humility

• once was attempt to deceive envious spirits

87:5.6Envy is a deep-seated hu­man trait; there­fore did prim­i­tive man as­cribe it to his early gods. And since man had once prac­ticed de­cep­tion upon the ghosts, he soon be­gan to de­ceive the spir­its. Said he, “If the spir­its are jeal­ous of our beauty and pros­per­ity, we will dis­fig­ure our­selves and speak lightly of our suc­cess.” Early hu­mil­ity was not, there­fore, de­base­ment of ego but rather an at­tempt to foil and de­ceive the en­vi­ous spir­its.

87:5.7The method adopted to pre­vent the spir­its from be­com­ing jeal­ous of hu­man pros­per­ity was to heap vi­tu­per­a­tion upon some lucky or much loved thing or per­son. The cus­tom of de­pre­ci­at­ing com­pli­men­tary re­marks re­gard­ing one­self or fam­ily had its ori­gin in this way, and it even­tu­ally evolved into civ­i­lized mod­esty, re­straint, and cour­tesy. In keep­ing with the same mo­tive, it be­came the fash­ion to look ugly. Beauty aroused the envy of spir­its; it be­to­kened sin­ful hu­man pride. The sav­age sought for an ugly name. This fea­ture of the cult was a great hand­i­cap to the ad­vance­ment of art, and it long kept the world somber and ugly.

• God dwells with the contrite and humble

97:7.12And this preacher of a su­per­nal God never ceased to pro­claim this God of love. “I dwell in the high and holy place, also with him who is of a con­trite and hum­ble spirit.” And still fur­ther words of com­fort did this great teacher speak to his con­tem­po­raries: “And the Lord will guide you con­tin­u­ally and sat­isfy your soul. You shall be like a wa­tered gar­den and like a spring whose wa­ters fail not. And if the en­emy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a de­fense against him.” And once again did the fear-de­stroy­ing gospel of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the trust-breed­ing re­li­gion of Salem shine forth for the bless­ing of man­kind.

• normal consciousness of smallness, mortal shortcomings, essential for religious growth

100:1.5The soil es­sen­tial for re­li­gious growth pre­sup­poses a pro­gres­sive life of self-re­al­iza­tion, the co-or­di­na­tion of nat­u­ral propen­si­ties, the ex­er­cise of cu­rios­ity and the en­joy­ment of rea­son­able ad­ven­ture, the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion, the func­tion­ing of the fear stim­u­lus of at­ten­tion and aware­ness, the won­der-lure, and a nor­mal con­scious­ness of small­ness, hu­mil­ity. Growth is also pred­i­cated on the dis­cov­ery of self­hood ac­com­pa­nied by self-crit­i­cism—con­science, for con­science is re­ally the crit­i­cism of one­self by one’s own value-habits, per­sonal ide­als.

• spiritual progress predicated on recognizing spiritual poverty

100:2.1Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment de­pends, first, on the main­te­nance of a liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with true spir­i­tual forces and, sec­ond, on the con­tin­u­ous bear­ing of spir­i­tual fruit: yield­ing the min­istry to one’s fel­lows of that which has been re­ceived from one’s spir­i­tual bene­fac­tors. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is pred­i­cated on in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual pov­erty cou­pled with the self-con­scious­ness of per­fec­tion-hunger, the de­sire to know God and be like him, the whole­hearted pur­pose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• normal consciousness of smallness, mortal shortcomings, essential for religious growth

100:6.4The self has sur­ren­dered to the in­trigu­ing drive of an all-en­com­pass­ing mo­ti­va­tion which im­poses height­ened self-dis­ci­pline, lessens emo­tional con­flict, and makes mor­tal life truly worth liv­ing. The mor­bid rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions is changed to the nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of mor­tal short­com­ings, as­so­ci­ated with moral de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tion to at­tain the high­est uni­verse and super­uni­verse goals. And this in­tense striv­ing for the at­tain­ment of super­mor­tal ide­als is al­ways char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing pa­tience, for­bear­ance, for­ti­tude, and tol­er­ance.

