Fifty Ways of Letting Go: Shadow Work for Spiritual Practitioners

HOW TO WORK WITH OURSELVES

The Basic Steps to Practice

There are two fundamental practices that help us to grow psycho-spiritually beyond the limitations of our biology and our upbringing. One of them is the further development of our capacity to love. Love is the mother emotion that allows us to have empathy, to care for others (and ourselves) and that enables us to heal our neurotic needs and addictive desires. The other practice is the development of the ability to detach, to see beyond our limiting beliefs, emotions and alienating judgments, thus transcending our usual myopic self-centered, dualistic way of seeing things. Without this detachment, Love lacks clarity and can be naïve. But without love, this ability to be detached from our thoughts and feelings can be cold and uncaring. When spiritual groups emphasize detachment over love, something very important is left out of their practice.

One of the most important questions about human psychological and spiritual growth is this: what to do with our difficult negative thoughts, feelings, and impulses, which can come upon us so suddenly, intensely and persistently? This is a book about how to work with, heal and let go of our less than helpful ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

The basic formula for this work is:

1) Self Awareness,

2) Self Acceptance and Compassion,

3) Refraining from acting out,

4) Investigation,

5) Loving, Healing, and

6) Letting Go.

Without SELF AWARENESS, we just blindly act out of our thoughts, feelings and impulses with no consideration or self reflection. We are then little better than other animals for we are not using one of the greatest gifts given to us by our evolutionary inheritance: the ability to step back from ourselves and to intelligently observe our thoughts, feelings and impulses from a detached position. The practice of non dual awareness or Mindfulness as it has come to be called is an incredible boon to us in helping us to fully develop and use this gift of self detachment for our own spiritual and psychological growth.

One thing important to note is that the word for mind that is used in Eastern religions actually means something like heart/mind, which more fully encompasses our whole being. It is that meaning we will use here, for this is a holistic mind/heart/body awareness. We are not a mind residing in a body where the mind is a little homunculus up in the control tower, directing the whole show. That is a very simplistic and dangerously inaccurate model of how consciousness actually works.

SELF ACCEPTANCE and SELF COMPASSION, are equally important, because without them, when we become aware of our negative impulses and feelings, we are likely to turn away from our awareness to avoid shame and self rejection. This turning away can be either to judge ourselves or to project the issue onto others when we can’t tolerate seeing it in ourselves. The more self accepting we are, the more we are able to see and acknowledge our emotional reactions and impulses. With the abilities to be self accepting and self aware, we can then begin to work more skillfully with our human shortcomings. Part of letting go of our harsh self judgment is the simple realization that all of mankind has these issues and struggles with them. Each of us is no better and no worse than others.

To avoid doing harm to ourselves and to others, we need to REFRAIN from acting on negative thoughts, emotions and impulses. The more we can catch and let go of negative trains of thoughts, not identify with negative emotions and resist the impulses to act out, the less we have to clean up and repair the damage from our acting out of our old dysfunctional patterns of thought and behavior. But of course, this is easier said than done! Awareness is key in this, but even being aware of our temptation, as Saint Paul notes in his letter to the Romans quoted above, we may still end up doing what we hate.

Interestingly enough, recent studies of the issue of self control or discipline (concepts that have only recently been studied by the psychological field) show that it is not rational thought and conscious efforts to resist temptation that are the most effective means of self control. In fact, the use of will power actually takes considerable psychic energy that can reduce our ability to resist further temptations. What works far better is using the positive emotions of love and gratitude to support our refraining from negative actions. I suspect that further studies will bear out what many spiritual traditions have known for a long time. Meditations on love, generosity, kindness, compassion and other positive attributes create a general state of mind that can resist temptation far better than the old fear based moralistic haranguing that much conservative and fundamentalist religion still holds onto and perpetuates.

As we learn to become more aware of our inclinations and impulses and refrain more and more skillfully, we find many opportunities to INVESTIGATE below the initial impulses to the deeper issues hiding below them. This means first focusing on the sensations and feelings in our body below any story that our minds might make up. So often what we find under these feelings and impulses are wounds from our childhood. As we inquire, we begin to become aware of the compulsive dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling and acting that we took on to protect ourselves (or so we thought) from being hurt further as children. This is the way our brains so often work: from a survival standpoint. These dysfunctional protective mechanisms that are part of our consciousness I will be calling egoic consciousness or the False Self in this book.

