It is liberating to be brought back to one’s insignificance. We are allowed to abandon the pretense that we are more than we are and find comfort in knowing that we are enough. We hand over our self-dramatizing intensity and the need to get the seat of honor and find the thrill that is in our “place”—in the last row and worst seat. “Sell your cleverness,” Rumi writes, “and buy bewilderment.” Like Jesus, who emptied himself, this humility keeps us from clinging to power and our own cleverness. In our raw need, we find our true selves and discover the misery there is in ceaselessly needing
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