Humility with Stephen G. Post
Thank you to all who participated in our online webinar event with Stephen G., Post, PhD to discuss the topic of “Humility” on July 1st. It was a wonderful event!
The video replay is embedded below. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Topic: Humility: What it is, what it is not, and how we can cultivate it within us. What goes wrong when we don’t value it as a virtue within ourselves.
Date: Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Stephen G. Post, PhD, spoke with us in this ASI-sponsored webinar event about the virtue of humility. Human beings, no matter how kind and compassionate, also tend to a self-inflation that can easily manipulate others and set aside appropriate boundaries.
Stephen was, for many years, a friend of the great Jean Vanier, Founder of L’Arche. Jean was a deeply spiritual man revered by many. But his legacy has been hurt because he was sexually intimate with several of the women volunteers or “assistants” in the L’Arche homes for people with cognitive disabilities. He was humble in many ways, but not humble enough. He used his power in the organization in a hurtful and manipulative way. He violated boundaries. He has passed away now but will no longer be remembered as a true saint, sadly. Ethics gave way to ego and sexual exploitation.
No human being is all that good. It is important that we learn from cases like Jean Vanier’s so that we don’t make the same mistakes again. We are only good when the Original Mind of Love radiates through us. We are not good in ourselves alone.
Stephen G. Post spearheads scientific studies and research on giving, selfless service, volunteering, and explores how giving to others is an expression of unlimited love.
Video Replay & MP3 Download
Download the MP3 version here (right-click and choose “save as type”)… or click on the link to open the audio player in a new browser window to listen.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
~Rick Warren “The Purpose-Driven Life” (not C.S. Lewis as mentioned in the video)
What C.S. Lewis actually wrote on humility (Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chapter 8, “The Great Sin,” Kindle location 1665):
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
Donation
While we offered this special online event for free for everyone to attend, please consider making a suggested donation of $10 or more to support the Association for Spiritual Integrity to continue sponsoring more events like this one. All donations are made in USD funds. The ASI is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt corporation. Thank you 🙏
Suggested Donation: $10
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Thank you. We look forward to joining you for our next live and interactive webinar event!
About Stephen G. Post, PhD
An opinion leader and public speaker, Stephen G. Post, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1983) is the best-selling lead author of Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Happier, Healthier Life by the Simple Act of Giving (Random House Broadway). He has been quoted in more than 4000 newspapers and magazines, and featured on numerous television shows including The Daily Show. Described by Martin E.P. Seligman in Flourish as one of “the stars of positive psychology,” Post is a leader in research on the benefits of giving and on compassionate care in relation to improved patient outcomes and clinician well-being. He addressed the U.S. Congress on volunteerism and health, receiving the Congressional Certificate of Special Recognition for Outstanding Achievement.
Post was co-recipient (2012) with Edmund D. Pellegrino MD of the Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in HealthCare from the HealthCare Chaplaincy Network, and the Kama Book Award in Medical Humanities from World Literacy Canada (2008). His book The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press) was designated a “medical classic of the century” by the British Medical Journal (2009), which wrote, “Until this pioneering work was published in 1995 the ethical aspects of one of the most important illnesses of our aging populations were a neglected topic.” Post is a recipient of the Alzheimer’s Association national distinguished service award “in recognition of personal and professional outreach to the Alzheimer’s Association Chapters on ethics issues important to people with Alzheimer’s and their families.” In 2021 Post published Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer’s Disease (Hopkins).
Co-Recipient of the 2019 National Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society Professionalism Award for development the Professional Identity Formation curriculum of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, Post has taught at the University of Chicago Medical School, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (1988-2008), and at Stony Brook (2008-present), where he is Founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics. The Center was selected (2011) for special institutional excellence by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (AMA & AAMC accrediting body), the only humanities and ethics entity in American medical school history to receive this distinction. An elected member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of Medicine, London, Post is the author of 300 articles in journals such as Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, Psychosomatic Medicine, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 2003 Post was invited to join the Founding Fellows of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), based at Cambridge University. Founded in 2002, ISSR is the world’s preeminent learned society devoted to this intersection, with 200 Fellows from the sciences and humanities. In 2001 he founded the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, so named by philanthropist Sir John Templeton, who selected Post as the Institute’s President (www.unlimitedloveinstitute.com). A non-profit 501(c) 3 public charity that investigates kindness, giving, and spirituality, Post has written popularly on this topic in God and Love on Route 80: The Hidden Mystery of Human Connectedness (Mango 2019).