About Me

I'm a writer in Los Angeles, with more than my share of the struggle to get free. I've written screenplays, two children's books,articles for the New York Times and published a novel, Restraint, an erotic thriller. I have a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School. This blog is a ongoing record of what I've learned, what I'm learning and what I'm still realizing I need to know, as I work my way toward change.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

HUMILITY, NOT HUMILIATION

It occurs to me that the way out of humiliation is through humility.When I feel humiliated by my situation or someone's (mostly imagined) response to me, I feel humiliation which is another word for shame. Shame is a judgment, the taking on of a certain belief, attitude - it's a judgment that's leveled only by my own fears and self-loathing., not tied to anything objective outside myself, to some standard that's been decreed from on high. 
   But when I open myself to humility, judgment vanishes. Letting go of it, I'm only where I am, full of acceptance  for where I am. Humiliation is static; when I'm flooded with shame, there's no way forward. I'm caught in the prison of judgment. But humility looks only for what is; let me begin from where I am. Humility opens me up to the possibility that I don't know everything, that there may be another view, that there may be something I can or need or want to learn. Humility is a great bowing down, not to any other person or god but to my own shared humanity, a recognition of the human condition with all its faults and weaknesses and fears. 

Humiliation is the child of the ego, of all the judgments ego creates. Humility is the gift of the spirit, the way to move beyond ego and find a path forward.

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