humility

Once, a seemingly long time ago, I did a sitting with a Zen priestess in Alpine, Texas. At the end of the seating she asked me,

"So?"

"Jean, I've learned that I am a conceited, judgmental person. I spent almost the whole time thinking about how great I was at meditation, sitting there with dead legs and an itch on my nose and putting people down around me for shifting, snorting or whatever. I can't believe I've seen this side of myself."

She laughed and said it was part of the root of human nature. I laughed too but was on the verge of tears. Am I really such an awful person?

I don't sit much anymore, although I'd like to start again. All the same, humility occasionally whacks me across the ego like a 2X4. That has been my week.

I won't go into all the details, although some more interesting ones include being strapped to a stretcher and taken to the Vail Hospital. (Everything outside a bruised bone is embarrassingly fine.) They span grades, teacher interactions, classmates, my relationship, my ability to hold myself together in public- mostly things social, which level me the most... primarily because I feel like such a dud in that department.

Maybe it's the incredible brightness of this full moon, but all these mistakes, letdowns and putdowns have converged in just a few days and helped me realize I need to rediscover humility. Not in terms of putting myself down, but in terms of being comfortable at whatever level and to quiet these dumb monkey thoughts that make me open my mouth at inappropriate times, tell me that I know more than I do and that talk myself up when the monologue is pointless. It's a restful place, to let these things go, and if done forcefully enough, it can be quite a rebirth.