The Infinite Heart
A Journey Into the Teachings of 150 Great
Mystics, Masters, Poets and Saints
WEEK THREE: Thursday
Hey, before I forget, have you ever seen the movie, “Ground Hog Day”? You should see it sometime. A lot of what you’ve been talking about has been reminding me of it. It’s one of my all time favorites. Bill Murray plays this arrogant, self-centered weatherman who starts to experience the same day over and over again. He’s in a town he hates, around people he hates, on a day he hates, and he’s trapped in it.
So at first he’s fighting it every step of the way, trying to find a way out. He tries everything, even jumping off buildings to end things once and for all, and nothing works. He just wakes up again and again, all alone, in the same hotel bed, facing the same day. He’s completely trapped in hell. And then he starts to fall for this woman, and tries to get her to fall for him. So each day, which is really the same day, he learns more about her and tries to use the information to win her over the next day. But the more he tries to master just the right responses to get her to like him, and the more desperate he becomes, the less she’s drawn to him. Until finally he just faces the terrible realization that he may be stuck in this day forever, and that he’ll never get to have her love. He just fully lets himself admit that he can’t do anything about it. He’s completely stuck in this hell.
And once he comes to peace with that, then he just starts really being alive in this same day again and again. And even though it’s always the same people and the same events, you get the feeling that for him life is becoming more and more fresh and fulfilling everyday. He’s not fighting it anymore. He’s not trying to get out of it. He’s really being there, every second. And then the woman he loves becomes so irresistibly drawn to the way he’s so alive and present and fulfilled, she completely falls for him. They spend the night together, and when he wakes up, she’s still in his arms. It’s the next day. So the more he was just content with what was, even if it was hell, then it was like heaven came to him.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Heaven is surrendering to hell. And hell is grasping onto Heaven. That, my friend, is perhaps the simplest way to say what all these heavy words we’re using are pointing to.
And I guess if you’re trying to surrender to hell in order to get heaven, then really you’re still trying to grasp after heaven, and so you’re really still resisting hell. So it’s not like you can just do your time in hell in order to retire in heaven.
Exactly. You cannot trick Truth. You cannot outsmart Pure Being. Heaven is in the falling and hell is in the grasping. No matter how noble a thing you grasp, the grasping itself surrounds you with hell. And no matter how terrible a thing you let yourself fall through, the falling itself surrounds you with Heaven.
I remember you saying something like that the first few days we met. How even grasping after God will keep you separated.
Right. Everything must be let go of. Saint John of the Cross: “The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord is broken, the bird cannot fly.” And the Buddha: “You should let go of even the most profound insight or the most wholesome teaching.” And Plotinus: “Some there are that for all their effort have not attained the Vision… They have received the authentic Light, all their soul has gleamed as they have drawn near, but they come with a load on their shoulders which holds them back from the place of Vision. They have not ascended in the pure integrity of their being, but are burdened with that which keeps then apart. They are not yet made one within.”
That reminds me of your story about the demon and the harp. It was grasping onto something and that kept it from being able to embrace God.
Yes, Grace may momentarily lift us up to the Divine, but as long as we are holding onto anything at all, even ourselves, we are far too heavy to remain. Saint Augustine wrote “I was swept up to Thee by Thy Beauty, and torn away from Thee by my own weight.”
And the harp could also be like practices and techniques, right? They let you get a good view of what’s to come, but as long as you’re grasping them, they hold you back.
Right. Even the most subtle grasping or pushing away prevents the merging into What Is. So, hell is simply the resistance of this Living Breath of Pure Essence. And Heaven is simply the resting your head in this Living Moment, in whatever form it takes. Heaven has only to do with how you are being. Not where. This is one of my favorite Psalms: “If I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me.” God never abandons us. We abandon God. Remember Plotinus: “You remain present to It yet turn your back on It.” When we decide resting in the moment is too unpleasant, too painful, too terrible, or too costly, then we shut ourselves away from the Living Breath of Now. We turn our backs to God.
We spend so much of our lives pursuing certain feelings and experiences. But as we’ve discussed, resting in True Nature has nothing to do with what you are feeling or experiencing. Nothing at all! So you never have to try to change anything you are experiencing! Pure Being is not a destination you can arrive at. It’s not an experience you can have that’s different from the experience you are having now. It’s not a particular wave you can swim over to if you can only manage to break away from the wave you’re in. It isn’t a power you can acquire or a gift you can have or a level you can attain or a goal you can reach or a status you can earn.
Then what is it again?
It’s simply a way. A way of being. A way of being simply and tenderly content to rest in what is, regardless of what you are experiencing in this moment. A way of resting in the Infinite Heart, in which you would let yourself endlessly fall through whatever you may encounter, no matter how dense or dark or terrifying. There would never be anything you could encounter that would lead you to decide it would be smarter or safer or more true to close down and protect yourself just for that moment, after which you would open up again. For you absolutely know that the Flow of Being you would be pushing away is the greatest Treasure, of infinitely more value than the structures you would be trying to protect. And you would also let anything fall through you, no matter how cold or piercing or painful or terrifying or disturbing.
You make it sound so dark.
It is authentic, unwavering willingness- the willingness to not resist any darkness that may come - that actually fills your life with more Infinite Living Light than you could have ever imagined.
So you aren’t going around looking for darkness, and you might not even really go through much of it. It’s just that you are willing to let it come. Resistancelessness.
Yes, you just tenderly, and without a hint of pity or martyrdom, release the insistence of “my way”.
I can kind of get letting yourself fall through anything. But you also said something about letting anything fall through you.
To simply not resist. To not push away this moment just because there is something you don’t like that’s trying to get in. When anything is pushed away, Pure Flow stops. So you perpetually surrender to this moment because that is what you know is most true. But it just happens that your endless softening renders all arrows useless.
This is the part where I ask what you mean and then you expand on what you just said for a while.
When any unpleasant force is coming towards you, when you try to resist it and defend yourself from it, it has something to grab on to. It has an opposing energy to interact with, to dance with. The arrow finds enough resistance to stick.
Like corn starch.
But when you absolutely resign to endlessly dissolving into Now, it has nothing to stick to. No one will come out and play with it. And so it goes away. It passes right through and then is done. Now when an arrow is passing straight through, without sticking to anything real, it can still be painful and frightening and terribly uncomfortable. When an arrow passes right through an open, soft, spacious, liquid heart, it can definitely hurt. It can definitely cause ripples. But it cannot cause any damage. It cannot scar the soul. It cannot touch what you truly are. It’s only pain. It’s only fear. It’s only extreme discomfort. Is that really worth trying to get rid of at the price of denying Pure Being a home in this world? Once Pure Being is your one true Treasure, there is no longer even the slightest temptation to trade it in for fool’s gold. Jesus said “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Hadewijch of Antwerb wrote “Anyone who has waded through Love’s turbulent waters, now feeling hunger and now satiety, is untouched by the season of withering or blooming, for in the deepest and most dangerous waters, and on the highest peaks, Love is always the same.” And Lalla wrote “On the way to God the difficulties feel like being ground by a millstone, like night coming at noon, like lighting through the clouds. But don’t worry! What must come, comes. Face everything with love, as your mind dissolves into God.”
* * * * * *
So, question. It always sounds like you’re saying don’t do anything to protect yourself physically. But I know you said that’s not what you mean. So if someone’s swinging a knife at you, you dodge it, right? You’re talking about how you react inside. So if there is a lot of pain and suffering happening and you could stop it or make it weaker by pushing it away inside, you wouldn’t, because that’s pushing away what is, which is also like pushing away Pure Being. And if you knew that you were about to be dissolved away, and you could stop it by just holding yourself together, you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t put yourself ahead of the natural flow of Being. The you that would dissolve away is just temporary structure anyway. And what would remain after that dissolved away is what you really are. Your True Nature.
Yes, very well said. At that point, all that you are familiar with and all that you have believed to be your self evaporates into Infinitely Space. And yet, something Pure and Real and True and Alive remains, and you are that. Remember Eckhart: “Here one cannot speak of the soul anymore, for she has lost her nature yonder in the oneness of divine essence. There she is no more called soul, but is called immeasurable being.” And Jacob Boehme wrote “The Soul then says I have nothing, for I am utterly stripped and naked; I can do nothing, for I have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; I am nothing, for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, and only God is my I AM.”
I liked what you said yesterday, about how the seed lets itself be completely broken open and torn apart and destroyed and replaced by something that seems to be different from itself. And then somehow there’s this flower, or maybe eventually this huge oak tree, and somehow what that seed really was, its essence, its true self, is still there as that entire oak tree. It’s the same consciousness, the same soul, the same being, if you can use those words, even though it seems like there’s nothing left of the seed.
Yes, beautiful. And then the oak tree says to all the acorns around “I know it feels like so much to give up, to let yourself be completely broken apart and destroyed by something within you that you can’t understand and can’t control. But please, believe me. No matter how it feels, what you really are will survive! And not only survive, but finally you will get to live as that which you were always invited to be! Then finally your real Life can begin!”
And those of us who refuse to listen to it must just be nuts. So back to this arrow thing, if someone is screaming at you, normally you would get all tight and defensive and sort of protect yourself, and maybe yell back. But instead, you could just completely let it all flow through without any resistance, even if it really hurts, and then it doesn’t find anything to cling to. So if you just completely open up, arrows can’t touch you, right? Sounds like a cool missile defense system.
This isn’t a technique you use in order to be safe from what is coming towards you. It isn’t magic to be used when you are under attack. And it isn’t a strategy to show yourself how much more mature and spiritual you are than that poor inferior soul who is slinging arrows. And in fact, any such agendas generate just enough tension and friction to give the arrow something to stick to. Uncompromising Openness can’t be used. It is simply what spontaneously happens when you are in line with what you know to be most true. Your heart knows that continuously Yessing into What is Here, without reservation or condition, is the most honest, most pure, most real way to be. It makes no difference to you at all if you are experiencing Light or darkness, Love or fear, Truth or distortion, bliss or great pain. You would never postpone laying your head in the Heart of this Living Moment until things are more to your liking. And so your ever deepening expanding into Pure Being never ceases, regardless of what your mind and body may be experiencing.
So if you’re in hell you’re just supposed to be content to lay down and stay there forever? I’m sure that’s a popular path. Does that get you out of it? Like in that story of the most lost Light being, trapped in the worst hell, what would’ve happened if he hadn’t resisted? If he had just kept letting everything flow in spite of the agony?
Then he would’ve continued to rest in Truth. To lay his head in the arms of God, regardless of what he was experiencing.
Yeah, but would he have gotten out?
You cannot rest in the arms of the Divine in order to get. You cannot do it as a technique to change this moment because you don’t like it. Then you are pretending to rest while in truth you are looking around thinking “Is it working? Am I out of hell yet? Maybe I’m not quite resting right.”
But would he have gotten out? I mean, if he wasn’t resting in order to get anything, but just because he knew that was true.
If not, he would’ve known the Living Truth he was unable to perceive. He would’ve lived in a way completely congruent with the way Pure Being lives, and so in spite of all perceptions, he would have been one with the Living Breath of the Divine. He would’ve simply been content to rest in the Heart of God and let Pure Being flow through him into that heavy place. Even if he never experienced anything but anguish, he would’ve been content to remain bowed down to his Beloved, and so he would’ve remained one with God, even in hell. Eckhart said “If you truly enjoyed God’s will, you would feel exactly as though you were in the kingdom of heaven, whatever happened to you or didn’t happen to you.”
But yes or no. Would he have gotten out?
Would He?
I’m not sure exactly why, but I’m thinking yes, eventually.
When you are endlessly falling through the Infinite Sea of Self, you can fall into many different currents. Some absolutely blissful, some intensely painful. Some of these currents are weak and lose their strength quickly, and others are strong and deep and carry you a great distance. But it so happens that every current eventually loses its energy, unless you are feeding it with your own resistance. Every current sooner or later reaches a point in which it can no longer carry you. And then you simply fall through it to what is next.
These currents are meaningless patterns of form. They are temporary structures. They’re of no consequence. But continuing to rest in them, without the slightest reaching out to hold on to blissful ones or the slightest pushing away to get rid of painful ones, that is of consequence. That is what matters. That is living each moment with fresh, vibrant, Overflowing Newness. Even if you are stuck in the same day, in the same hell, again and again. That is living in the way that Essence lives. Endlessly dissolving into ever deepening Openness. And when you fully allow suffering to have you, without any defending, then even the suffering begins to have a Spacious Sweetness within it. The Pure Center of the darkest night begins to make itself known when you allow yourself to keep falling through its layers.
So if he had just let himself keep falling, eventually he would have sort of fallen through, into a different space.
Right. Hell is not an abyss. It’s a tunnel. It’s a black hole that pulls you from one beautiful world to another. But for as long as you are grasping onto the sides, half way down, you will remain there.