• humbly receive credit for Adjuster’s endeavors

110:7.10Dur­ing the mak­ing and break­ing of a con­tact be­tween the mor­tal mind of a des­tiny re­servist and the plan­e­tary super­vi­sors, some­times the in­dwelling Ad­juster is so sit­u­ated that it be­comes pos­si­ble to trans­mit a mes­sage to the mor­tal part­ner. Not long since, on Uran­tia, such a mes­sage was trans­mit­ted by a self-act­ing Ad­juster to the hu­man as­so­ciate, a mem­ber of the re­serve corps of des­tiny. This mes­sage was in­tro­duced by these words: “And now, with­out in­jury or jeop­ardy to the sub­ject of my so­lic­i­tous de­vo­tion and with­out in­tent to over­chas­tise or dis­cour­age, for me, make rec­ord of this my plea to him.” Then fol­lowed a beau­ti­fully touch­ing and ap­peal­ing ad­mo­ni­tion. Among other things, the Ad­juster pleaded “that he more faith­fully give me his sin­cere co-op­er­a­tion, more cheer­fully en­dure the tasks of my em­place­ment, more faith­fully carry out the pro­gram of my ar­range­ment, more pa­tiently go through the tri­als of my se­lec­tion, more per­sis­tently and cheer­fully tread the path of my choos­ing, more humbly re­ceive credit that may ac­crue as a re­sult of my cease­less en­deav­ors—thus trans­mit my ad­mo­ni­tion to the man of my in­dwelling. Upon him I be­stow the su­preme de­vo­tion and af­fec­tion of a di­vine spirit. And say fur­ther to my beloved sub­ject that I will func­tion with wis­dom and power un­til the very end, un­til the last earth strug­gle is over; I will be true to my per­son­al­ity trust. And I ex­hort him to sur­vival, not to dis­ap­point me, not to de­prive me of the re­ward of my pa­tient and in­tense strug­gle. On the hu­man will our achieve­ment of per­son­al­ity de­pends. Cir­cle by cir­cle I have pa­tiently as­cended this hu­man mind, and I have tes­ti­mony that I am meet­ing the ap­proval of the chief of my kind. Cir­cle by cir­cle I am pass­ing on to judg­ment. I await with plea­sure and with­out ap­pre­hen­sion the roll call of des­tiny; I am pre­pared to sub­mit all to the tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days.”

• lean not upon one’s own understanding

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

• safety only when soul craves reproof

131:3.6“The fool has said in his heart, ‘Evil shall not over­take me’; but safety is found only when the soul craves re­proof and the mind seeks wis­dom. The wise man is a no­ble soul who is friendly in the midst of his en­e­mies, tran­quil among the tur­bu­lent, and gen­er­ous among the grasp­ing. Love of self is like weeds in a goodly field. Self­ish­ness leads to grief; per­pet­ual care kills. The tamed mind yields hap­pi­ness. He is the great­est of war­riors who over­comes and sub­dues him­self. Re­straint in all things is good. He alone is a su­pe­rior per­son who es­teems virtue and is ob­ser­vant of his duty. Let not anger and hate mas­ter you. Speak harshly of no one. Con­tent­ment is the great­est wealth. What is given wisely is well saved. Do not to oth­ers those things you would not wish done to you. Pay good for evil; over­come evil with the good.

• happy are the humble, the poor in spirit

140:3.3“Happy are the poor in spirit, the hum­ble, for theirs are the trea­sures of the king­dom of heaven.

• happy are the humble, the poor in spirit
• parable of Pharisee and publican

140:5.71. “Happy are the poor in spirit—the hum­ble.” To a child, hap­pi­ness is the sat­is­fac­tion of im­me­di­ate plea­sure crav­ing. The adult is will­ing to sow seeds of self-de­nial in or­der to reap sub­se­quent har­vests of aug­mented hap­pi­ness. In Je­sus’ times and since, hap­pi­ness has all too of­ten been as­so­ci­ated with the idea of the pos­ses­sion of wealth. In the story of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can pray­ing in the tem­ple, the one felt rich in spirit—ego­tis­ti­cal; the other felt “poor in spirit”—hum­ble. One was self-suf­fi­cient; the other was teach­able and truth-seek­ing. The poor in spirit seek for goals of spir­i­tual wealth—for God. And such seek­ers af­ter truth do not have to wait for re­wards in a dis­tant fu­ture; they are re­warded now. They find the king­dom of heaven within their own hearts, and they ex­pe­ri­ence such hap­pi­ness now.

