[FairfieldLife] Re: What Is Intellectual Humility?

[emptybill]

Where and when on this group have you ever displayed humility?

And please don't give us the old "I'm humble before God".




--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@...>
wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu noozguru@ wrote:
> >
> > On 07/08/2012 10:56 AM, Robin Carlsen wrote:
> > >
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/what-it-be-intellectually-humb\
le
> > >
> > >
> >
> > My tantra guru always emphasizes "being humble" because regardless
of
> > what you experience or learn there will always be more to learn and
> > experience.  It is, after all, an infinite process.
> >
> > Intellect is frequently selective.  Don't ask me about sports
because I
> > don't know a damn thing about it and I grew up in a sports crazed
family
> > with a father who was planning on being a college coach with a math
> > minor but due to Great Depression did not finish college.  Yeah, I
> > inherited the math minor part. ;-)
> >
> > So regardless of how bright someone is they are frequently weak in
some
> > area (and with many intellectuals that may of well be athletics). 
So
> > while I lowered the class curve in academics in my small town school
my
> > peers didn't mind so much because I was a klutz when it came to
sports.
> >
> > My parents also emphasized not lording ones intellectual ability in
the
> > same way my guru does as there will always be someone brighter. And
at
> > that I don't see people often as "dumber' but just "lazy minded"
> > apparently because that has become popular due to this bad practice
of
> > "raising self esteem" the last 20 or so years in schools.  I'm more
in
> > favor of lifting people up rather than keeping them down.  To bad so
> > many of our "leaders" don't believe in that.
>
> RESPONSE: I don't think about humility quite like this, Bhairitu. I
think of it more like *a state of consciousness*, where one is given the
grace to know that one is a contingent and created being (without a
necessary existence), and in objectively experiencing through one's
subjectivity, this truth, one endears oneself (as it were) to the
intelligence and reality which has caused one's existence.
>
> So for me, humility is a very real, almost physical thing. It
determines even one's perception, and ideally is to be incorporated into
one's personality—as in the paradigmatic example of Saint Francis of
Assisi. He became the embodiment of humility, and this was what drew him
as close to God (or what I would now refer to as Reality) as any human
being has ever been.
>
> No, humility is a kind of grace which allows one to feel metaphysical
nuances which are, perceptually and experientially, incompatible with
pride and egotism and a sense of wanting to protect one's status.
Humility—the really creative (non-mood-making kind!) and intelligent
kind—is almost a secret mode of orientation of oneself towards
reality. And it yields up plenty of suffering and doubt and confusion;
but in the end it tends to heal and make one understand what is the very
hardest thing to understand: the terrible mystery of providence.
>
> But of course I must be humble here in asserting my opinion of
humility. :-)
>
> From what you say here you must have missed knowing that the artistic
Roger Federer was resurrected at Wimbledon.
>
> Humility is, as Charlie Sheen once would have said: WINNING!
>
> If it can be said, Bhairitu, I even deem humility the first
prerequisite for finding the right kind of irony .
>
> I agree of course with what you say about everyone having a weakness.
No one is excluded from this, I think.
>
> But humility goes beyond apprehending this; I see humility as as the
most efficient way to go about seeing and knowing Creation, for what it
really is.
>
> As a mathematics major you must know something about David Chalmers:
for me I feel his mathematical genius provides him a certain kind of
(unconscious) humility which enables him to say the most interesting
things about consciousness that anyone has ever said yet.
>
> Leonard Cohen, he has a kind of creative humility too.
>
> Maharishi, I think he was oblivious to this 'natural law'. :-) And
this really is a downside now for those who remain loyal and devoted to
him and his teaching. Because he is the wrong kind of model to
emulate—No one can emulate Maharishi—and this shows. (We did a
good job of attempting this in the seventies; after that, the clock
struck twelve and our carriage turned into a pumpkin.)
>