It’s like I told a water bug I was trying to flush down the toilet yesterday. “Be brave, young bug! Have trust! Life will be better there than it is in this whirlpool of hell! Let go and be free!” I think the little guy took my words to heart, cause it finally let go of the side. Well, actually I think what happened was it let go of its grip just long enough to flip me off. And after that one last glorious moment of defiance, he got washed away to the great beyond. My bathroom won’t be the same without him, but I know he’s in a better place. You know, what you were saying also reminds me of birth. I mean, it’s like you’re in a safe, warm place, and then maybe things constrict and get uncomfortable and frightening and painful and the only way out is to go through it. You have to stop fighting and holding on and just let yourself go through that tunnel of hell in order to come out in a new and beautiful world.
That’s also an excellent description of death. Whether of the body or of our mis-identifications and attachments.
Well, when I die and make it through the tunnel into the next world, if there is one, if someone’s waiting there to hold me upside down and slap my butt, this time I’m returning the favor. Anyway, it sounds like whenever it feels like you’re in hell, you can count on it being temporary. Like you’re in a hell canal. If you just completely stop resisting and let the current take you at its own pace, sooner or later you’ll come out the other end. There really is a light at the end of the tunnel.
When we stop waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, it comes to us. When we let the Flow of Being take us even into the darkest, most constricted places, without resistance or hope of escaping, then that tunnel will continue to pass by all around us until we find ourselves once more in the daylight. And when we let currents of hell flow through us, without defending or pushing away, they will run their course and disappear, like a chain of storm clouds passing by, until the Sunlight that was always there again becomes unveiled. And then we once more see what our heart always knew: The warm, loving Sunlight is not truly something separate from us, far away, sending us light only when there aren’t any clouds in the way. It is our very nature. Our very heart. Our very Being. Marsilio Ficino, a fifteenth century Catholic priest, wrote “Revere yourself as an eternal ray of the Divine Sun.” The Light at the end of the tunnel is our own.
So basically, it all gets down to one simple little question: How? How do we stop all our resisting? How do we just let our heart rest even when we’re in hell? Even when killer arrows are flying towards us. Hey, I didn’t say the answer would be simple.
The answer is so simple we keep missing it.
Well then explain it in a more complicated way. That seems to come pretty easy for you. I mean, you make it sound like we can just decide to stop all our effort and then it’s over. But it’s not that easy. Maybe there’s nothing we can do to fall into the volcano, but we still have to get to the top of it first. Doesn’t it take a lot of work to develop spiritually and really open up? Therapy or meditation or power yoga or whatever. I mean, you’re the one showing me techniques like the glaze of the Heart.
The Gaze of the Heart.
My point is, it does take a lot of work.
Effortlessness takes no effort at all. We’ve talked about how practices and techniques can be useful in thinning the layers and helping you experience a more tender, connected space. But any path that would put off resting in this moment until you are more connected and less defended has some distortion. Any path that points anywhere but right here is pointing in the wrong direction. Nothing about your patterns or your personality has to change first. Absolutely nothing. We don’t have to wait until we’re more ready or more spiritual or more courageous or more loving or more mature, or less busy or less selfish or less distracted or less depressed. We don’t have to wait until we finish a few more things on our “to do” list or until we have worked a bit more on our issues. We don’t have to wait until we have a few minutes to ourselves, or until we have less stress or fewer defenses. We don’t have to wait for anything to change first.
We don’t even have to stop or change how stuck we might be in this moment! We don’t even have to get unstuck first! However bad we’ve blown it, we don’t have to undo that mess first. It isn’t a matter of using thrusters to try to counter the thrusters that have been going for so long. And it isn’t that now that we have such thick walls it’s too late for us. “I’m a hopeless case, but maybe someone else who is more open or more spiritual or more disciplined or more motivated could let go.” Each moment is a new, very simple choice: To continue putting forth the effort to sustain our resistance of this moment, or to finally let ourselves stop and just rest our heart in the uncontrollable flow of What Is. J. P. de Caussade wrote “Do what you are doing now, suffer what you are suffering now; to do all this with holiness, nothing need to be changed but your hearts. Sanctity consists in willing what happens to us by God’s order.”
But it sounds like you’re talking about making some big choice to do something, and you’ve said a hundred times there’s nothing we can do.
There is nothing we can do.
