Letting Go
If the personality stops pushing, it ceases to exist, because the very existence of the personality is a contraction, a pushing. So, when you follow this process, the part of the personality which is holding a particular tension will disappear when you see no more reason to push. When you realize that the pushing is useless, you stop doing it. This is still not exactly what is called surrender; it is what is sometimes called letting go. We sometimes think of it as the personality letting go, but even this is not accurate. The personality can't let go. It just stops pushing. And when it stops pushing, it disappears. There is no person which is letting go of something. There is no entity letting go of another object.
Diamond Heart Book III, p. 175 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book III, p. 175 • discuss »
The perspective of poverty requires a continual letting go, a continual giving away, a continual disowning of all possessions, of all dimensions of experience. We have less and less. The less we have, the poorer we feel, and the more there is purity. Saying that we “let go” or “surrender” is not quite precise. It is more accurate to say that we discover that all of our states and feelings and inner experiences don’t belong to us. We cannot sell them, we cannot trade them, we cannot accumulate them, we cannot store them, we cannot have them at will. They are not ours; they are gifts. These phenomena that pass through our souls are similar to the weather. Is the weather ours? Can anyone own the snow, the rain? What comes, comes, what goes, goes. The evolution of the urge toward possession is connected to our physical survival. Ultimately, however, it has come to serve the survival of the ego, the false self. When we experience essence, essence doesn't feel it possesses anything. Essence never says, “I have strength. I have realization.” It is you who says that. Essence is just there; spirit simply is. When you say you have something, essence feels compassion towards you. “Poor guy, he wants to be rich.” Having to have is attachment. Attachment can be to anything, material possessions, emotional, mental, essential, divine, enlightened possessions.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 10 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 10 • discuss »
Letting go of attachments and accepting poverty is a heart-wrenching process. We feel deep tears as we experience the continual loss of everything we love. We feel oceans and oceans of hot black tears. The tears of letting go and surrender deepen into an ocean of grief, and the ocean becomes darker and blacker, so black that at some point you don't even have tears. What we are letting go of, what we are losing, are things we have cherished all our lives. You have to let go of your cherished beliefs, your loves and hates, your loved ones and your enemies, your ideas and philosophies, your comforts and consolations, even your mind and your heart. Most of us will protest “How can I let go of my heart? what is life without my heart?” It is not a matter of not experiencing your heart or anything else; it is more a letting go of needing to possess things. The resistance and reluctance reflect the fear of the poverty. You think that if you let go of something, “That's it. It's going to be gone forever.” But you have to take that risk. You don't know whether it will be gone forever or if it will come back again. That's the test of the poverty. You might feel that your self is going to go, your heart is going to go, your intelligence is going to go. And you have loved and needed all these aspects of yourself.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 17 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 17 • discuss »
We see here the connection to true, existential, objective aloneness. Aloneness has to be accepted completely for it to become poverty. But letting go of dual unity does not imply that dual unity will never happen, or that it is not possible for it to manifest, or that it is not real. Letting go of dual unity means there is no attachment to it. You don't feel you have it. It is something that might occur sometimes. If you are an individual soul, then the loving condition of the dual unity may occur sometimes.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 24 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 24 • discuss »
What will be left if consciousness goes? For consciousness to go, beingness and existence also must dissolve. There needs to be absolute nonexistence, absolute darkness, darkness so dark that you don’t know it is dark. The moment you know it is dark, consciousness has already arisen, the big bang has started, the word has been uttered. To realize the truest, absolute, utmost nature of who we are, and of all of reality, we have to let go of consciousness.
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 169 • discuss »
Diamond Heart Book V, p. 169 • discuss »
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