Kabbalah Kronicles 26 – Eating Humble Pie

Uncle Zally / Zalman Velvel

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Last week I showed you how to attain the ultimate prize here on earth, for God to love you with all His Heart.

How?

By being humble. In fact, it would be even better if you were exceedingly humble.

But what is humble?

It is always good to start with a definition so you know what the heck you are talking about, and then arguing about … although some people don’t need logic to starting talking or arguing, and they are called toomlers.

The Rabbi defined being humble as being honest – acting in accordance with lasting truths. I asked for some examples:

One lasting truth is that God made everything and runs the world. Some men and women achieve great heights of power and prestige … and look almost like a God themselves. But then what happens? A book comes out, a story in the tabloids, or a video from a hidden camera, and those false Gods come tumbling down.

Another lasting truth is that nothing is owed to you. All your blessings, your talents, and your success come from God, who can remove them at any time. Do I need to give examples of this?

And last, when you partner with God to make the world a better place, then you will know God, come closer to God, love God with all your heart and feel His Great Love in return.

Now that we had a definition, we broke our discussion into two parts:

1- Five more benefits of humility in this life

2- How you can practice humility until you get it right

You will notice the emphasis on benefits of humility in this life. You won’t have to wait until you get into Heaven to attain them. They are:

1- People will like you more

2- You will like yourself more

3- If you have a great talent, you will nurture it better and rise higher

4- Arrogance closes your mind, humility frees it

5- Improved friendships

The first benefit, people will like you more, was explained by Mario Puzo in “The Godfather” – “A friend should under-estimate your virtues and an enemy over-estimate your faults.” Basically, if you are talented, rich, or beautiful, if you let people know it, they won’t like you. They may admire you … but they won’t like you.

Now being humble to yourself required a lot of discussion and argument between the Rabbi and I … until I gave in. Basically, the more slack you give yourself, the easier it is to ride out the scrapes, falls, and terribly embarrassing public moments in our lives. The reverse is also true. The more humble you are about talents you have, the more you are able to nurture them and improve them, as opposed to thinking you are already at the epitome of your ability.

Next, humility is a great mind expander. When you admit to yourself you don’t know everything, you can then learn. When you tell yourself you already know everything about a subject, which is a symptom of arrogance, your mind is closed. You have no need to learn because you already know it all. It’s interesting to note that humility toward what you know, when you are teaching, makes you more effective to those you are training. This I experienced firsthand. The adage, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know first how much you care,” comes to mind.

The Rabbi surprised me with the last benefit, how humility improves friendships.

I have known the Rabbi for 18 years, and for 17 years and 364 days of those 18 years, I both admired him, and felt sympathy for him. Why sympathy? Because he was held to such a high standard by the people in his congregation that I believed it was difficult, even impossible to have close friends.Let’s face it, religious leaders are people, they’re human, but if they let something “slip out,” and it gets around, it could have serious repercussions.

I told this to the Rabbi, during this discussion … something I held in all these years … and he looked at me, shook his head, and then smiled. He informed me he had some beautiful friendships with others, and as long as both he and the other friend were humble, and had the honesty that humility requires, the relationships were rewarding. He said the only time problems surfaced was when one or the other allowed arrogance to enter.

So there you have it: five more benefits that humility brings in this life, in addition to a closer relationship with the Almighty.

The next blog will deal with how you can attain real humility, and practice it until you get it right.

I presented the topic in this order so I could be a good salesman for God. Every good salesman knows, “First you sell benefits, then you ask for the check.”