As we become aware of these specific childhood wounds without reactivity and judgment, we begin to develop a more compassionate attitude towards ourselves and we open ourselves to the HEALING power of Love: love of self, love of God, love of our fellow human beings. Love and other positive states of mind not only help us to resist temptation but help us to heal our emotional reactivity that comes from trauma and wounds from our past experience. This work of loving ourselves is often not easy. We have had years of abusing, neglecting and abandoning ourselves; so it takes time to develop a loving, nurturing relationships with ourselves. Finally, as we refrain from our compulsions and are able to stay lovingly present with our wounded self, we are able to LET GO more and more easily. And this letting go is not something we do just once but is an ongoing noticing and sloughing off of negative thoughts and impulses.

The Critical Importance of Personal Practice

Do not say, when I have leisure I will study. You may never have leisure.

Rabbi Hillel the Elder

I have a colleague at my counseling center who is very bright and insightful, understands much about spirituality, but he balks at the notion that he should need to practice spirituality. Why should I have to practice in some Dharma Center, meditating long hours, while normal people just go on about their daily lives? They seem to get along just fine without all of this rather dreary spiritual labor, so why shouldn’t I? he asks. And there is another more subtle argument that he makes against practice. Basically it boils down to this: spiritual practice can be hijacked by egoic consciousness and its agenda into unhealthy and non-productive directions. This is true; the False Self inevitably will try to insert itself into whatever approach we take to spirituality. However, for me that is not a reason to doubt the value of spiritual practice, but rather a good reason to be on the lookout for wherever the False Self may show itself, including in our spiritual practice.

At this point, there is no way I can convince him of the need for practice. The motivation to practice will have to come from him. From what I have seen, there are two basic reasons we are motivated to engage in spiritual practice. The first is that we have had a taste of Divine Love, we can’t forget it and we keep searching for our way back to it. The other is that we experience suffering in our lives and find that we need some kind of practice/inquiry into the causes of our suffering to free ourselves from our self imposed bondage. We human beings are forgetful creatures. We can have an amazing experience of God’s abundant Love and then lose sight of it the very next day- or minute for that matter. For that reason we need to practice consistently, just as we eat our meals and brush our teeth every day. This does not mean we have to retreat into a monastery or convent. But it means we have to be very intentional as to where we find the times and places in our daily life to practice.

In dealing with our suffering, we could say that those of us who are motivated by it are the lucky ones, for it pushes us to dig deeper and more consistently into our lives than most people want to. Many AA members come to thank their addictions for forcing them to deal with their issues and consequently make their lives better. Whatever motivates us to engage in spiritual practice, it is important that we find the right practices for our particular needs and personal issues and that we make time for them in our all too busy and distracted lives.

Bottom line is, if you want your life to improve, you will find the time to practice. It won’t happen any other way. Just reading about spirituality and knowing a lot about it will not get you there, trust me! As you find the time and you practice consistently (not slavishly) your life becomes more peaceful and enjoyable and you spend less and less time involved in upset, distraction and living on the surface of your life. Spiritual practice is not something that magically makes your life perfect; rather, it helps you to gradually see the perfection that was there to begin with, even in the difficult things that will show up in your life.

If you already have an established practice regimen in your life and you belong to a spiritual practice community, then this book could be a useful tool for considering additional practices to undertake. It could help you especially with healing and integrating your shadow: that part of your consciousness that remains hidden from you and causes you much unnecessary suffering. In any case, work with the inquiry questions and practices in each chapter of this book that call to you, not all of them. One of them might be a key to clarifying and healing some issue that has been nagging you for some time. And for those of you who are spiritual workaholics, take it easy! You don’t need to do everything I propose in this book. Dear ones, that would just set you up for more guilt and feelings of inadequacy which you probably have enough of already!

For those of you who identify yourselves as spiritual but not religious, consider these words from someone who has been on the spiritual journey for some forty-five years: for all the faults and failings of religious communities, they are still useful and even essential supports for remembering who we really are. We all need community to practice within. Alone and without support we are very likely to fall away from the conscious life. We need community for its resources, its support - and for holding us gently accountable when we fall back on old unhealthy ways. This community of practice might be a Twelve Step Program. It might be a church, temple or mosque. It might be a Buddhist practice center or a Hindu ashram. But make no mistake, for most of us this is essential to our spiritual growth.

