Is this Humility?

by Robert Perry

As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. (M-29.4:3-7)

Instructions

The image we have made of ourselves is incredibly arrogant. It thinks it knows who we are better than God, Who created us. In the following exercise, we will use the power of rhetorical questions to try to shake loose our arrogance. The Course makes copious use of rhetorical questions as a tool of mind change. In what follows, the italicized material (which usually follows a Course passage, though in the first and last instances is a Course passage) is composed of questions we are meant to ask ourselves. Try to ask yourself these questions with as much earnestness as you can. The more earnestly you ask the question, the more the asking will shift your mind.

Passages and rhetorical questions

My Father knows my holiness.
Shall I deny His knowledge and believe in what that knowledge makes impossible [my sinfulness]?
Shall I accept as true what He proclaims as false [again, my sinfulness]?
Or shall I take His Word for what I am, since He is my Creator and the One Who knows the true condition of His Son? (W-228.1:1-4)

Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you. (T-18.IV.3:1-2)

Am I willing to be not content with anything less than the greatness God has given me?

And it is only arrogance that would deny the power of your will. Think you the will of God is powerless? Is this humility? (T-22.IX.1:2-4)

My true will is one with the will of God. How, then, can my will be powerless?
Can I really imagine that God’s Will is powerless? Is this humility?

Humility is strength in this sense only: To recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize and accept the fact that He does know. (T-16.I.5:2)

Am I willing to recognize and accept the fact that I do not know who I am?
Am I willing to recognize and accept the fact that God does?

To accept your littleness is arrogant, because it means that you believe that your evaluation of yourself is truer than God’s. (T-9.VIII.11:5)

Do I honestly believe that my evaluation of myself is truer than God’s?

True humility requires that you accept today’s idea [“I am the light of the world”] because it is the Voice for God Himself which tells you it is true. (W-61.3:1)

Do I really think God’s Voice would lie to me?

Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it? (T-9.VIII.9:2)

Can my grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it?

This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. (M-11.2:2)

Is my judgment of me or God’s Judgment of me more likely to be true?

Then consider this: Which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent, and unsure of everything? (W-186.12:3-4)

Which is more likely to be right about me?
a) the Voice That speaks for the Creator of all things
b) a distorted image of myself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything

The arrogance [of the belief that you are sinful] could not be more apparent than emerges here. Here is a principle which would define what the Creator of reality must be; what He must think and what He must believe, and how He must respond, believing it. It is not seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been established for His belief. His Son can tell Him this, and He has but the choice whether to take his word for it or be mistaken. (T-23.III.6:1-4)

Do I have the right to define what God must be?
Do I have the power to ordain what He must think and believe about me?
Can I dictate how He must respond to me?
Can I decree all this without even asking Him?
Can I just tell Him, leaving Him only the choice of taking my word or being mistaken?

Is this humility or madness? (T-19.III.11:2)

Closing prayer

Father, I was mistaken in myself, because I failed to realize the Source from Which I came.
I have not left that Source to enter in a body and to die.
My holiness remains a part of me, as I am part of You.
And my mistakes about myself are dreams.
I let them go today.
And I stand ready to receive Your Word alone for what I really am. (W-228.2:1-6)