Humility is of the Spirit, but pride is of the ego. The first is permanent and true, the other, impermanent and ultimately unreal. An egoistic intellect sees not (nor cares to look) beyond its own contrivance, and supposes that it must construct truth out of its “competence” and “ingenuity”. Being harbored, this vanity will cause great distress within the mind; for the ego must continually validate the supposition that its intellect functions, in itself, as a devise of enlightenment. However, once the intellect realizes that truth arises not out of its own machinations, a great burden is lifted.
Enlightened by grace, the intellect finally perceives that truth must transcend its own ability to reason and contrive. Truth, then, is something of the kind that one must bring himself into alignment with that it may be apprehended through natural intuition. To a mind of genuine humility (and fierce discernment), truth illumines the perception with relative ease; for the humble mind seeks to destroy its personal biases via the process of illumination. If, through sapient practice (meditation, prayer, study, dialectic, etc.), truth can be recognized in the subtleties of life, good. However, if truth eludes natural intuition, one must be patient and bring himself back into alignment. Otherwise, the intellect will go about the frantic task of trying to construct a hypothesis in which it might rest its uncertainty. If, for example, the ego expects that it ought to comprehend a complex bit of philosophy (yet genuine comprehension is not forthcoming), it will attempt to force its understanding out of insecurity. This impulse must be resisted. No such contrivance is ever reliable, being groped for and conceived as a result of ignorance. On the contrary, we must seek patiently for the truth, resisting the impulse to fill the void of our ignorance with rubbish.
Though out of pride (and fear), the ego uses the intellect to erect arbitrary knowledge within itself, humility of Spirit is content to wait patiently for genuine intuition. Having been cultivated within the consciousness by Spirit itself, humility recognizes from whence truth arises. All modes of consciousness that are able to bear with humility arise from those portions of mind that have been vivified (wholly or partially) by Spirit. It is within these modes of consciousness that the intellect should rest; though more often than not, the immature mind will rest in the egoistic modes. Coming to the point where one is able to recognize whether a thought is characterized by by egoism or Spirit seems to be a tremendous milestone in spiritual development. This ability of the “knower” to cultivate its own consciousness is the means by which all conditioned fear is removed, and not fear only, but any inordinate mode of consciousness. As one grows in this way, the more he puts himself to death by surrendering mind unto the Spirit. By virtue of self-death, truth becomes immanent to the mind of he who is mature in humility. His intuition comes by divine nature.
ScrutinyInFaith 