Humility is an important part of our spiritual growth, for without this quality our learning becomes stifled and stagnates. As Brant Secunda, a Huichol Shaman from the Dance of the Deer Foundation, explains ‘if you don’t have humility and think you have and know everything, that will just hold you back’.
When you become humble, you lose the need to take things and have things. You lose the need to have approval from others and you become self-reliant in your own right since there is nothing virtuous about being or feeling superior. Real spiritual progress is gained from overcoming your old self and growing into a better person – which itself requires humility and understanding – and finding any answers within.
From a larger perspective, we are all on an equal footing with everything that exists around us whether that is a flower, tree, stone, animal or bird; we are all interconnected, our energies entwined and, inevitably, dependent on Mother Nature to sustain us. However, one way to shift focus away from yourself can be done daily and quite simply by using fewer personal pronouns, such as ‘I’ and ‘me’, and replacing them with ‘us’. Other ways are by striving to be kind and calm as often as possible, even under provoking circumstances, so that your life becomes calm and steady. We can always help ourselves find inner steadiness by connecting with the beauty and rhythm of nature. Going outside during dusk or dawn and simply noticing the sunrise or sunset, can assist in grounding us by providing a witness to just ‘being’. To live steadily is to be reliable, consistent, resilient, and, inevitably, with humility.
