In our pursuit of humility we come to numbers 7 and 8 of
Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility. Summarised
by Joan Chittister they are:
Let
go of the false self.
Preserve tradition and learn from the community.
Perhaps “false self” is a somewhat unfortunate term. A woman who assiduously attended a meditation
group I once led flatly refused to entertain any notion of a false self. Herself, as she experienced herself, no more,
no less, was the only self she consented to recognise. “False self” is nonsense, she said. Well, we go over this ground fairly
frequently, do we not. St Paul writes
about what he calls in Greek sarx (σαρξ,
σαρκος), translated “flesh”. He
says we can live either according to the flesh, or according to pneuma (πνευμα), Spirit.[1] They are not the same thing, and Spirit, in
this sense, is not simply some improved version of the false self. They are different. The False Self, Thomas Keating for one
teaches, is the self we normally assume is the authentic me, which I maintain
as presentable and which I hope other people see. Keating calls it the accumulation of all our
personal strategies for daily management, happiness and security – while the True
Self is the person God sees, created and knows, the person open to God’s
spiritual gift in Christ, humbly and gratefully. I think the term “false self” gives the wrong
impression, and along with others I prefer to talk about the ego, the persona
we wear and adjust from time to time, if we can. Fr Laurence Freeman points out that Jesus had
an ego. The ego is not necessarily bad –
indeed it’s essential – but the ego may not usurp the place that belongs to God. In contemplative life and prayer we are ready
and willing to see the ego peeled back in favour of the True Self which is
always there, always was, abiding in Christ as Christ abides in us. Humility, teaches Benedict, requires that we
consent to the diminishing of the ego. He must increase, said John the Baptist,
referring to Jesus, but I must decrease.[2] Humility requires kindly understanding of the
difficulties and pain of this, in ourselves as also in others.
Number 8 counsels us:
Preserve tradition and learn from
the community. This counsels the
humility to observe and learn, even from what we might find outmoded, past its
use-by date. Learn history…! Wisdom counsels the humility therefore to
learn how to listen, sometimes especially to what we believe we disagree
with. Wisdom can emerge in strange
old-fashioned clothes. Now I can imagine
one or two of my colleagues and friends from years ago, people who suffered my
bright ideas and new strategies, saying today, “Well, listen to you…!” But age and reflection are useful. Tradition endures for a reason. Do not
remove an ancient landmark, counsels the Book of Proverbs.[3] Humility then entails the inner discipline by
which we listen to the past, and to the different voices in the community,
before starting to reform everything in sight.
Such humility is learned in silence and stillness, the disciplines of
waiting and the readiness to watch the ego attenuating in the light of Christ.
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