Humility in Conflict
Weekly Reading Topic for February 29, 2020: Humility in Conflict
Well, good morning, love! I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:
What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?
The answer was: “Humility in Conflict.”
What follows is your weekly reading, dear one. It seems appropriate given that today is Leap Day, the day we recognize that even the calendar keepers make mistakes in their calculations, and need to Get Things Right.
Weekly Reading │ Humility in Conflict
Q: What do we need to know about “Humility in Conflict?”
A: The classic definition of humility includes a reference to the earth. Same Latin root: humus, or earth, dirt, the ground. To be humble is to be close to the ground, down in the dirt. Grounded. Earthed.
Of course, we think first, in our culture, of another word that shares this: humiliation. To be brought down, to be revealed to be lower than first thought, to go through a process of public shaming.
Humble, humiliated, humility, humus. On the ground.
We also think of someone as obedient, subservient. Beaten.
But of course, there is another meaning to humility, to humiliation, to humbleness and to being close to the earth: being aware.
When you are grounded, earthed, lying in the dirt, your ear is to the ground. You can hear the hoofbeats of the future as they pound toward your life. You can hear the rustling of the rabbits in their warrens, the digging claws of the owl picking up its prey. You. Know. What’s. Up. Because you are down, and you can hear it.
As we ready ourselves for our life to get really interesting, remember to be humble. This means so many things!
If you are a stranger in a strange land you are naturally careful, attentive, listening. You pay close attention to body language, to gestures, to the way people are walking, to where the crowds are and aren’t. You are polite, you smile, you greet people with soft tones and open hands.
As the world changes around us it is entirely possible that we will find ourselves strangers in a strange land. That our countries of birth will feel unfamiliar, foreign.
Be humble. Show humility. Be careful, and attentive. Learn the language. Say kind things. Keep yourself low to the ground, ear pressed to the earth, listening for the hoofbeats. If danger comes nigh, you’ll know it, and you can be prepared.
When you are already humble, when you are showing humility, it is easy for others to see you as worthy. They are more likely to lift you up, give you shelter. Harmless wins friends in a stranger’s land. Or at least, it renders you invisible, and therefore safer. And if you need to defend yourself, it gives you the power of surprise.
What will you have to hide from? Not necessarily something external. The conflict, if/when it comes, will be internal. That’s what you have to prepare for!
Inner anger, shame, judgment, fear … these are the things to be careful for, attentive to, wary of. These things carried in our own bodies, our own hearts, our own minds, are easily turned against us when the going gets tough.
To put it another way, unless you know how to use a gun, and use it well, don’t carry one. It’s too easy to disarm you and use it against you.
So if you find yourself with a body full of anger, shame, fear, with a full ego and a surety in your own righteousness, your own rightness, beware: you are carrying danger inside, and you will not be able to hear the hoofbeats of danger outside.
Tread lightly. Lie down and press your ear to the earth. Listen to the animals, listen to your breathing, listen to your heartbeat, and let yourself calm down before you rise again. Don’t stand up until you have regained your inner composure, your equanimity. Your humility.
What we bring forth is what we live, now more than ever. If you want to see good in the world, be good in the world. It’s not always easy to make the kind choice. Sometimes we can’t — we are just too full of the not-kind feelings.
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In those times, we need to withdraw, lay down, humble ourselves before the inner raging, let it work its way out of our body before we rise again to make a new choice.
Being humble is not about denigrating yourself, or about losing anything, or about bearing shame. It’s about letting the tug of the internal conflict anchor you in place for a while, bring you back down to the earth, where the gravitational pull of all that molten iron spinning in the center of our planet can drain that conflict right out of your tissues.
It’s cold in most places in the northern hemisphere right now, but it’s warm in the southern hemisphere. If you can, go outside with bare feet, even just for a moment, to put your feet on the planet directly. It will help to connect you to the core, to the place where all energy eventually goes.
Imagine those feelings just pouring out of you, into the earth, dispersed along the roots of our brothers, the plants (who give us all our food, and our chocolate, and our coffee, and that tiny lovely molecule called caffeine). Those plants direct the feelings down and down and they are caught by water and carried deeper, deeper, until they dissolve in steam into the iron and are purified in the red hot fire at the center of the earth.
And the planet uses that energy for good planet-y works. For new earth, and minerals, and strange gases to carry new life. And so nothing is wasted, all is exchanged, and meanwhile, you’re up there on the surface, feet stinging in the cold and the wet and feeling wild as you hurry inside, and put your feet in a warm bath, and rub them and thank them for carrying you on this earth.
And if you are at the top of a tall building in a city where the earth is all bound up in wrought iron fences, don’t worry — it’s still possible to give those feelings to the earth, to the recycler, and as you do, just remember that all building materials, all people, all animals are all made of the same few elements, all from earth, all from our glorious ball of a planet that spins through the universe in great arcs of time.
So the earth knows the humble center, yes, and also the very tallest of places, because we are in the outskirts of our universe, so far, as far as the tallest skyscraper, lightyears high, and still, we are connected to the center, no matter how far. So yes, if you don’t want to go outside … it’s possible to do this inside.
Humility in conflict means that we tread lightly, carefully, watchfully. We don’t speak unless necessary, but instead we keep our minds, ears, and hearts open.
We clean up conflict inside of us, so we don’t add to the conflict outside of us.
We keep mindful of ourselves as one soul among many, of our role as a unique expression of God that is interacting with billions of other unique expressions of God. Altogether we do not add up to God because God Is One … instead each of us is Total and All.
And so if we are in conflict, we drop down. We lay ourselves down, quiet, and listen. We become like the little child again, resting on the floor at naptime, careful to keep his limbs on his carpet square, hugging his blanket and feeling the warmth under his cheek, the cool on his other.
And we stay there until we have found our beating hearts, our resting, quiet, loving, beating hearts. And when we rise, we speak from there, according to the three wise rules given by multiple sages over the century: Is it True? Is it Kind? Is it Necessary?
I am always here to serve in any way I can.
Much Love to You!
Molly
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