Letting Go, Part I

As we start to explore our spirituality, many of us think the process is about adding to who we are.  This makes sense; it’s how we’re raised.  We grow up focusing on how to add to ourselves—skills, knowledge, possessions, money, etc. — all to better our lives somehow.  Growth is equated with acquisition.

Yet while spiritual knowledge and understanding are also acquired over time, the big irony is that spiritual growth is largely about letting go.  It’s about releasing rather than adding to.  

We don’t add to ourselves as we explore this path, we release to ourselves.   

Our Mythic Self lives at our core.  The only way to get to who we already are is to let go of the layers and layers of beliefs, thoughts and patterns that we have (also) accumulated over time.

Again and again and again, we let go.  Sometimes we let go by choice, other times by force.  

It’s a paradox: life is about growth but spirituality is about letting go.  How do we navigate this?  

We come to understand that the more our accumulated layers fall away, the more we will expand into our spiritual selves.  

When things fall apart (and they will), you will think you’ve done something wrong.  Others will probably even tell you/judge you accordingly.  But know you are not wrong, you are on the path.

Letting go does not mean that you have to turn away from your daily lives, not unless you want to live in a monastery.  

Life, in fact, is where the letting go happens.  Work, school, kids, neighbors, traffic, flooded basements, loud cars, pets, holidays, city streets, first dates, last sightings, gatherings, solitude, moving, building, tearing down, planting, shopping, watching, listening, hating, loving, grief, sadness, joy, tenderness, ugliness—all of the messiness and the beauty of life is here for you, to help you expand into your spiritual self.

Into who you already are.