Article By Siobhan Farrar

posted by UK, February 28, 2026

Humility, is a virtue that I have come to understand as a great harmoniser, a golden lyre the soul can use to make life into an ever more beautiful music. Humility will cool down the harsh sounds of our ego and warm up the strings of our spiritual resonance. The magic of making inner steps emerges as we accept the ground on which we stand. In this sense we ‘quit the evasions’ (Epictetus) and we compose ourselves. With humility, we have less need to wear masks because we can accept ourselves more fully ‘as we are’. It may not be today, but tomorrow – why not? Through making contact with our weaknesses, genuine transformation becomes possible.

Less need to wear masks makes us less afraid, which brings the additional benefit of greater soul freedom. We pretend less, waste less time trying to maintain ourselves in postures we have already outgrown. Humility helps to dissipate the superficial obstacles that adorn many areas of materialistic life. What we ‘try to show’ to others over time will ‘matter less’, not because we become ‘care-less’ but because our centre shifts away from prioritizing how we appear towards how we know ourselves internally to ‘Be’. Humility moves us into our heart and into the benevolent inner atmosphere where we can behold ourselves naturally and openly.

With skilful use, humility can help us to adapt and counter the numerous forms of pride which ensnare us daily. Arrogance is a more-or-less obvious form but as a teacher of mine once wrote, there is another dangerous form which we could call ‘delusions of uselessness’. In this form we may think ourselves truly humble because we have adopted a posture of ‘I can’t’, but this is a false form of humility. We can recognize the inner posture as false when it denies us the freedom of conscious action. Under many circumstances conscious action can be biding our time and waiting, but the difference in attitude between conscious waiting and ‘I can’t’ is inwardly very significant… We develop our potential step by step, sometimes our steps are small and sometimes we make impossible leaps forwards that defy reason. What matters most is the direction and the continuity of the direction.

As we gradually lose more masks and gradually gain more freedom, we become more accustomed to facing difficulties and having some internal victories too. As we understand our inner landscape better, the terrain is less alien, but then, at some unsuspecting moment we are likely to be led to more difficult encounters. In particular I am thinking of those with Trust. Do I trust where it is all heading? Do I trust myself? Do I trust that I and all those whom I see suffering are held by life? The encounter with trust is for some, one of the hardest. When facing this abyss, humility will put us at the foot of the mountain, looking up at the mountain. The knowledge of where we’ve been before and the mystery ahead gently obliges us to go forwards. Humility will never turn us towards meaninglessness or set us apart from life. In those moments of deep despair, humility will return us to ourselves, which is to return us to the root of the mystery. The inner sound of consolation that says, ‘whatever has happened, tomorrow we can do it better, the sun will rise again and so will we.’

I could summarize by saying that the virtue of humility is an antidote to isolation and to materialism, a virtue that when lived, puts things in perspective and by doing so restores us to our place in the whole. Plotinus said “Without virtue, God is only a word” and we could continue by saying that with virtue, ‘God’, the divine or spiritual resonance and our highest values, reveal themselves as a present reality within and around us.

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By Harry Pham | Pexels | CC BY PD

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