One Sufi sage asked his disciples to tell him what their vanity was before they began to study with him.
The first one said:
“I imagined that I was the most beautiful man in the world.”
The second one said:
“I believed that because I was religious, I was the chosen one, one of the chosen few.
The third said:
“I believed that I knew, and therefore believed that I could teach others.”
And the fourth said:
“My vanity was greater than their vanity, because I believed that I could learn, I could know.”
The sage remarked:
“And the vanity of the fourth student still remains the greatest, because he still strives to prove that he was superior to others in some way.”
You can be selfish about your humility too. To be poor in spirit simply means not to be anything, not even to be humble. A humble man is not poor in spirit, a humble man is an ego, an ego upside down, an ego standing on its head. When the ego disappears, humility also disappears. When you leave, where does your shadow come from?
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru