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This false-humility teaching meets with two logical problems. The first logical problem is that it posits an extreme dualism between self and God. In popular, or noncontemplative, religion this dualism is regularly taught. This, to an extent, is inevitable, possibly, for language tends toward subject-object dualism, not a subject-subject construct.
The dualism is never well practiced, for you cannot practice well a duality of what is a unity. Contemplative theology assumes prior union between the self and its Source; the One co-inhering with the self awakens the self to being in God and God in the self. Indeed, "self" and "God" assume each other.
This is partly remedied in Hindu contemplative theology. Here, the essential core of the self is called the Self. This Self is in God and God in the Self. This is so emphasized that the Hindu contemplative can say "I AM THAT."
To clarify, in prelude to treatment of nondualism in Christian contemplation, I refer to some analysis of the theology of Sri Ramanuja (traditionally 1017-1137), the greatest Hindu teacher and devotionalist in nondual Hindu theology. The material is from "Ramanuja's Vedarthasangraha," by Swami Adidevananda (1956).
The way in which Sri Ramanuja interprets the famous text, 'That thou art' (tat tvam asi) is unique. This is done by means of co-ordinate predication (samanadhikaranya). In a co-ordinate predication the identity of the substantive should not be established through the rejection of the natural significance of co-ordinate terms [i.e., I AM THAT, That thou art]. The identical import of terms taken in their natural signification should be brought out. The Mahabhashya of Patanjali [another great Hindu nondual theologian] defines co-ordinate predication thus: "The signification of an identical entity by several terms which are applied to that entity on different grounds is co-ordinate predication." In such a proposition the attributes not only should be distinct from each other but also different from the substance, though inseparable from it. In the illustration of a "purple robe", the basic substance is one and the same, though "purpleness" and "robeness" are different from it as well as from each other. That is how the unity of a "purple robe" is established. In the co-ordinate predication asserting identity between "that" and "thou", Brahman [God] himself with the self as his mode, having the self as his body, is pointed out.
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