The Lone Ranger, Do-it-yourself, buffet style spirituality of many spiritual seekers today leaves them susceptible to many mistakes and self deceptions. This is the disease of our Western obsession with personal freedom and unlimited choices. When we run solo we have few checks and balances on our own unconscious and unskillful behaviors and attitudes. Left to our devices, we are likely to run towards what is pleasant and fun and avoid the difficult work of engaging with our shadow.

All of these institutions are imperfect because they are filled with imperfect human beings who can really screw up. So choose wisely, but choose to work in community. You will at times be upset with people in the community that you think are stupid or worse. And you will of course make your own blunders! But if it is a healthy religious / practice community it will be of great assistance to you on your spiritual journey. And, make no mistake about it, your experience of friction with the less than perfect people (you included) in this community will actually be a critical part of your learning!

The Trap of Self Criticism and Shame

It is important for me to talk about something that many of us in our western culture are prone to that can get in the way of the work done throughout this book. Because of our culture’s overemphasis on individualism and our personal achievements and attributes, we are prone to harsh self criticism, self rejection and a deep sense of shame about our personal inadequacy. When we start becoming more aware of our less than desirable traits in the shadow work we will engage with in this book, it is extremely important for us to be able to manage our Inner Critic. For some of us, this Inner Critic will just not let us off the hook when it perceives that we are not living up to its exacting standards.

If you are anything like most people you will find this to be true: as you approach your shadow (the parts of yourself that you have disowned, repressed and/or are unaware of) your egoic consciousness will get more and more upset, defensive, and resistant. You will be tempted to turn away from this challenging work. And one of the things that can easily cause us to turn away is harsh self criticism and shame. When these arise, all desire for clarity, healing, and transformation disappear. Another way that we can turn away is to project our shadow material onto other people and get angry and judgmental towards them.

So be aware of and prepared for this to happen! Otherwise your Inner Critic might come upon you unexpectedly when you encounter something in one of the chapters that really points to your issue and this might discourage or distract you from getting spiritual and psychological healing. That is why the initial chapters on Self Forgiveness, Self Acceptance and Trust are so important for the work that we will be doing together in this book. I want to be sure that you are ready to use these tools when the demons of shame and blame attempt to take you down into their lairs of self rejection and self condemnation or paranoia and blame of others.

HOW TO BEST USE THIS BOOK

To read spiritual books but not to engage in regular spiritual practice is like reading books about physical fitness and never doing physical exercise.

This book is an example of Integral Psycho-Spiritual Practice – the weaving together of spiritual and psychological wisdom and practice to address our full nature as human beings, both our everyday psychological issues and our desire for transcendence. My standpoint is that, without an integrated healed healthy ego, transcendence by itself will not serve you very well. This book invites you to explore a variety of spiritual and psychological practices that address body, mind and spirit. Most of our problems are not held at the mental level; they are carried on the emotional and unconscious levels and are often deeply felt in our bodies. So I will be inviting you to especially address these deeper levels in the exercises in this book.

While this book is broken down into easy to read chapters, I encourage you not to rush to one that sounds just like your issue of the day. There are beginning chapters, including this introductory material, that are basic to using the rest of the book productively and they give you the appropriate psychological and spiritual tools to facilitate your work. This book deals with challenging issues that may trigger reactions of self judgment, shame, fear, etc. One thing we know about our psychology as human beings is that if we get bogged down in self judgment, shame or fear, or anger and judgment of others, we can lose any desire for the healing, self knowledge, and the emancipation that would otherwise be available.

Here are a few important ways to both increase your engagement with the material and increase what you will derive from it:

1) Read Chapters 1-10 first to prepare yourself to engage with the rest of the book skillfully. These chapters contain foundational practices and processes that will allow you to maximize the benefits you will get from engaging with the material in each of the succeeding chapters.

2) Always go back to the exercises on Self Compassion and Self Forgiveness when you find yourself slipping into self judgment, or shame. This will support and protect you when you find yourself being attacked by your Inner Critic.

