Question: How do you meditate for humility?

Sri Chinmoy: Try to remember two words: humility and humiliation. Humility and humiliation are like two neighbours. If you are humility, then you look around and see your humiliation-neighbour; but you are not humiliation. Again, if you are humiliation, you look around and see your humility-neighbour; but you are not humility.

The deeper spiritual philosophy is this: if we are not humble in the purest sense of the term, then we are humiliated. It may not show in our words or in our gestures, but it is a fact in the inner world. Outwardly if we are not humble, then in the inner world automatically we are humiliated every second, because we are not one with the universal Reality, the transcendental Reality. If we do not have oneness with the supreme Reality, if we have not established our oneness with Truth-Light, then naturally we are humiliated inwardly. So when one is not humble, the immediate result is humiliation.

How can we develop or become aware of inner humility? It is only by knowing what humility is. Humility is not just touching somebody's feet. It is a reality that is constantly self-giving. When we get five dollars, we become like a child who thinks that he has one million dollars. We do not share. Our backbone becomes stiff. Our spinal cord does not bend to share with others. This is our reality. But this is not the reality of a tree; a tree is not like that. Before the tree bears fruit, when it does not have anything, it remains erect. But when the tree develops flowers and fruit, at that time the tree does not go up and touch the skies. It does not say, "I will have nothing to do with earth; earth is so bad, so ungrateful." Instead, the tree bends very nicely and shares its fruits with the world. Before the tree bears any fruit, the tree is for itself. But when it possesses something, when it starts bearing fruit, at that time it becomes for the world. The tree does not keep the fruits only for itself. The tree offers them for all the world to eat.

How can we get satisfaction from life? Satisfaction we can get only when we give to somebody else, to our larger self, to humanity. We can get joy only by becoming one with humanity, by sharing our reality with others. When we are becoming one, the whole world becomes grateful to us. So if we are humble, if we become like the tree-reality which constantly bears fruit, then only we are getting and giving satisfaction to the Supreme in mankind.

Always think of satisfying the Supreme in mankind and the Supreme in your Guru. Then automatically you will become humble. The more you give soulfully and devotedly, the more satisfaction you get from mankind. And in satisfaction you get everything that you want. So give, give, give – consciously, devotedly, unreservedly and unconditionally. Then you will see that you are not giving to somebody else, but only to your own larger reality that is hungry for divine satisfaction.