• purge me from secret sins

146:2.1312. All be­liev­ers in this gospel should pray sin­cerely for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom of heaven. Of all the prayers of the He­brew scrip­tures he com­mented most ap­prov­ingly on the pe­ti­tion of the Psalmist: “Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O God, and re­new a right spirit within me. Purge me from se­cret sins and keep back your ser­vant from pre­sump­tu­ous trans­gres­sion.” Je­sus com­mented at great length on the re­la­tion of prayer to care­less and of­fend­ing speech, quot­ing: “Set a watch, O Lord, be­fore my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” “The hu­man tongue,” said Je­sus, “is a mem­ber which few men can tame, but the spirit within can trans­form this un­ruly mem­ber into a kindly voice of tol­er­ance and an in­spir­ing min­is­ter of mercy.”

• childish when self-conscious and attention-craving

149:6.9“Out of your wrong con­cepts of the Fa­ther in heaven grow your false ideas of hu­mil­ity and springs much of your hypocrisy. Man may be a worm of the dust by na­ture and ori­gin, but when he be­comes in­dwelt by my Fa­ther’s spirit, that man be­comes di­vine in his des­tiny. The be­stowal spirit of my Fa­ther will surely re­turn to the di­vine source and uni­verse level of ori­gin, and the hu­man soul of mor­tal man which shall have be­come the re­born child of this in­dwelling spirit shall cer­tainly as­cend with the di­vine spirit to the very pres­ence of the eter­nal Fa­ther.

• before God is appropriate

149:6.10“Hu­mil­ity, in­deed, be­comes mor­tal man who re­ceives all these gifts from the Fa­ther in heaven, al­beit there is a di­vine dig­nity at­tached to all such faith can­di­dates for the eter­nal as­cent of the heav­enly king­dom. The mean­ing­less and me­nial prac­tices of an os­ten­ta­tious and false hu­mil­ity are in­com­pat­i­ble with the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the source of your sal­va­tion and the rec­og­ni­tion of the des­tiny of your spirit-born souls. Hu­mil­ity be­fore God is al­to­gether ap­pro­pri­ate in the depths of your hearts; meek­ness be­fore men is com­mend­able; but the hypocrisy of self-con­scious and at­ten­tion-crav­ing hu­mil­ity is child­ish and un­wor­thy of the en­light­ened sons of the king­dom.

• God dwells with the contrite and humble

149:6.11“You do well to be meek be­fore God and self-con­trolled be­fore men, but let your meek­ness be of spir­i­tual ori­gin and not the self-de­cep­tive dis­play of a self-con­scious sense of self-righ­teous su­pe­ri­or­ity. The prophet spoke ad­vis­edly when he said, ‘Walk humbly with God,’ for, while the Fa­ther in heaven is the In­fi­nite and the Eter­nal, he also dwells ‘with him who is of a con­trite mind and a hum­ble spirit.’ My Fa­ther dis­dains pride, loathes hypocrisy, and ab­hors in­iq­uity. And it was to em­pha­size the value of sin­cer­ity and per­fect trust in the lov­ing sup­port and faith­ful guid­ance of the heav­enly Fa­ther that I have so of­ten re­ferred to the lit­tle child as il­lus­tra­tive of the at­ti­tude of mind and the re­sponse of spirit which are so es­sen­tial to the en­trance of mor­tal man into the spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven.

• parable of Pharisee and publican

151:4.5“The king­dom of heaven is also like a mer­chant seek­ing goodly pearls; and hav­ing found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold ev­ery­thing he pos­sessed that he might be able to buy the ex­traor­di­nary pearl.”