3) Read s l o w l y, one chapter at a time. Chew on and digest the self reflection questions and engage the practices. Don’t skip quickly from one subject to another, just reading the main explication. This will keep you on the mental level and very little healing occurs there. The material in these chapters is meant to be read with a contemplative mind and body. The poems and stories at the beginning and the Invitation sections at the end of each chapter are designed to lead you into a deeper contemplative level; reflect on them and perhaps do a Lectio Divina (slow meditative reading) exercise with them. It would be helpful to devote a whole evening (or perhaps even a whole week) to one chapter and to meditate or do some kind of centering process for 10-15 minutes before and after engaging with a chapter in order to deepen and integrate the work.

4) Each chapter will have exercises and reflection questions for you to engage with the subject matter on an experiential basis. Chose the ones that most speak to you. Not all of them will. There will be prompts in these sections to access your deeper perceptions and feelings about an issue. You are encouraged to process the material through self-compassion and somatic (body) exercises such as Focusing and Heart Centered Listening. (See appendices 3 & 4 for further information on these practices.) Write your responses to the questions; this encourages a deeper engagement with the inquiry process. Keep an ongoing journal for this.

5) To support yourself in coming to this work with the right frame of mind, you might want to read and engage the material in this book in your own sacred space. This would be a clean, attractive area away from the hubbub of your regular life where you ideally have an altar and pictures and symbols of your connection with Divinity. Another thing conducive to working on a deeper level is the use of quiet sacred music, particularly when you engage in the Inquiry section in each chapter.

6) Another good support for working more deeply with this material would be doing it in a study/practice group. These days lots of people are getting together to read spiritual works and to reflect upon them. With such apps as Meet Up.com available as well as plain, old fashioned networking, it is easy enough to find an existing group or to form a new group yourself. Look at Appendix #9 for some suggestions on how to make such a group work well.

Letting in Love

There are two ways of letting love into our lives. One way is to eliminate the barriers that we have to letting love in. Usually we are not conscious of these barriers, because they are based in our unconscious egoic programming and they cannot be undone with rational thinking. They are held on a deep emotional level in our bodies, hearts and minds. The other way to heal the resistance to letting love in is to actively invite love into our hearts and minds. This needs to be done as a regular spiritual practice and is best done with rich imagery, meaningful ritual, and often with others in spiritual and religious community.

Chapter 1: Falling into God’s Arms

Chapter 2: Letting in Love

Chapter 3: Developing Trust

Chapter 4: Being with Our Vulnerability

Chapter 5: Letting Go of Our Self Judgment

Chapter 6: Letting Go of Self Doubt

Chapter 7: Letting Go of Guilt

Chapter 8: Letting Go of Shame

Chapter 9: Letting Go of Fear

Chapter 10: Accepting and Loving Ourselves

CHAPTER 1

Falling into the Arms of God

The great Chan master of the Song dynasty, Da-hui Zong-gao said, "Just let go and make your heart empty and open.

translation by Dana Dunlap

Autumn

The leaves fall, fall from afar

    as if faded from heaven’s gardens

    they fall with negating gesture.

And in the night falls the earth

    away from all the stars in its loneliness.

We are all falling. This hand here falls

    And look at the other one. It’s in all of them.

And yet there is one who holds this falling

    in His unendingly gentle hands.

Rainer Maria Rilke, translation by Robert Cornell

Introduction

This book is basically many variations on one central theme: how to let go and fall into the arms of God. Or, to put it in Buddhist terms, letting go of the small self and realizing our Buddha Nature. The greatest challenge in life for us all as the imperfect human beings that we are, is to be able to let go of our fears and self centered desires, our limiting stories about ourselves and the world around us and to open up to a bigger picture of what Life is about besides me, mine, and myself. The individuals that we, as a healthy culture, most revere are the ones who were able to transcend their personal situations, identify themselves with humanity and to give themselves to a purpose that framed their lives of service and undergirded their inspirational leadership.

