Greco-Christian stream·The Imitation of Christ·Book II — Admonitions Concerning the Inner Life·Chapter II. Of Lowly Submission
II. Of lowly submission
On the disposition that makes the inward life possible: lowly submission to God's order, however it falls. Submission not in despair but in trust; the soul that knows it is in God's hands is free where the soul self-managing is always anxious.
Source context
- Theme
- lowly submission as prerequisite for inner advancement — the soul's voluntary subordination to higher authority
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Benedictine monasticismThe Rule of Saint Benedict (chapter 7) structures humility as a twelve-rung ladder of submission, presenting voluntary self-lowering as the ordered path toward God — a structural parallel to Kempis's equation of lowly submission with spiritual ascent.
- Sufi adab doctrineSufi teaching on adab (right comportment toward the shaykh and toward the Real) treats inward submission of the ego-self as the necessary condition for reception of divine influx — a cross-tradition congruence with Kempis's insistence that learned submission precedes illumination.
- Neoplatonism (Plotinus)Plotinus in the Enneads identifies the soul's self-emptying turn away from multiplicity toward the One as the structural prerequisite for union, placing voluntary self-subordination at the centre of the contemplative ascent — parallel to Kempis's lowly submission.
Chapter II. Of Lowly Submission
OF LOWLY SUBMISSION
Make no great account who is for thee or against thee, but mind only the present duty and take care that God be with thee in whatsoever thou doest. Have a good conscience and God will defend thee, for he whom God will help no man's perverseness shall be able to hurt. If thou knowest how to hold thy peace and to suffer, without doubt thou shalt see the help of the Lord. He knoweth the time and the way to deliver thee, therefore must thou resign thyself to Him. To God it belongeth to help and to deliver from all confusion. Oftentimes it is very profitable for keeping us in greater humility, that others know and rebuke our faults.
2When a man humbleth himself for his defects, he then easily pacifieth others and quickly satisfieth those that are angered against him. God protecteth and delivereth the humble man, He loveth and comforteth the humble man, to the humble man He inclineth Himself, on the humble He bestoweth great grace, and when he is cast down He raiseth him to glory: to the humble He revealeth His secrets, and sweetly draweth and inviteth him to Himself. The humble man having received reproach, is yet in sufficient peace, because he resteth on God and not on the world. Reckon not thyself to have profited in anywise unless thou feel thyself to be inferior to all.
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