Letting Go

     “Love is patient, love is kind, and love is not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude.  It does not insist in its own way; it is not resentful and irritable; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoice in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.”

                                                             SELF TRANSFORMATION

     Transforming your identity is more like performing surgery on yourself; you must act as both doctor and patient.  This is an impossible task in the physical world, but entirely possible in awareness.  Awareness looks at itself and when it does, it can search out flaws and fix them.

     Before surgery begins, you need a disease or defect.  The ego for all its claim to running everyday life, has a glaring defect.  Its vision of life is unworkable.  What it promises as a completely fulfilling life is an illusion, a wishful thinking and you can chase all your life without laying hands in it.

     When you become aware of this defect, the result is fatal to the ego.  It cannot compete with the soul’s vision of fulfilment.  We have all been conditioned to believe that it is the ego that is practical and realistic to life, while the soul is unattainable and detached from everyday affairs.  But that is a complete reversal of truth.  The following illustration shows;

Ego:  I have everything I need to be comfortable.
Soul:  I am everything I need.

Ego:  I am serene because bad things cannot come to me.
Soul:  I am serene because I have nothing to fear in myself.

Ego:  Through hard work, everything can be achieved.
Soul:  The flow of life’s abundance brings me everything.

Ego:  I measure myself by my accomplishment.
Soul:  I do not measure myself by any external standard.

Ego:  I win much, more than I lose.
Soul:  Giving is more important than winning.

Ego:  I have strong self-image.
Soul:  I have no self-image, I am beyond images.

Ego:  Because I am attractive, I win the attention of the opposite sex.
Soul:  People are attracted to me as soul to soul.

Ego:  When I find my perfect love, it will be under my own terms.
Soul:  I can find my perfect love, because I have discovered it first in myself.

     The Soul’s vision stands for life transformed not life presided over by the ego.  Yet most people would find the ego’s version more reasonable.  For one thing they are already quite used to it.  Familiarity keeps most of us doing the same things everyday.  But what makes the ego’s path seem easy is that it is based on improving the conditions of life step by step.  If you have a modest job today, it will become more important tomorrow.  A small first home will one day turn into a larger home.  If you ran into problems or obstacles along the way, they can be overcome.  Hard work, diligence, loyalty, and faith in progress combine to make life better.

     This is the ego’s version of personal growth however limited your life maybe in time it will steadily get better.  It is focus on the externals and ignores what is actually happening in the inner person.  There is no correlation between fulfilment and external progress.  Example, a country like the impoverish Philippines ranks higher among societies on scale of happiness than the United States.

     The ego’s vision of fulfilment is unattainable because each isolated “I” is on its own, cut from the source of life.  The steady improvement being promised can only be external, because there is no security inside.  The only way the ego can deal with the psyche’s disorder and discontent is to wall it off.  The “I” is full of secret compartments where fear and anger, regret and jealousy, insecurity and helplessness are forced to hide.
The soul’s vision of fulfilment seems far more difficult and yet if unfolds automatically once you reach the level of the soul.  Fulfilment is not a matter of self improvement.  It involves a shift away from the ego’s agenda, turning externals to the inner world.  The soul holds out a happiness that is not dependent on whether conditions outside are good or bad.  The path of the soul leads to a path where you experience fulfilment as a birthright, as part of who you are.  You don’t have to  work for it, you only have to be.

Grace comes from a clear vision of who you really are.

     Our old way of life centered on saving, planning, looking ahead, providing for security and relying on material goods must give way to a new one based on trust in Providence; no planning or looking ahead and non physical treasures.  Deep transformation is necessary, yet the steps to get a person from here to there are not outlined.

     Faith is an inner certainty that such radical change can and will happen.  But faith need not be blind.  Nor does it have to be based on anything outside yourself.  By going through the process of letting go, you will find that there are reasons to have faith here and now.

     By letting go completely a new person can achieve a new identity.  The fruit of surrender is GRACE – the all embracing power of God. Grace is the invisible influence of the divine.  Once it enters the person’s life, the old tools that we have used to run our lives – reason, logic, effort, planning, forethought, discipline are discarded like the training wheels of a bicycle.

     Grace is unbounded awareness.  Grace abolishes life’s limitations.  There is nothing to fear, nothing to be guilty of.  The whole issue between good and evil disappears.  Peace is no longer a dream to be chased, but an innate quality of the heart.  These things are the result not of supernatural intervention but of coming to the end of the process.

     A breakthrough can lead you to ultimate surrender.  Because letting go is a process, it eventually comes to an end.  But this end point is different from anything you would anticipate.  You won’t be the person you see in the mirror today.  That person goes through life with endless needs.

     In the ultimate surrender, you give up all needs.  For the first time you will be able to say “I am enough”.   You will find yourself in a world where everything fits together as it should.