In order to expand our sense of who we are and what our calling is beyond our limited sense of ourselves, we need to let go of many things that do not serve us or our world. A deep faith in God or some other transcendent entity such as what Buddhists call the True Self or Buddha Nature or the Twelve Step traditions speak of as our Higher Power can support us in moving beyond our character defects, our psychological complexes and our all too human limitations. These religious and spiritual concepts and the sacred texts, writings, rituals, traditions and cultures that they are embedded in become, for those of us who commit to a particular faith journey, the wind in our sails, the safe ship that conveys us to our ultimate destination; the other shore, the Kingdom within.

The image of letting go and falling into the arms of God can elicit some fear in us as to whether or not there is Someone or Something there to catch us when we do let go. After all, fear of falling is one of the basic instinctual fears we humans have! And falling is a great metaphor for the challenges that are part of spiritual practice: to let go into the unknown, let go of our need for too much control, too much self protection and to move way beyond our comfort zone. For our ego, this letting go can feel as if we are going to fall into a bottomless abyss of darkness.

This is why the spiritual journey requires us to develop an ever growing and deepening faith in order to make possible this inner movement of letting go of our fears and allowing ourselves to be held by Something Greater than our little egoic consciousness. This faith journey that we are on is one where we regularly remind ourselves through meditation, prayer and ritual of our being held by/within the Beloved, the Tao, Divine Spirit, Buddha Nature. As the imperfect, conditioned human beings that we are, we need these ways of worshipping and practicing to grow and strengthen our connection with and trust in the Beloved.

Many years ago, my Zen teacher talked to us his students about throwing ourselves into the House of the Buddha. Several times a year we would renew our vows at the Zen Center as both lay members and monks. We would recite as we bowed, Namo Buddha, Namo Dharma, Namo Sangha. I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the teachings, and I take refuge in the practice community. Every religious tradition reminds us that we have to give over our self centered ways, because our self centeredness is exactly the cause of our own suffering- and the suffering of mankind in general.

Personally, I like the image of falling back into my Big Self – my deep and true Self that has let go of fear, of self judgment and is playful and relaxed. Sometimes I picture myself being on a rolling log (my ego) such as lumberjacks compete on and then suddenly and joyfully letting myself fall back into the water. Other times, I like to hold my hands upwards towards God in a gesture of surrender and receiving His Love. These ways of picturing letting go and letting God encourage me, when I am tempted to get uptight and defensive about something, to just relax and let go.

We inevitably will get triggered at times and our old automatic emotional reactions and defensive patterns of behavior will manifest themselves. If we practice letting go on a regular basis, then when the ego defenses are triggered, we have something to literally fall back on! When we are reactive, it is so helpful to have a way of relaxing, letting go and abiding in Divine Love. This is a love that we all rest in, and when we forget, we use our spiritual practices to re-member that we are an essential part of this Love. This is why the practice of letting go and letting God (or however you name the great mystery) is so foundational to our spiritual life.

Because the templates of how we see the world and ourselves are so deeply set in our consciousness and can take over in our minds and hearts so quickly, we need to regularly practice letting go of our thoughts, beliefs and impulses. Recently, I had a spiritual directee share with me a funny example of this. She was in a parking lot and happened to look over at a woman that she had never seen before in her life, and BAM her mind immediately stereotyped this woman as ‘poor white trash" and came up with a whole back story just from this brief encounter.

This is a perfect example of the workings of the part of our brain that Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, called a machine for jumping to conclusions. And we all have it as part of our brain that is designed to respond quickly -and emotionally- to external stimuli. Because of our evolutionary heritage and our brain’s bias for remembering negative experiences over positive ones, our first impressions can take us deep into negative emotional territory very quickly. That is, if we don’t have ways of catching ourselves and overcoming our tendency to go to fear and anger with practices that increase our self awareness and deepen the channels in our brains that engender love and compassion.

We now can say, based upon neuroscience, that what was once regarded in Western Christianity as original sin is in fact the product of our less than perfect human brains that are programmed for survival. Our brains have been molded by evolution to be easily triggered into greed, lust, anger, fear and other negative emotions as survival mechanisms. As we practice the many ways of letting go and letting God that are described here in fifty chapters, we will learn more and more how to overcome these less than angelic parts of ourselves.

Self Inquiry & Practice:

Love is letting go of Fear.

