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“humiliation”

The Fool

According to Jacquelyn Small – “The Fool represents an inner attitude of Divine Innocence, willing to have total faith in the process of living. He casts himself totally — and with gay abandon — into all with which he comes into contact, and redeems whatever he meets.

This quality of Divine Innocence is a form of continual humility in all our relations, which prevents any adversity from causing imbalance. Anything adverse The Fool encounters is brought to the heart of its positive quality with a sense of awe; it is transformed.”

In some ways, the fool is the antithesis of humiliation. The fool can not be humiliated no matter how much someone tries. Because the fool embraces the joyous innocence and silliness of life. The art of silly walking is one way of embodying the archetype of the fool. While we fear feeling humiliated or appearing foolish, The fool takes on the mantle of foolish and wears it like a crown.

It is a way of making art from humiliation and discovering a kind of deep resilience that bolsters us in even the darkest storms. ​
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Humbled or Humiliated?

It’s normal to be humbled by something new. It reminds us that no matter what we do life can be challenging, that we always have new horizons to learn from and deepen. To be humbled is good and powerful and a sacrament. But humiliation is different. It’s an experience of becoming less than, of discovering ourselves flawed while at the same moment having those flaws exposed to the world. 

Humiliation is humbleness mixed with shame, self-recrimination, and with self-abandonment. It’s something done to us when we’re young that we learn to do to ourselves before the world ever could. 

It is good to be humbled, but bad if we turn this into a subtle form of self-abuse in the form of humiliation. If instead we can be gentle and kind to the parts of ourselves that feel humiliation the most, and offer a form of acceptance they so long for, regardless of success or failure. You can learn to absorb the barbs of humiliation and transform them into humbling lessons that help you grow stronger on your journey.