• sit not in chief seat

167:1.5Then went Je­sus over to where the sick man sat and, tak­ing him by the hand, said: “Arise and go your way. You have not asked to be healed, but I know the de­sire of your heart and the faith of your soul.” Be­fore the man left the room, Je­sus re­turned to his seat and, ad­dress­ing those at the ta­ble, said: “Such works my Fa­ther does, not to tempt you into the king­dom, but to re­veal him­self to those who are al­ready in the king­dom. You can per­ceive that it would be like the Fa­ther to do just such things be­cause which one of you, hav­ing a fa­vorite an­i­mal that fell in the well on the Sab­bath day, would not go right out and draw him up?” And since no one would an­swer him, and inas­much as his host ev­i­dently ap­proved of what was go­ing on, Je­sus stood up and spoke to all pres­ent: “My breth­ren, when you are bid­den to a mar­riage feast, sit not down in the chief seat, lest, per­chance, a more hon­ored man than you has been in­vited, and the host will have to come to you and re­quest that you give your place to this other and hon­ored guest. In this event, with shame you will be re­quired to take a lower place at the ta­ble. When you are bid­den to a feast, it would be the part of wis­dom, on ar­riv­ing at the fes­tive ta­ble, to seek for the low­est place and take your seat therein, so that, when the host looks over the guests, he may say to you: ‘My friend, why sit in the seat of the least? come up higher’; and thus will such a one have glory in the pres­ence of his fel­low guests. For­get not, ev­ery one who ex­alts him­self shall be hum­bled, while he who truly hum­bles him­self shall be ex­alted. There­fore, when you en­ter­tain at din­ner or give a sup­per, in­vite not al­ways your friends, your breth­ren, your kins­men, or your rich neigh­bors that they in re­turn may bid you to their feasts, and thus will you be rec­om­pensed. When you give a ban­quet, some­times bid the poor, the maimed, and the blind. In this way you shall be blessed in your heart, for you well know that the lame and the halt can­not re­pay you for your lov­ing min­istry.”

• causes one to be exalted

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• Jesus asked why someone called him good

196:0.9The Mas­ter’s en­tire life was con­sis­tently con­di­tioned by this liv­ing faith, this sub­lime re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. This spir­i­tual at­ti­tude wholly dom­i­nated his think­ing and feel­ing, his be­liev­ing and pray­ing, his teach­ing and preach­ing. This per­sonal faith of a son in the cer­tainty and se­cu­rity of the guid­ance and pro­tec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther im­parted to his unique life a pro­found en­dow­ment of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. And yet, de­spite this very deep con­scious­ness of close re­la­tion­ship with di­vin­ity, this Galilean, God’s Galilean, when ad­dressed as Good Teacher, in­stantly replied, “Why do you call me good?” When we stand con­fronted by such splen­did self-for­get­ful­ness, we be­gin to un­der­stand how the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther found it pos­si­ble so fully to man­i­fest him­self to him and re­veal him­self through him to the mor­tals of the realms.

• Jesus asked why someone called him good

196:2.2Je­sus’ life in the flesh por­trays a tran­scen­dent re­li­gious growth from the early ideas of prim­i­tive awe and hu­man rev­er­ence up through years of per­sonal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion un­til he fi­nally ar­rived at that ad­vanced and ex­alted sta­tus of the con­scious­ness of his one­ness with the Fa­ther. And thus, in one short life, did Je­sus tra­verse that ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gious spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion which man be­gins on earth and or­di­nar­ily achieves only at the con­clu­sion of his long so­journ in the spirit train­ing schools of the suc­ces­sive lev­els of the pre-Par­a­dise ca­reer. Je­sus pro­gressed from a purely hu­man con­scious­ness of the faith cer­tain­ties of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence to the sub­lime spir­i­tual heights of the pos­i­tive re­al­iza­tion of his di­vine na­ture and to the con­scious­ness of his close as­so­ci­a­tion with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the man­age­ment of a uni­verse. He pro­gressed from the hum­ble sta­tus of mor­tal de­pen­dence which prompted him spon­ta­neously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, “Why do you call me good? None is good but God,” to that sub­lime con­scious­ness of achieved di­vin­ity which led him to ex­claim, “Which one of you con­victs me of sin?” And this pro­gress­ing as­cent from the hu­man to the di­vine was an ex­clu­sively mor­tal achieve­ment. And when he had thus at­tained di­vin­ity, he was still the same hu­man Je­sus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.