- Gerald Jampolsky

If you belong to one, your spiritual community probably has many rituals, images, prayers, and ways of worshipping that can help deepen your faith in the Beloved and engender love and compassion in your heart. Besides these, are there other images, symbols, music, words of scripture or writings from the world’s wisdom traditions, poetry or rituals that you find most helpful to let go into God / the Universe? Without being too concerned if they meet the criteria of correctness for your spiritual community, explore which might be best for your own spiritual development. This is so important! There are no universal images, texts, rituals, etc. that work for everybody.

We know from psychological studies such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming that different people learn through different modalities of the senses. Some are visual learners, others auditory, still others kinesthetic, etc., etc. I encourage you to find your own touchstones and talismans that help you to remember how to let go. It is your privilege as a conscious human being – and your responsibility - to care for your spiritual well being and find what is most encouraging, consoling and empowering to you, given your unique history, gifts, and inclinations.

In meditation, practice using guided imagery with a picture, symbol, or words about letting go that you have chosen to represent this falling / relaxing into God’s / the Universe’s care. Perhaps with music of your choice, meditate on these images, symbols, word pictures that invite you into this surrender, this falling into God’s arms. If you are visually oriented you might make a collage of God / the Goddess holding you in their arms that you could place on your altar at home. Perhaps poetry or scriptural passages call you deeply into Source. Have verses memorized that you can bring to mind when you need to remember your connection to the Beloved.

Sometimes, people like to have a loving dialogue with God/Source to find their way to this peace in His/Her arms. Try this out. Talk to Him/Her as you would a loving Father/Mother and tell Him/Her about your fears, your hurts and concerns and see if you can let Him/Her heal and comfort you. Or just talk to Him/ Her as you would your Beloved as He/She most certainly is! Do this from your Heart Center so that it isn’t just coming from your head. You might put your hand over your heart as you have this dialogue to keep centered in your heart space.

Important Practice

Relax in a safe space that feels inspiring and quieting to you. This could be your sacred space at home or in nature somewhere. Lie down on your back and deeply let go. Breathe out deeply, and let your breath breathe you. And allow yourself to feel supported by the earth (or floor). With every outbreath, allow yourself to relax more and more deeply, falling gently into the arms of the Beloved / the Universe / Buddha Nature.

Assuming that the place where you are is peaceful and safe, if you find your peace being disturbed in any way as you try to enter more deeply into these practices, pay attention to what is going on inside of you. Is it the call of duty, feeling guilty for giving yourself this unproductive or irresponsible time? Is it a feeling that something bad will happen to you if you let yourself be this relaxed and undefended? Is it a feeling gnawing away at you that something is wrong with you that must be fixed? If none of these scenarios fit (or schemas as psychologists say), feel into your body and see if you can find images and/or words to match the feelings that you are having.

Remember that, while it may seem strange to you now, it can be very valuable to feel and compassionately explore your dis-ease, to make friends with it and to inquire into its source. This will be a topic that we will pursue in many other chapters of this book. The key to working with our dis-ease is to be as loving and accepting with it as we would with a child, for indeed that is what it is: our own wounded Inner Infant, Inner Toddler, Inner Child, Inner Adolescent. Depending upon at what stage in our development we have been hurt by parents, peers or others, we have psychic wounds and egoic structures that protect these soft spots.

Our work to heal the ego is not to attack it but rather to heal and nurture the parts of ourselves that were wounded in our growing up so that we no longer need the ego’s rigid protection. As we become familiar with our wounded selves, we may intuitively begin to sense what these young parts of ourselves suffer from and what they need from us. If it is a very young infant part, it needs our tangible, physical holding and nurturing. If it is a toddler or older child part of us, it may need permission to play and to make its own choices. If it is a preadolescent, it may need our encouragement and recognition for its accomplishments.

Much of our work in this book is body oriented, because the thinking mind, while very useful to us, is often not able to bring about the healing that we are looking for. Insight onto our issues often in and of itself does not heal the issue. We need to touch into our hurts in the body. To that end, Yoga is a wonderful way for us to learn how to relax, stretch, and let go with our body. This goes far beyond mental effort and becomes a way to em-body letting go. If you tend to be mentally oriented, as so many of us are, Yoga offers us a gateway to Spirit through the body. We can practice using breath and asanas (postures) to let…go. Consider adding Yoga to your spiritual practices if you continue to find sitting still in meditation difficult. It could very much help you to find the doorway into inner silence.

