I had Dave Banks as a guest speaker for a webinar this week, and he spoke of the importance of humility. He shared how humility is the key that opens the door to surrender. It was a helpful reminder to me because I can often forget to be humble and to remember that life isn’t about me. Even my actions for good causes and acts of service can become co-opted by my ego.
One of the reminders of this is when I get tired. When I overdo it, it is a reminder that my personal identity has become too front and center and is running the show. It is an indicator that I have forgotten to be humble so that I can surrender and remember I am not the doer.
I am noticing this now. I am struggling with getting a new website up. It is feeling hard. I am noticing myself pushing. But it is not about the website. It is feedback. My ego has been running the show. I have been working too hard, trying to get too much done. Yes, I do feel inspired by my work and the causes I want to support, but I also want to remain humble.
My ego runs away with me, gets excited, and wants to do everything. I forget that life is unfolding through me. Yes, I want to be a willing participant in creating a more equitable and just world, but that world I see and experience comes through me, and nothing good comes from me being burnt out.
I recognize now that burn out doesn’t happen to me from the outside. It is an experience that is the by-product of my ego getting overly involved and me feeling exhausted as a result. It is so hard for me not to push at times. This is a big learning curve for me. I have gotten so much better over the years at allowing inspiration to flow through me and to follow the natural momentum that emerges from there. I have also created more space in my life for reflection and quiet, but I still lose my humility and push at times. I forget that my value is not dependent on how hard I work.
I haven’t seen the connection between pushing and humility before. This feels new to me. An invisible layer of arrogance I hadn’t been aware of.
My little innocent ego wants to be important in the world. I want to be good. I get seduced into trying to live up to my ego’s expectations and conditioning. And it is always a trap, even in the most legitimate of disguises.
I know there is no perfection here, and there is no need for it. I can accept my humanness and my foibles of self-importance. And I am so grateful when I remember and get stripped down to my ordinariness. I share this here in vulnerability. I still have beliefs that tell me if I have anything to share in public it better be good. I share here to out myself and to deepen my exploration of a new way of being that has my individual self be insignificant in its individuality and significant in its expression of the whole. As Aristotle said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
This is not coming from a place of worthlessness. It comes from freedom and radical Self-care.
Humility is the key that unlocks the door to this freedom. Letting go of the striving of the individual self is radical self-care. It is the best! And in that humility, the whole has more room to express. The synergy is more easily felt. The connections and interdependence are more vividly appreciated.
When the individual self is important, it is exhausting. I have been letting it run the show trying to get things done. This is not bad or wrong. Just a reminder to come home within my Self to the one Self, not the individuated expression of a separate self.
It is in this surrender and in this remembering that the embodied experience of this individual self has a greater sense of its place in the whole. There is no real separation. We are all in this together. Each one of us plays our part as we co-create this living symphony of being, all being not just human beings.
My ego is jumping in and saying, “Don’t get too transcendental here. Remember there is work to be done. If you find your wellbeing, you aren’t going to do the work.” But I know that is not true. If there is any work, it is finding the key that unlocks wellbeing and peace of mind. What emanates from there will support the whole. Each cell in a body has health in it. No body benefits from the individual cells not being in wellbeing. And the whole body benefits from as many cells as possible being in wellbeing at the same time. That is the symphony. Again not just of human beings, but of all beings down to the smallest of micro-organisms. The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. And humans may be the dominant life form on this planet but we are not the only beings.
How do we support as many beings experiencing wellbeing at the same time?
It does not come from individual beings striving and dominating. This is the patriarchal, European model that is based on duality and fear. A win-lose model that is increasingly becoming more evident that it is a lose-lose model. A new way is actually the old way of indigenous and ancestral wisdom. It comes from the humility of seeing we are all one being. There is no separation. Everything is connected and alive. There are cultures where the is no word for the individual. There seems much to be learned from the wisdom of the collective.
Humility may be the enemy of the ego, but it is the friend of wellbeing for all beings.
Give yourself the gift of experiencing your insignificance so you can surrender into the significance of the whole.
I still fight it at times, but it is worth it. It is the best self-care I can ever do. Remembering how unimportant I am and feeling the freedom of this, the wellbeing of this, the truth of this.
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. You can get her free eBook Relationships here. Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. Rohini is the author of the free ebook Relationships and the co-founder of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also subscribe to Rohini’s weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com. You can also follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.
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Rohini Ross
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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Juliet
27.07.2020 at 09:42Thank you Rohini. You put words to something I understood but could not express. This is beautifully written. I realized that this is a path that I (and we all) travel. Even if I struggle with humility and surrender and this feeling of the oneness of life, there are moments of clarity. It feels like the fog lifts up for moments of time and the path looks so clear and peaceful. The more I understand and realize this, the longer the fog lifts up. Reading this blog article was one of those moments.
Rohini
27.07.2020 at 09:48Hi Juliet,
Thanks so much for letting me know and sharing this moment.
Love,
Rohini
Jessie Marcus
29.10.2020 at 09:01So deep and so powerful. I was unaware and this has shed some light on my finding my worth in pushing which has been my habit in the past. So much potential to unfold from this. Thank you!
Rohini
30.10.2020 at 11:37Thanks, Jessie! So glad you are experiencing more freedom! <3