Humaning: The Sacred Art of Being Small

"I created man from invisible (spiritual) and from visible (physical) nature…
small in greatness and again great in smallness,
and I placed him on earth, a second angel, honorable, great and glorious…"
— 2 Enoch 30:12

There’s a moment—maybe it came for you in the stillness after a hard conversation, or in the silence when the thing you feared actually happened—when the weight of being human arrives. Not with fanfare. Not with explanation. Just a soft, heavy blanket over the bones. You feel tender. Uncertain. Exposed. Maybe a little irrational. And if you’re like most of us, your first instinct is to fix it.

But what if it’s not a flaw?
What if it’s not a wound to be healed or a bug in the code?
What if what you’re feeling is simply… humaning?

Defining the Term Humaning

Humaning is the term for the act of feeling or operating from the limitations of humanity. It is the moment when meaning in exile floods our awareness, and for a second—or a season—we feel small. We tend to translate it as insecure. Tender. Not enough. It is not a dysfunction. It’s the felt experience of being alive in a world pressing in on all sides, shaping and misshaping the truth of who we are. Whatever survival-rooted meaning we have loaded in our DMN is then projected onto the experience yearning for resolution.

Animals don’t typically human. They move with instinct, with presence. They don't look in mirrors and question their worth. They don’t project their unmet needs onto others or rehearse conversations in their heads. But we do. Because we human. Often. Daily. Sometimes all day.

When the Sacred Feels Tiny

“Every experience is a conscious experience.
It is the essence of experience to be
‘consciousness of’ something.”
-Husserl 

What separates us from animals isn’t just cognition—it’s meaning. We are meaning-makers, but also meaning-carriers. We have a gestalt of awareness around the meaning we hold. And when we fall into the feeling that something is wrong with us—that’s often just the moment we are humaning.

Enoch wrote, "small in greatness, and again great in smallness." These moments where the outside world feels greater than us, we can feel the weight of our reality. All conscious thought is first-person awareness. That awareness becomes small when presented with the subjective thresholds of meaning that are challenged or become overwhelming. In reality, we are living on a planet that is a speck of dust on a speck of sand. Objectively, we are eclipsed by the vastness of the universe... But subjectively and equally, we are the universe's feature presentation.

It might show up as:

• Feeling rejected after an honest conversation.

• Crying uncontrollably after the loss of a pet, or the end of a friendship.

• Wanting to disappear after a perceived failure.

• Overthinking what someone said five days ago.

• Sitting in front of a mirror, seeing someone you don’t recognize.

These are not breakdowns.
These are thresholds.

We are not meant to fix them—we are meant to be with them. We are meant to experience them as part of the bittersweet dream called life.

The Suffering of Trying to Escape Humaning

One of the deepest sources of human suffering is mistaking humaning for a problem. When we feel insecurity rise or grief pour in, we scramble to medicate, manage, or muscled-arm our way through it. We spiritualize. We numb. We coach ourselves with affirmations and reframe reality to feel in control again.

But the essence of humaning is that it doesn’t want to be controlled.
It wants to be felt. The survival-rooted programming misinterprets and distorts our reality in an attempt to fix what should be experienced. 

Grief is humaning. And the way it wraps around the heart like ivy—it isn’t a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign you’re alive. Feeling insecure about something no one else sees? That’s humaning. Shadow contracts playing out in a room full of people who don’t know the story you’re in? Also humaning. The tangle of constructs that catch fire when you try to step forward with your gift and suddenly feel paralyzed? Yep. Humaning.

Why We Need This Word

Words shape meaning. And until now, we’ve had no elegant way to name these moments without making them pathological.

We say:
“I’m in my shadow.”
“I’m triggered.”
“I’m spiraling.”
“I’m being toxic.”
“I’m broken again.”

And so we collapse under the experience rather than enter into it. But what if we could say:

“I’m humaning right now.”

And it would be met with understanding. A nod. A hand on the back. The kind of compassion that comes from naming something without making it wrong.

This is not a bypass. It’s not an excuse. It’s not permission to stay stuck.
It’s recognition. A container. A sacred frame around what was once called a flaw.

Learning to Carry Our Humaning

Part of what makes humaning so difficult is that most of us were never taught how to carry it. We were taught to override it. Push past it. “Power through.” But to truly evolve—not just spiritually but existentially—we must become skillful in carrying our humanity.

To say:

“This ache, this shame, this rawness—I honor it. I am experiencing the divine distortion that comes from being in a body.”

It’s not indulgent. It’s not weak.
It’s holy.

Because the truth is: your capacity to experience divinity is directly tied to your ability to hold your humanity as sacred. You can’t bypass your way into godhood. You have to carry every fragment of your humanness on the way.

Holding Others in Their Humaning

And perhaps even more sacred than carrying your own humanity is learning to recognize and hold space for others as they carry theirs.

That person who lashed out because they were afraid? Humaning.
That friend who’s withdrawing and can’t explain why? Humaning.
That team member who’s suddenly insecure and making mistakes? Humaning.
That parent who can’t seem to meet you with grace? Humaning.

When you know what it is, you don’t have to judge it. You can just hold it. Witness it. Make space for it.

And when you say to someone,

“It’s okay, you’re humaning right now,”
you aren’t patronizing them. You’re naming their experience in a way that brings relief.

You’re saying:

“You’re not broken. You’re becoming. And I see you.”

Humaning as Sacred Curriculum

In the Turning Within framework, we’ve spoken often of projection, constructs, and meaning in exile. Humaning is the felt texture of that exile pressing into the present moment. It is the embodied signal that a part of you is surfacing—asking not to be fixed, but to be met.

It is the part of you that still believes you’re not enough.
It is the part of you that fears love will be withdrawn.
It is the moment your nervous system echoes an ancient story.
It is the god forgetting... so they can remember deeper.

Closing the Loop

So the next time you feel that tightening in your chest, or the voice in your head telling you you’re not worthy, or the ache of grief that feels endless… pause.

Name it.

“This is me, humaning.”

And in doing so, invite grace into the moment. Make room for your experience—not to solve it, but to honor it.

Because the more sacred you hold your humaning, the more divine your presence becomes.
Not in spite of your humanity.
But because of it.

—
Let’s hold each other through our humaning.
Let’s teach the world that feeling doesn’t mean failing.
And let’s remember that the path from human to god is not a ladder—it’s a spiral.
Winding inward, through the depths of our smallness, until we remember…
we were never small at all.