A hundred and one.
It has nothing to do with some big choice to do something. It has to do with every moment allowing yourself to stop doing. To simply let go of the chronic effort of striving and resisting you have been putting out. This isn’t anything complex, it isn’t something that requires training or technique or practice. We can’t use as an excuse that we don’t know how.
But I don’t know how.
A leaf doesn’t need to learn how to fall. But clinging to the branch after winter has arrived, now that takes learning. A roly-poly curled up in a tight, protective ball doesn’t have to learn how to let go again. Sooner or later, it just knows it’s time to stop hiding. That if it stays in a tight ball for its whole life, it will have missed really living. When a frightened kitten is puffed up with claws out, it doesn’t have to learn how to relax its claws again and curl back up on your lap. You don’t have to know how. You simply have to give your consent. And then, sooner or later, the curling up on your Master’s lap happens of itself. Listen to D. H. Lawrence:
All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
* * * * * *
Ahh, such a beautiful poem.
Any poem with a kitty in it can’t be all bad. So you’re saying you don’t have to learn how to do anything. You just honestly become willing to let go, and when that’s sincere, it just happens.
Exactly. To whatever degree you become honestly willing to be more tender and gentle and naked and vulnerable deep within whatever may arise in this moment, to that exact degree your heart will effortlessly be that open. It has nothing to do with knowing how to do anything. Even ignorance cannot be an excuse! Your body, your mind, your personality, your patterns, they all really know how to let go and relax and simply rest again in this Living Moment. They’re only waiting for permission from the consciousness that masters them. They’re only doing their best to follow your orders. They’re standing guard for you. They’re carrying such thick, heavy armor for you. They’re pushing away enemies and grasping onto false treasures for you. And when you let go of their leashes, and simply let your heart rest, then slowly, one by one, they all come back to where you are, and join you in a deep inner resting. Even if the mind and body are active. That’s all your patterns ever really wanted anyway.
I can see how we’re choosing, consciously or unconsciously, to hold on and resist and be closed and defended, so hypothetically we could choose to stop. But obviously, most of us just aren’t willing or able to let it happen. Even when a part of us feels willing and tries to open, the rest of us is saying, “Are you crazy? There’s no way we’re going to open up and be vulnerable and exposed in this situation! Good thing we aren’t letting you run the show! Nice try, fool.”
Then you are trying to force your petals to open against their will. You are trying to use force to change your patterns of grasping and defending because their contracted way of being isn’t okay with you. Then your way of being becomes like theirs. It’s a way of being in which what is in this moment is unacceptable. So you immediately resist it and use force to try to change it.
God, this stuff gets so frustrating! Then how in the hell do you stop yourself from being all closed down and defended and all if you can’t try to change it or even want it to change?
You don’t need to change any of that. You don’t have to change even one of your patterns of grasping or defending even slightly in order to let go. You can’t even use as an excuse that you can’t seem to change your patterns or that you don’t know how to let go of your armor. You don’t have to change anything about what your patterns are doing! It’s so much simpler than that!
Okay, so now you’re going to say something about how you just have to change the way you’re reacting to your patterns, or something. That you have to stop attaching to them or supporting them or keeping the pressure on them that’s been holding them together. That they can be there but you have to let go of them, right? But most of us either don’t know how to do that, or if you’re right that we only have to be willing and it happens by itself, then I guess most of us just aren’t willing to do that. But it sure feels like we don’t know how. It would be like opening up your throat and lungs when you’re underwater. It goes against every instinct you have. You’ll drown. Yes, it’s theoretically possible to choose to do it. But hell no, nobody’s ever going to make that choice, so it’s just the same as being impossible. You’re saying we have to let go of patterns that either we don’t want to let go of or else we can’t let go of. And if we try to make ourselves let go of them, it’s just using force to fight force, which you’ve made abundantly clear doesn’t work. So we’re still completely fricking stuck!
Not only do you not have to change one thing about your patterns, you don’t even have to let go of the way you are interacting with your patterns! You don’t have to try to get disentangled first. You don’t have to try to let go of them first. You don’t have to stop believing them first. You don’t have to do anything or change anything first! It’s so much simpler than all of that!
Then what the hell are you talking about?
Listen again to de Caussade: “Do what you are doing now, suffer what you are suffering now; to do all this with holiness, nothing need to be changed but your hearts.”
