I cannot see all that is happening...

Tonight, in addition to all the beauty that always comes from the A Course in Miracles study group, I saw something very profound to me.  I was standing out on the back patio listening to the rain.  My attention was caught by a drop of water suspended in space, defying gravity, right there in front of me.  It was perfectly formed, tiny, yet holding something that gave it a slight milkiness to its color.  I could imagine all of the microbes, molecules, atoms, and particles which might have given it this color and surface tension necessary to be as formed as it was.  I could imagine, for a moment, its infinity within itself.  One drop of water.

It was so perfectly formed and holding the light so delicately that I had to look closer.  It truly looked as though it were suspended by nothing... just floating in space, lit against the night sky.  It would occasionally sway back and forth with the breezes that were blowing across it.  The night here is rather cold, and I blew on the drop of water a little.  The water vapor from my breath condensed, and I could see that the drop of water was held up by a spider web that ran from the ceiling of the patio to the honeysuckle bush next to the patio.  Until I blew on the drop of water, I couldn't see the threads connecting it and anchoring it in space. What looked like a miraculous suspension of the laws of gravity was actually my own gap in cognitive understanding. 

How many times do we see something magical that seems to happen for no reason?  How many times do we look at our lives and wonder why something is occurring... either painful or pleasurable?  How many times does it seem to have rhyme or reason to it, and how many times do we simply accept something at face value?  Just because we can't see the entire web of events and circumstance and ultimate consequences of something, doesn't mean that something else is not occurring.  Some web is holding that drop of water.

I have noticed that in our society, spiritual can either be a dirty word or a word whispered with a giggly awe or a word invested with a certain concept of ourselves as "seekers" or as people "in-the-know".  Society in a lot of ways debases our own inner guidance, calling it gaga or unscientific or whatever.  Sometimes we invest our own spirituality with certain superstition, lacking the knowledge of causality, or shrouding it in layers of mystical and whimsical fantasy.  How much of all of this is true?  What if we could really just simply see truly... honestly... truthfully (full of truth)?  What would that look like... to see all the webs of creation... to see all the webs of causality... to not mistake one thing for another?

How much can I really judge when I can't see all that is really happening?  Does judgment of another really make sense in the light of all of this?  If I cannot see truly, can I judge anything or know its cause or effect?  How much do I really know?  Humility to me is a four letter word (might as well throw in sacrifice while I am at it).

Humility, as it was taught to me, involved a certain debasing of self.  It was a very deep belief that I am unworthy to have or to do something in comparison to another.  It involved a will that was not my own pushing and prodding me into a certain direction.  Whenever someone told me to be humble, it invariably meant that I was proclaiming too loudly my own desires about something.  It meant that I was less worthy than another, than society, than family, than religion, or than a concept of God.  It compared me to something else and invariably found me lacking.  The truly "humble," I learned, should merely sit down and shut up or serve some nobler something, which was usually some vague concept of something or another person who didn't feel the need as deeply as I did to be "humble."

What is real humility?  Real humility is the acceptance that we are what we are... not less and not more.  It is knowing our capability and understanding what exactly that capability is.  I am not more than another, but neither am I less than another.  I am not more than what God created me to be, but neither am I less than what He created me to be.  Humility is also the understanding of context... where I am, for unless I have context, I cannot know what my capabilities might be.  Just like seeing the drop of water on the web and realizing that I cannot judge what is occurring until I can see exactly what is occurring, humility demands only one thing, a certain willingness to have one's eyes opened to another way of seeing.  At its deepest levels, humility is a suspension of judgment so that I may know what is involved in the situation then acting truly or acting with the understanding of what and who I am.

The words of Jesus, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and no man comes to the Father but by me," would be construed as the most arrogant of words for our modern-day understanding of humility.  Yet, was it only because he could see clearly that he stated these words?  Can you state those words?  Can I?  What if we understood that this was our reality?  What if we understood that by uttering those words we were being the most humble that we could be, because those words are a simple statement of our reality?  What if we understood that by uttering those words we were simply stating everything that God created us to be, and that by denying those words we were arrogantly denying what God created us to be?  Just because I cannot see the web holding me suspended in space, that doesn't mean that it is not holding me in space.