The more we mature on the spiritual path, the more we realize the role that paradox plays in our evolution. Here is the paradox: God wants to give us all of heaven, all the goodness our souls aspire to experience, yet our capacity to receive depends not on a grandiose personality or grandiose projects, but on littleness, emptiness, and humility. For this reason Jesus tells us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Please do not interpret humility as a form of self-hatred. Nothing could be further from the truth! What God desires to give us is always greater than we can imagine. Our happiness projects and all the small gods we chase after do not begin to compare to the bliss that awaits us in the experience of God-communion. Humility in this context is a letting go of the inferior pleasures we cling to so that we can avail ourselves of the superior blessings God wants to give us. The world’s mystics tell us that prayer and meditation are ultimately about being emptied of attachments and the egoic self so that we can be filled with God’s ineffable love and the light of our own souls. Essentially, humility is pleasing God over and against pleasing the world. God is the God of the unexpected: heaven’s greatest blessings come to us in simplicity, emptiness, and humility. Daya Maya, one of Yogananda’s most advanced disciples, tells us,
“Humility has nothing in common with putting on an outward show of piety; it means being able to take all of life’s experiences with the right attitude, even when we are reviled with unkind words. St. Francis expressed it beautifully: ‘Learn to accept blame, criticism, and accusation silently and without retaliation, even though untrue and unjustified.’ In trying to defend ourselves against criticism, we become mired in self-pity and self-righteousness. Real humility, on the other hand, enables us to stand strong, because it is God we are seeking to please, not man. In being true to Him, we will become the kind of person whose qualities may also be more pleasing to man.”
Still deeper, there is another level to the phenomenon of humility: service and friendship to the outcasts, marginalized, and the so-called little people. Jesus tells us, “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Both Jesus and Yogananda served their disciples, the angels serve us, and God serves all of creation. Service is the ultimate, most noble pattern embedded in creation. To be God-like is to serve, and to be like God is the greatest reward we could imagine.
Beloved God,
With only my humble self
To offer you,
May I be of service
In the ways you invite me to be.
