Holy Shy!

 Kierkegaard remarks in Works of Love that the third part of God is a 'cooling factor' in a relationship which also acts as a "soothing agent" (p.313). Essentially, he is arguing that the spiritual third party in a relationship serves to remind people that they are truly servants of the good, rather than serving exclusively each other. This helps to relieve conflicts between family members, neighbors and relatives, because it reminds them that before God, everyone is basically equal; I am not 'better' than you, and we are both learning how to grow and live together under the same sky. If people can keep in mind that nobody is superior or inferior to the other, then there is neither pride nor shame in the interaction. Moreover, there is a certain element of what Kierkegaard refers to as "holy shyness" (p.314)--the sense that a divine being is watching over the people in the interaction. When I experience holy shyness, it's almost as though I were imagining what the interaction would look like from the perspective of an ultimate good, or a divine being. If a king were to come over and visit your family, would you behave just as you normally would, or would you feel a little more conscious of how you behave with the others? Surely, people can feel a little bit modest when they can conceive that there is a divinity watching over them.
     It's interesting to reflect on how this applies to situations where a person is not necessarily believing in a higher power or God. At this point, I am not so sure whether there is any equivalent to this concept of "holy shyness" in any other philosophy or religion I have encountered so far. There are, however, times when I wonder what a Buddhist master would say if she or he would to see me in a stressful situation. When I imagine someone with a lot of wisdom seeing me, I suddenly do feel modest, and a lot of things I might normally do and think seem frivolous in that moment. Another example is after a period of meditation. I have noticed that after meditation, things that bother me start to feel embarrassingly slight, as though the air had cleared and the monster is actually a cute little mouse. Then I do wonder: what was that all about? Why did I have such distressing thoughts about something so insignificant? I do wonder if perhaps meditation can bring a person to a point of view of wisdom. That is, I am no longer taken by my ego drives or desires, but start to see things with a very wide and spacious lens. There are many times when even short periods of quiet leave me feeling humbled.
     But what is the difference between humility and humiliation? Wouldn't too much humility seem too constricting? According to Kierkegaard, when people are not seeing themselves in comparison with others, there is no real humiliation. It's only when I start to think that someone else has 'more' of something than I (more virtue, more spirituality, etc.) that I start to go through these cycles of humiliation and pride. In a sense, I wonder if one of the great advantages of meditation is that it can take a person beyond comparison with others, and thus deflate a lot of conflicts that arise from the effort to 'save face' before someone else. Meditation could be one way, and prayer could be another. But I would also suggest that anything done mindfully can be a way to bring oneself to a more authentic relationship with the world, which is not affected by the filter of comparison.

Kierkegaard, S ( 1962), Works of Love (trans. Hong, H. & Hong, E). New York: Harper.