importance, not-believing we have more value, not-believing that we deserve entitlements. And lets be careful here. Because when I speak about spirituality, I am not speaking about psychology. Throughout my life, I have believed and behaved in 'humble' manners so that I can remain in a codependent relationship or so that I can feel in some way better than another person because of my act of humility. Humility--as I experience it in spiritual life--seems to be a willingness to let go of my version of reality (as important as I think it is) in order to remain on the path which is a continuous orientation to all that is.

Again, this language is tricky. Spiritual teachings often sound like they are saying, "Deny reality as real." "Everything is an illusion." I am not saying that here. I am not saying that nothing is real, and that we just need to humbly accept that. I am also not saying that we abandon the "self" for the sake of the spiritual life. It seems as though this is the opposite direction of where I'm headed.

I am saying that my human thought/feeling/somatic experience of reality is happening, and it's not everything. To truly see that it is not everything, I need to clearly see myself. I need to allow awareness to see my thoughts and emotions. I need to allow awareness to look inside the patterns in my brain. I allow awareness to see it all. I humble my sense of "self," my limited, guarded, protected, carefully defended and nurtured sense of self in the presence of all that is. Not to diminish the self. Not to destroy the self. But simply see and know the self. I feel as though when I humbly observe and know this self as it thinks and moves and grows, I have greater access to the whole.

A big add-on here: humility requires shadow work and love. Witnessing the things we think, do and feel that subsequently bring in shame or 'hiding in the shadows' liberates them to come into the light and be loved equally with all things. I have experienced this on the "continuous orientation to all that is" journey. In real time, I see strongly held opinions and feelings coming into the light of awareness. Sometimes these are items that might bring on feelings of shame for their existence. "I'm supposed to be a spiritual person! I've done therapy! I'm accomplished in my profession! I was a good parent!" running through my head, defending my ego and limited sense of self. With humility, I have found the willingness to let go of my version of reality (as important as I think it is) in order to remain on the path which is a continuous orientation to all that is.