     You can ask your soul to produce results by running your own soul-experiment.  If your first experiment has positive results you can try another, and then another.  This is the most practical way to resurrect the soul.  The more useful the soul becomes, the more real it is, not as a religious dogma but part of yourself. 

     To resurrect your soul, you must do the opposite of what your past conditioning tell you to.  Instead of turning to a higher power, you turn to yourself.  Instead of leaving your body behind, you take it on the spiritual journey.  Instead of condemning physical desires and temptation, you follow desire into the unknown region where the soul resides.

     In Sanskrit the inner guidance that shapes a human life is called “Upaguru” the teacher who is near.  In other words, anyone who can guide you to see what you need to see serves as your guru.

     It takes infinite flexibility for your soul to understand what you need at any given moment.  But every soul is up to the challenge, and therefore each daily moment contains, hidden inside it, a small unique revelation.  Zen Buddhism holds that every question already contains its own answer.  Your soul takes the same perspective.

     A breakthrough can occur when you accept that awareness is what guides you.  If you attune to that possibility you are reconnecting to your soul which is nothing but awareness in its most expanded form.

     Awareness comes from the soul, yet many people would say that they have never been guided, much less transformed.  For centuries human beings have prayed for signs that there is a higher power.  These signs are actually everywhere but there’s a subtle difference between inner and outer guidance.  One person’s insight is another person’s message from God.  One person’s glimpse of inner light is another person’s angel.  The realm of the soul has room for both.

    If your inner guide is always with you, why aren’t you aware of it?  Actually you are.  Every desire pushes you in a certain direction.  Every thought looks forward or backward.  Anyone who has a purpose in life even if the purpose is limited in getting through the day is following his or her own inner guidance.  The real issue is , how wise this guidance is.  Your soul has the potential to be a perfect guide.  You must first attune your mind to a subtler level and then your brain will adapt – this is the flow of life that governs all change.  Being guided is a process, and at this moment you find yourself somewhere – the beginning, middle or end of the process.  In the beginning, you catch just a few glimpses of subtle guidance.  Usually these seem like chance events or lucky coincidences.  How you make the choice will determine whether you will begin to listen to your guidance or not.

     The Rishis of sages of India concluded that the Higher Self, which we are calling the Soul, is the source of everything, including God and Fate.

     The end of the process comes when you stop fence-sitting.  You no longer half-heartedly believe in God and fate, but you seize the reins yourself.   At this point, guidance becomes an acknowledged part of you and the journey you are consciously taking.  You see the truth of Upaguru – there is guidance at every moment, because the guru is inside yourself.  The teacher is a near as your next breath.  The end of the process means that it matures.  The process of being guided is fully revealed, at which point you take full advantage of it.  How do you get to that point?

     1.  Realize that you are on a journey to higher consciousness.
     2. Expand your awareness through meditation, contemplation, and other means.
     3. Ask for guidance, simply and sincerely, and then wait for it to appear.
     4. Trust your finest instincts.  Guidance doesn’t come in the form of fear, premonition, omens, distrust or 
        self-importance.  All of those things exist around us, they cloud our view of true guidance, which is   
        always a signpost to the next step of personal growth.

     The tragedy in life is that we learn to struggle so young, too young to realize that innocence and simplicity should never have been abandoned.  Only in innocence can you receive the gifts of the soul.  Once you accept that you are supposed to struggle in order to survive that presumption becomes your reality.  It gathers its own energy and momentum.  Your brain quickly learns to conform.  Once your brain is conditioned, the look, feel, and sound of the world have been fixed – until you escape that conditioning.

Tuning in to the Soul

We already know that the body is aware.  By tuning in to it, you can increase its awareness.  Tuning in is also how you clear a channel to the soul.  You are tuning in to your soul anytime you chose to grow and expand.  On the other hand, when you tune out, the soul connection is blocked.

 You are tuned in when;

     1.  When things are going easily for you.
     2. You are calmly certain.
     3. The answer is clear.
     4. Everything fits together.
     5. You feel in harmony with the situation.
     6. There are no outer obstacles.
     7. Opposites are reconciled.
     8. You are open to possibilities.
     9. You don’t judge yourself or others.
   10. You are whole.

You are tuned out when;

     1. Things are not going smoothly for you.
     2. You are confused and uncertain.
     3. The answer is not clear.  You go back and forth.
     4. Everything is mixed up.
     5. You feel out of sync with the situation.
     6. There are many obstacles.
     7. You are conflicted inside.
     8. You find it hard to see a way out.
     9. You keep blaming yourself and others.
   10. You feel incomplete.  You must be lacking something.

From the book "Regenerating the Body and Resurrecting the Soul" by Deepak Chopra