Letting Go

 

A single understanding: “I am the One Awareness,”

consumes all suffering in the fire of an instant. Be happy.

-          Ashtavakra

It seems so hard to let go.  We hang onto objects in the world and invest them with the power to make us happy or unhappy.  “Objects in the world” includes our own bodies and the physical presence of other people.  From birth it seems, we are attached to sensory appearances.  It is quite natural, of course.  We are born into these body-mind vehicles of experience in a state of spiritual amnesia.  From this limited perspective we suffer from imaginary things like abandonment, alienation, loneliness, loss and insufficiency.  We forget that the universe is the projection of Self.  A projection of Love distorted through the lens of ego-centricity.

It is the mind rooted in avidya, “ignorance,” that creates our false sense of separation and suffering.  It is our belief in our limitations that makes us feel powerless and alienated.  This world is a projection of our collective psyche but each of us is responsible for waking up.   Nothing is real unless we bring into being through our awareness.  Perception is a creative act not a passive acceptance.  We tend to forget that every act of perception includes our interpretation.  As the French writer Anaiis Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” 

Ram Das says, “What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”  Letting go means releasing our false beliefs regarding ourselves and the world.  Yoga teaches that mind is the source of bondage but it is also the means of liberation.  In truth all of our beliefs are false because they are only approximations of reality.  Reality is beyond the grasp of our concepts about it – and we are an aspect of that reality.