This month we're exploring humility as powerful. As transcendence of our conditioning where the ego is constantly seeking to be at the least, acceptable and palatable and at the most, supreme. The invitation is to see that humility is not what culture has sold us but something quietly secure and powerful.

Audio-only version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d2edAL2gkJFJDCfg7RnoLPuRntK87l3k/view?usp=sharing

Time stamps:
0:00-40:20 - Dharma Talk
40:20-End - Community Time

Journal Prompts (Copy and paste any that feel interesting to explore!)

1. Think of a time you shifted into needing to be right. What was at stake in that moment, and what story were you protecting?

2. Where in your life right now might you be performing certainty rather than sitting with not-knowing? What would it change to say "I don't know" out loud?

3. Asmita (misidentification with ego) invites us to notice when we over-identify with our roles, opinions, or achievements. Which part of your identity story do you defend most fiercely, and what happens inside you when it is questioned or threatened?

4. The Buddhist teaching of anatta (no-self) suggests the self is fluid, not fixed. If your current success isn't ultimate, and your current failure isn't ultimate, what remains? How does that feel to sit with?

5. Recall a moment when you received feedback that destabilized your sense of self. Looking back: was your reaction protecting truth, or protecting your identity or imate? What's the difference for you?

6. If you feel hurt, overlooked, or criticized, what behaviors do you reach for to feel more acceptable or superior to the one hurting you? How does that impulse show up in your relationships, your work, your practice, if at all?

7. Think of a teacher, leader, or voice you've followed. What first drew you in? Was it their certainty, their power, their clarity? Or something quieter? What does that tell you about what you were looking for at the time?

8. Have you ever found yourself deferring to someone's authority and outsourcing your own knowing because they seemed more certain, more credentialed, or more impressive than you? Why does that outsourcing feel appropriate when it does?

9. What qualities do you actually look for in someone you allow to influence your learning or living, beyond charisma, certainty, or a commanding presence? Make a list. What do those qualities tell you about the kind of guidance your deepest self is actually hungry for?

10. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be close? In which relationship in your life right now is this the most alive question, and what would choosing closeness require of you?

11. Where do you most habitually distort your sense of self: inflation or diminishment? When and with whom does that tend to happen?

12. When perfectionism kicks in, what story are you trying to prove? Is it about worthiness, safety, belonging, or something else? How does that drive push you away from a more grounded, provisional sense of who you are?
13. What would it look like in your daily life to point yourself back to yourself as the ultimate source of wisdom, not as isolation or arrogance, but as deep self-trust? Where do you still not quite believe your own knowing?

14. Think of a time when you held a strong opinion and later revised it. What made it possible to change your mind? What did it feel like, and what does that experience tell you about the relationship between conviction and humility?

15. What might be keeping you from wanting to exercise your discernment and instead take someone else’s word for it because they seem confident and competent? What could be stopping you from believing most in your intuition, feelings, opinions and observations?