Letting Go

“Let go; let God!” I have steared clear of these words in the past because they are badly tainted with Christian ideas of God. But, if you realize that God is no more, and certainly no less, than the unfathomable intelligence behind all that we experience (a.k.a. The Universe), then letting go, and letting God, becomes the very key that unlocks the door inside of us that opens to all of infinity. Heaven, salvation, bliss, ultimate truth, real power, true love, Nirvana and of course enlightenment are all references to what lies beyond that door. So why shouldn't we take this advice seriously? It is the key to our happiness, and to discovering and attaining our deepest need of all; the need to be (to know that we exist). You might think you already know that you exist, and no doubt on an intellectual level this knowledge seems plain to you. But if you still struggle against the illusion of death then it can only be because you have not yet accepted the knowledge of your existence in your heart. This is the well known “hole” inside of us that we perpetually and vainly seek to fill with all the delusional trappings of our experiental reality. We try to fill this hole with not just money, sex, drugs and power, but also with many other “fake gods”, such as righteousness, family values, and so-called morals. But ultimately what we attempt to do in all these cases is to establish our presence by exerting some form of control over our experience. It does not matter if the control we project is good or bad, just so long as it is control, and hense, evidence of our existence. But the truth that snaps at our heals and constantly threatens to rob us of our hard earned sense of existence (and purpose) is that nothing we do will last forever. In fact, the greatest influence possible by any one human (say, for example, a Christ, or Buddha) is clearly limited to several thousand years, perhaps tens of thousands at most. But even if one man could make a mark on the universe that lasted for over a billion years, when the mark is gone, so is all evidence that such a man ever existed. We can deny the inevitable erasure of such evidence in innumerable ways, and most religions focus almost all of their energy on exactly that. By imagining that what we do in this life will effect how we spend eternity is one way that religion attempts to dupe us into thinking we can escape that ultimate truth that seems to want nothing more than to destroy everything we have (our memories of our experiences). Yet, what we don't realize is that no finite experience will ever “live forever”. The very definition of finite demands that it has an end as well as beginning. Only something infinite, without end or beginning, can “live forever”. And that “something” exists inside of us, and all around us at the same time (anything infinite in time must also be infinite in space, since we know that space and time are all one and the same these days). It is the source of all finite experience, and whether we identify with it or not, it is ultimately who we are! But, we can't identify with our infinite selves if we turn to finite reality (and reason) for answers. This should be obvious, but for some reason such a self evident truth commonly elludes the most adamant soul searchers. Probably because the illusion of reality is so convincing. Yet, if it were not convincing then what would be the point? Seeking control, and hense confirmation of our existence (sometimes perceived as “love”) through finite experience is grasping the “golden sand” that can only seep through our fingers like in Poe's famous poem (A Dream Within A Dream). The only way to realize our true power (i.e. The Love of God) is to stop grasping at something that simple observation will tell us doesn't even exist! It seeps through our fingers no matter how tightly we clasp it, because it is only an illusion. We must let go of the illusion, or what Poe calls a dream within a dream, in order to realize the one true experience; which is who we are. That does not mean grabbing ahold of anything, or exchanging one idea of God for some other. It means letting go completely, just letting go, nothing else. Letting go is how we wake up from reality.