Humility is the mother of all virtues; it is mother of all growth. To be humble is to be honest. Humility and honesty are essentially the same thing. One who is humble is brutally honest about oneself and is open to truth. Only those who are humble and honest can grow in truth. Without these two qualities, we don't grow. The only honest response to life is a humble one. Our growth, in other words, is by a letting-go. It is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Thus, we grow more by subtraction than by addition. So our growth is not a matter of accumulating more and better information, but a matter of letting go of our ego and "decreasing." Growth, paradoxically, (in spiritual terms) is not about increasing, but about decreasing. I must decrease, He must increase. (See Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, 120-121.)
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