The power of humility or contrition

A friend is writing a book and gave it to me to review. I found it interesting, a real page turner.

At one point in the book, a man and his buddies had done a girl seriously wrong. He carried that knowledge with him for fourteen years before coming across the grown girl. Although he wasn’t confronted about his past behavior, he knew it had hurt her. He took her aside and asked her to turn him into the police. He didn’t ask the woman for forgiveness, he admitted he was wrong and wanted to make it right.

Our society uses the method of punishment or jail as a means of making bad behavior right. It was all he knew.

But the woman, watched him confess and knew he had already punished himself for fourteen years. She told him, “Your contrition has changed you and made you better person.”

This sentence struck me. It paralleled my thoughts on how powerful divine Mind is to transform the human mind. It is the human mind or ego that is the real criminal. Sitting in a jail won’t change a person, although we need jails most of the time because we aren’t so advanced as to know how to help people become changed for the better very well.

Real change happens in mind and involves contrition or humility.

I can think of the times when out in the woods, or with my pets, or watching people help people and I feel a wave of humility or contrition come over me. It does change me for the better.

I can think of the times when I was with a foster child and felt as though the child was equal to perfect innocence and a life of goodness. The child’s background, ethnicity, or skin color was irrelevant, completely vanished as elements of reality. The human personality was gone and the spiritual child was there, is here.

This also shows me how ridiculous it is to argue religious doctrine or church conformity or social standing. They too have no bearing in the realm of reality.

We work with what we have and we humans do have enough understanding to continue to progress mindfully. We can internalize the humility or contrition that changes us, or puts us on the path of love.

turning colors August 2014