All I am speaking of is, deep in the center of your heart, letting this moment simply be okay with you exactly as it is. Not trying to change it at all. Even if every ounce of energy from your mind and body is going into trying to make this moment be different. And even if your patterns are completely resisting letting anything about this moment reach your heart. You don’t even need to try to change that. Just simply letting all of that happen without judgment or resistance or an agenda to change it. The mind keeps trying to understand what it is it has to do. But it’s so much simpler than anything our heavy and complex minds could ever do! It requires no doing, no rearranging of patterns, no changing of any form or pattern or action. As long as you’re trying to do it, you’re going in the wrong direction.
It sounds like any direction you try is the wrong direction.
Exactly.
Like biofeedback. Or using thrusters. Or trying to jump into the Volcano. As long as there’s any effort, you’re climbing instead of falling.
That’s it exactly. The moment you are trying to get anywhere that would require anything to change about this moment, you are trying to get to the wrong place. Such a place is not a place of Truth. Pure Being is a flow of complete allowing and accepting and opening and merging without any hesitation or resistance or pushing or pulling. So any way of being that requires even the smallest effort to redirect something in the present moment first, that way of being isn’t true. So it cannot take you anywhere really worth getting to. You cannot get to Truth through a way that is untrue. Any path that would have you change anything about what is, it might be quite a scenic or exciting journey, and it might give you fleeting glimpses of Essence, but it cannot lead you out of illusion. If it has the tiniest conditions upon what is allowed to be happening within your mind or body or the world around you in order for your being to merge with Pure Being, it can’t bring you to Truth!
Damn! There go the rest of the sacred cows. I think it’s good you’re impartial enough to offend everyone equally.
So, the moment you think “Okay, if I can just change that, if I can just start doing that, if I can just get rid of that, if I can just open up to or let go of or relax that, then finally I’ll be getting somewhere, then finally I’ll be able to let go,” then you’ve already missed it! This is why it’s so elusive. We try to change what the mind is doing so that we can finally just be. But only you, what you really are– the Pure Spark of Consciousness that is currently so entangled in the mind and body and the surrounding world, the heart that has chosen to insist and grasp and push away rather than fall endlessly more open– only you can just unconditionally rest, regardless of any circumstances and patterns in the world of form. Regardless of how attached or entangled you may be. You don’t even have to get disentangled first!
Every time I start to put together a basic picture of what this looks like, you throw it in the fricking trash! My mind just can’t get it.
It doesn’t need to. The mind can’t do it. All doing in form in order to find Pure Beingness is on the wrong track. It requires not the slightest change of any form, any pattern, any circumstance, for you to let go and simply be. As long as letting go depends on any particular arrangement in form, it’s a conditional letting go, at the mercy of the happenings of the world.
We have this idea that if we can just focus on each thing we’re attached to and let go of it, then eventually we’ll come to the end of the list of our attachments, and then we’ll be free. But the problem is not the objects that we’re grasping or resisting, but the grasping and resisting itself. And as long as that is present within us, as long as we would still use force to rearrange the present moment before we’re willing to rest in it, then we won’t run out of attachments. We say “I need to let go of that,” and then sometimes we do. But usually by immediately grabbing on to something else. Only the object of our grasping changes.
Makes me think of the monkey bars on the play ground. As soon as you let go of one of the bars, or even before, you grab on to another one so that you don’t fall. You’re saying those monkey bars just go on forever. You never run out of something to grab onto until you just let yourself fall.
Exactly. We look back at all the bars we have let go of and feel pride at how far we’ve come. Yet we are no closer to the Solid Ground of Reality. It’s amazing how we actually convince ourselves that if we keep moving from bar to bar, maybe one day we’ll run out of them and then we’ll arrive at the other end or finally jump down. We feel as though we’re really working on getting rid of attachments and issues, and getting closer to our Pure Center, but are we really any closer to letting go of our grasp of the bars? As long as we are reaching our hands up to grab something, there will always be something there to grab! It’s the very grasping that ensures the presence of another bar. If we were really only interested in letting go, why would we wait until some imagined future time when we’ll have nothing more to grab on to? If we were really fully willing to let go of our grasping, we would just do it. Right now. We would let our hands just stop their effort, and release our grip. And let ourselves be tenderly okay with whatever happens. Even with an endless fall into the unknown.
All right. Let’s stop here for today. Tomorrow we’ll try to finish things up.