Invitation

Let nothing disturb you, nothing trouble you. He who has God has everything.

Saint Theresa of Avalon

Know that no effort is needed in this Letting Go, this Falling. You just…let go. Let go of worrying about the future. Let go of trying to make something happen. This Falling happens on its own as you let it. Let go of judging yourself as not worthy, let go of feeling afraid, let go of needing to know what is happening… Let go of being in control. Wheeee! Let go like a child playing. Let go like a lover making love to their beloved. Let go like a bone tired person falling asleep at night after a busy day at work, thankful for the comfort of their bed…

Inside yourself, fall back into your deepest Self, deep below the thinking mind with all its concerns of right and wrong, gain and loss, beyond all its worries and concerns. Dive deep into the dark oceanic abyss that resides within you and swim there, buoyed by the Beloved. Making no effort, abide there, floating in the current, gently being guided deeper and deeper into this unknown dark realm of rest and bliss. This is your true home as a spiritual being. Rest and let no concern disturb your contemplation of the unknown Knower of you - which is you yourself, the Beloved in whom you are always immersed.

When you know this place, you then know the way Home. You will know how, even in difficult circumstances, to find your way through the thicket of fears, concerns and desires to this place of abiding. Remember to practice this falling and abiding regularly, for then you can remember well the Way home. This is the work of the mystic: to let go into the Dark Abyss within and to sink into Love and Unknowing and to abide there over and over again until this becomes an indelible memory that infallibly leads you back to your true Home.

CHAPTER 2

Opening to Love

Love is simple. Love is the Way, the only way for us humans. Love is Life itself. Without Love there would be no human life as we know it.

The Beloved

We look for the Beloved, but

we look for Her in all the wrong places.

Until, at last, trusting in ourselves,

far beyond the wiles of the World,

our Heart rests in its heart of hearts,

Where true love is found.

Robert Cornell

Introduction

For some time I have marveled over the amazing length of time it takes for a human being to be reared, to be nurtured and taught enough by its parents and other adults to be able to fend for itself. Evolutionary biologists have talked about how the human mother’s pelvis has had to evolve so as to allow for the size of the baby’s head to come through the birth passage. They also discuss that one of the reasons for the child’s need for a long period of nurturance is that the infant’s brain, while large for an animal, is not nearly fully grown at birth and, because the mother’s pelvis can’t expand any further, this further brain development must occur after birth over a long period of time.

But they seldom speak about the absolute need for parental love that would allow this nurturance to continue for such a long duration- and that this nurturance is actually essential for the further development of the human brain. This part of Darwin’s theory of evolution regarding the importance of love and nurturance in the development of human beings and expounded in his book The Descent of Man, has been ignored and instead evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology have taken up the theory of the Selfish Gene. It seems that our individualistic culture even affects our scientists so that they cannot conceive of anything beyond self-interest, even if this selfishness has to be placed in our genes in order to ignore the critical importance of generosity and selfless love in the very survival and continued evolution of the human race.

So for them, this generosity can only be explained as an evolutionary advantage that gives our selfish genes a higher chance of survival. What pray tell is a selfish gene? How can a gene be considered selfish or unselfish? Isn’t that rather an anthropomorphically based concept? How does the concept of selfishness even make sense on the biological level? And what about the holistic view of how living beings fit into the great scheme of things?

While evolutionary psychology, which is based upon the selfish gene theory of evolution might be a meta theory that leads to interesting theories about human consciousness in terms of what behaviors and predispositions have in the past lead to human survival, it provides no inspiration for what we aspire to become as an evolving human race. And it offers no inkling of how we are to grow beyond the limitations of our biological inheritance. That role must be taken up by philosophy, religion and spirituality. For what will enable the human race to survive and the world to survive our folly will not be human selfishness (or genetic selfishness) but rather human compassion and wisdom.

I suspect there is a strong correlation between the ability of an animal to love and nurture its offspring and the level of intelligence that animal species can have, purely on the basis of biological considerations. We now know how much critical human brain development occurs after birth and it is instigated by the interaction of the parents with the child. Without parental love, this level of nurturing interaction could not be sustained. We also know from studies of infants given adequate physical nurturance but raised without prolonged warm human interaction, that