All truth (or reality) comes from the Holy Spirit as Children of God whom are now living spiritually. Thus, humility is just a revelation of facts.
Fact number one: We must be dead to the right to ourselves in order to be productive in righteousness; and two: We are enlivened and empowered in Christ whom is far and above anything that we could hope to produce in this human structure and mind, apart from God thru Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit...we are nothing!
Thus, humility is not an ideal; it is the unconscious result of the life being rightly related to God and centered in Him. When we say, "I think humility is....etc," my spirit is immediately burdened, for there is nothing more awful than conscious humility; it is the most Satanic type of pride. To consciously serve is to be worse than the Pharisee who is eaten up with conceit.
What did The Lord of heaven and earth say? "Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart." (Matthew 11:29). If Jesus Christ cannot produce a meekness and lowliness of heart like His own, Christianity is nonsense from beginning to end, and His teaching had better be blotted out. But my testimony is that I have received His revelation spiritually and mindfully in way of righteousness. Thus, now I am convinced that any self-awareness is of no value in the Kingdom of God; it is, in fact, enmity towards God. Thus, my empowerment in Christ is solely His to claim and as a result, humility is contoured and constructed into my character rightly so in relationship to Spiritual truth.. This is not me then saying, "I think humility is.." It is me saying, "I know my Father whom is in Heaven and is the author of all wisdom and I am not, yet it is He who is my life now in Christ Jesus! Therefore I am humble for this is reality in righteousness (a properly aligned relationship with God)..to both the depravity of my sinful nature, and to the glory of God's miraculous grace and power found in me.
We who have experienced "CC" for awhile have seen many quarrels amongst ourselves, I even would venture a guess that some would argue that point, in that we are discussing deliberately with ordained judgements, but suffice it to say - the point of humility in our character requires us to ask the question - What causes fights and quarrels among us? Don't they come from our desires that battle within us? We want something but don't get it. We go as far as to kill and covet, yet we cannot have what we want. We quarrel and fight! We do not have because we do not ask God. When we ask, we do not receive, because we ask with wrong motives that we may spend what we get on our pleasures.
As I look into that section of James I also look further in relationship to humility playing a fundamental role in our character, being properly aligned to God, when James states, "Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is you boast and brag! All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who (while being properly aligned in a relationship with God in Christ; being humble (factual revelation), where He loves us first and asks of us to be His Ambassadorship as Lord and co-worker In Chirst) who knows the good he ought to do (spiritual awareness and not self-awareness) and doesn't do it sins.
To add: The sphere of humiliation (that's right humiliation and not simply humility) is always the place of more satisfaction to Jesus Christ, and it is in our power to refuse to be humiliated, to say, "No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountaintop with God." Do I believe that God engineers my circumstances, that it is He who brings me each day into contact with the people I meet?
Am I faithful enough to Him to know that all I meet with in the ordinary deliberations of every day by chance or haphazard is absolutely under His dominance and rule? Do I face the humiliation which sometimes comes in my contact with people with perfect knowledge that God is working out His own will?
We must consider this over considering in human reasoning humility or humiliation - "Are we properly aligned with God thru Jesus Christ?; number one. And, number two; "Are we faithful to Him to such a point that, as He leads us, and loves us His way, are we immediately obeying Him?" For those of us in Christ now live spiritually and not in the flesh at all! Is Satan producing an idea in us mindfully that we are serving God's doctrines morally in the flesh which is the same thing? And that God can do things in us, even many things, but not all things?
I pray we all support each other in prayer as we guard our hearts. I am humbled by my Lord and Savior. But it is there I am also a New Creation empowered in Himself! To Him be the glory!! That is a fact Jack! Our Humility (or lack of self-awareness) is factual in Christ. Not something to obtain, but rather something He gives us in our character.