Humility and kindness are some of many qualities of the spirit that emerge as one grows spiritually.

Humility is the quality of the consciousness that arises as pride is being disintegrated. Pride, being such an enormous ego with numerous aspects, will have the trapped essence having the opposite quality once it is liberated with the mystical death – it will be endowed with the quality of humility.

The conditioned essence, trapped in the energy of pride, gives life to that venomous defect and makes us identify with it and believe that we are that pride, that arrogance, that vanity…It prevents us from seeing the reality of our true self, just like every other ego does, making us think that we are always on the right path. An exceptionally hypnotic effect that it has makes us take a heavy burden of a false identity that it offers us.

In the process of consistent elimination of pride, the trapped essence endowed with humility returns to our free consciousness, and we come to learn what humility is, just like we come to know the virtues of the essence that are trapped in other egos; for example, by eliminating lust we learn what is true love and chastity, by eliminating greed we come to know what altruism is, etc.

Without eliminating layers of pride, (or in a lesser way by becoming temporarily free of it through a deep meditational state), we will not truly understand what humility is. We might remember having experienced it in early childhood or at random times in life when the consciousness was, for one reason or another, prominent and dominating the space of the psyche, providing with a small glimpse into the virtue of humility. On the other hand, the essence that’s being liberated through the process of the inner work would enable us to see concretely what humility is and its relation to our spiritual and daily life.

Many people think that being humble means being simple and not minding taking insults from people, constantly having one’s face down and dressing and acting simply. That’s a false perception, as many people who fit the above description do those things because of how their personality has developed, or because they want to appear humble. To quote a poignant story from the book Revolutionary Psychology: “It is stated, in accordance with legend of time, that Aristippus wanted to demonstrate wisdom and humility. So, he decked himself with an old robe full of patches and holes, then held the rod of philosophy with his right hand and walked the streets of Athens…‘When Socrates saw him coming, he exclaimed in a loud voice: “Oh Aristippus, your vanity is shown through the holes of your vesture.” If we are identified with pride, it doesn’t really matter how we dress or act, because in that moment we are far from true humility.

The nature of the essence is humility. To be humble is to be present in the moment, centered in the consciousness, and acting from the heart. The consciousness has many qualities that shape the expanding essence into that which it truly is, and in that shaping or self-realizing we can clearly see each of those virtues. Humility, however, seems to be a very prominent one because consciousness is always in that state of clarity, never imposing itself above others nor putting itself below. It is always that what it is, what its true nature is.

From humility comes kindness, it is its natural result. It comes from the heart that purifies itself from the ego. To be kind does not only mean to act kindly, because we can be kind while not acting. Kindness is something that is irradiating from us, from our eyes, our aura, our Being. We can know if the person standing opposite to us have kindness simply by looking into their eyes. Fortunately, many have this quality developed to a degree, because many still feel their essence and have conscience, though it can be cultivated in a much greater way in the process of the dissolution of the egos.

With the virtues of humility and kindness sufficiently developed, people would treat each other differently; there would be much more respect and clearer understanding as to how our actions affect those around us, how acting with pride can hurt others and cause unnecessary arguments, and thus accordingly we can take actions that are in line with the voice of the essence, which ultimately link us to that higher life that we are aspiring to.