3 understandings of humility for strengthening our relationships
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To summarize, I spoke today on the topic of relationships and especially the role of humility in relationships and I talked about three aspects of humility. The first was, does anyone remember? Beautiful, thank you. So I talked about looking down at ourselves, self-pity or inferiority that is also, that is first of all unhealthy and that is also a negative self-centeredness.
Some people think I am so great and some people think I am so bad. But we have to live with ourselves and if we dislike ourselves, if we loathe ourselves, then it is worse than living with someone whom we dislike because we are living with ourselves whom we dislike. So we cannot look down at ourselves and this positive self-understanding comes from spiritual knowledge where we understand we are all parts of God, we are potentially divine and thus we don't have to look down at ourselves.
But to look up at something bigger than ourselves means that we don't agitate about the wrongs in our life, agitate for rights, claiming victimhood, claiming martyrdom that oh this person did like this to me, that person did like this. All of life is tough. Everybody is working through their tragedies and if you want to feel sorry for yourself, the rest of our life is not a big deal.
Setting the wrongs right will not bring as much meaning to our life as taking up a responsibility. At a basic level taking up responsibility means taking responsibility for ourselves. I have some strengths, I have some weaknesses.
So let me take responsibility to the best that I can in my situation. So spiritual, the spiritual knowledge helps us to understand that we have an eternal purpose for us, that is spiritual evolution. To grow in our wisdom, to grow in our maturity, intellectually and emotionally to grow and then to ultimately grow in our capacity to love, to love the eternal, to love Krishna and to connect with everyone in the light of that relationship.
So that brought us to the second definition of humility. Does anyone remember that? Yes, to not let our ego come in the way of our purpose. So some people are lost, they don't have any purpose and some people are so lost that they don't even know they are lost.
And that's like somebody busily going, driving a car, where? To fuel. What after that? Next gas station, next gas station. So that's no purpose.
Now food, sleep, sex, power, these things are what we live with. That's not what we live for. So purpose has to be something bigger.
It's not about what we get but what about what we contribute, what we connect with, how we grow. So that purpose is, if we don't have that purpose, then what happens? If we don't have anything to fight for, we will fight for anything. So then any small things can become big.
Sometimes if somebody enters into a relationship simply for pleasure, even a small thing which displeases us, displeases that person, that can escalate and they can terminate that relationship over the small thing. So that's why we need something big in our life and that spiritual knowledge says that we all are parts of God. We are all meant to contribute and connect in our life.
And I talked about the example of Hanuman, how he did not try to prove that he was stronger than Simbika, but he just focused on his purpose. And thus, our purpose is not to say to defeat those who oppose us. Our purpose is not to prove our power but to pursue our destiny, to progress towards our destination.
So that if we are going towards that destination, sometimes if we are disrespected, we can accept that also. So that was the second definition of humility. And third was, remember? We should not take others actions personally.
Yes, don't take others actions personally. That means that, I gave the example of how the dyslexic person, just hitting someone or inside every complaining adult is a crying infant. So when people hurt us, most often it is not about us.
They have a movie going on in their head and that they are stars and we are all extras over there. So, based on whatever is going on in their head, they hit out at us. Now, rather than taking it personally, if we take it personally and we react to that and then they react to what we have spoken and it just gets aggravated.
Instead of that, try to understand what is the need, what is the unfulfilled need that is making this person speak like this. Now, of course, it's up to us then to decide whether I want to fulfill that need or I feel this is too, I can't do this. I don't want to get into this.
But either way, we can keep small things small by understanding that people's actions frequently are not about us. It's about what is going on in their head. And then I concluded by how humility, when we don't take other's actions personally, then that doesn't mean we let them walk over us.
But rather, we stay focused on the purpose. If we get pushed by someone in the train, we may just move aside. But if they are pushed out of the train, then we take a stand.
So, we keep the small things small. But if it's a big thing, then we take a stand. And that way, humility can become an asset for us for pursuing our purpose and keeping healthy boundaries in the relationship while also helping the relationship to grow.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Any questions or comments? Yes, please.