June 12

HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 12: “Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

We all have things we can enjoy doing to the extent that we get lost in them. This is most often beneficial, because it stops us from trying to “fix” things in our lives. When I can lay down my issues, my problems, or a quandary I am in about something, I can focus on other things that are more important in that particular moment. Usually, I come back to that thing, problem, etc. and my issues seem to have resolved themselves without my need to work it out. This, for me, is what I have to do, in order to achieve the peace and humility of “not knowing mind”. I love this concept, always have. And I love that I can throw myself away by working with others or writing or painting or gardening or hiking…all of which I love. I also love to cook or read, but they don’t quite do the same thing for me. It is lovely to know that I can leave my troubles at the foot of something greater than me and just walk away. I have taken a long, long time learning to do this. It seems that my ego-mind wants to “fix” all of my problems, figure things out, and get to the bottom of every mysterious situation that I do not immediately know how to work through. It is really challenging for me to just say “I don’t know about that one” and walk away from it…I worry and think and ponder and question and drive myself quite crazy…but less often than I used to. So there is hope for me to lose my tendency to focus all of my attention on MY life and MY troubles and MY desire for solutions. The important thing for me to remember is that by focusing on the problems, I will NEVER find any solution, because they are NEVER inside the problems. I must shift my eyes and attention to another channel for solutions to appear. They are always new and different than they were in the past; so, of course I do not know of them yet. I only can remember those solutions from the past; they seldom apply to today’s life. Oh! So I love that shifting my focus to someone or something that helps me lose myself is going to give the Universe time to create new solutions for me. This is happy news, because, as usual, I still only have a hammer. When I can know the beauty of “not knowing mind”, I am free! And this practice is always going to inform me and everyone I share this process with that we continue to learn and grow and gain in humility. An old saying I am quite fond of is that recovery is not a destination, but a journey. We do not arrive at a place of wisdom and understanding, but take small (sometimes infinitesimal) steps toward a direction of peace and wisdom. And some days we get to see more than others. But the real growth comes in knowing that I truly have a “not knowing mind”…the challenge is always to remember that!