My biggest objection to letting go of my judgment and chronic dissatisfaction has been my fear that if I stopped seeing what was wrong and the compulsion to say “this is wrong and things shouldn’t be this way,” it would be equivalent to giving up all hope of having a better life.
In fact, a few years ago, while attending a spiritual practices conference, one of the instructors confided to me, “people come here because they want to be happier and more successful but the truth is [God] doesn’t care if you’re wealthy and successful. It can be really tricky teaching people something the application of which may have unintended consequences for them.”
I can’t speak to the instructor’s frame of mind when he shared this but I know I felt a pang of fear when I heard what he said. What I heard him saying was, “You can do these spiritual practices and end up losing all your money because that is what [God] sees fit. And even though this may cause you tremendous misery and pain, [God] is doing it because it’s good for you.”
I know for myself, that’s the reason I’ve resisted spiritual practice for so long. Because we tend to hold that [God] is like a drill sergeant at bootcamp trying to shape us lazy, worthless humans into something worth letting into heaven. “OK, I’ll give you cancer and if that doesn’t give you the character and moral fiber required to be an angel, I give up.”
It’s funny to me how I see my higher power as being such a total asshole. You would think an Being that created everything might be above such petty concerns as “shaping humans up enough to qualify as angels.”
The point I really want to make is that I’ve believed that by letting go of my ego-driven judgment and need to feel superior, I would doom myself to a pathetic life of misery. You know, “Well, if I don’t care if I have a better job, I’ll end up working at some minimum wage fast food job for the rest of my life.” Or “I’ll just be stuck with my jerk boyfriend who cheats on me and criticizes me all the time.”
And in defense of the ego (so often portrayed as the BAD GUY in spiritual teachings) those attitudes…the need to feel superior and to create something better…got us out of touch situations when we were children. If you grow up with parents who don’t like the way things are but won’t do anything (because if I rock the boat I’ll lose my job) you learn those beliefs. You learn this is our tribe’s culture and if you want to be a member, you believe these things, too.
What I am learning as I continue to shift my attention from my ego (not making the ego the bad guy so much as a part of me that no longer needs to run the show) to the voice of my higher power, I’ve learned that letting go of ,judgment dissatisfaction, and fear doesn’t transform me into either some helpless lump who just has to put up with the indignities of life or into a woo woo flake who thinks “it’s all beautiful, man.”
There’s a reason it’s called Mind-FULL-ness. Both of those extremes seem rather mindLESS.
Letting go is a type of giving up but not what I think most of us view as giving up. I think the type of giving up most people fear including me is the fear that “I’m just not going to try anymore.” That is despair born of the fear that we are truly worthless.
The giving up that occurs when we say I’m going to let my higher power show me what I need is giving up on the idea that our ego knows what’s best for us. In my case, I stopped frantically chasing solutions. I stopped thinking, “Well if I could just find a better strategy to deal with this problem I’ll be happy and have what I want.”
Instead, I said, “I’m going to be quiet and listen more to what that little voice inside me is saying and follow what that voice is suggesting.”
This is not always easy. That little voice rarely gives me directives. Which is why I am in profound appreciation for the spiritual teachings that offer some guidelines to help when I get confused. Things like:
- Am I reacting from a place of fear or am I being attracted because it’s something I love.
- Am I finding my identification based on what I dislike or am against? Which feels like separation. Or am I encompassing something which is love.
- Am I judging and making something wrong or am I open and curious?
I could go on but I think the best guideline for my intentions are:
- Do I feel contracted, separate, and up against something? This is fear and ego.
- Do I feel expansive, connected, and as though my heart is open? This is love and trust.
One last thing I’ll mention is I often get caught up in the idea that “This is a lot of work.” The way you have to “work really hard” to become an Olympic athlete. The implication being, my life is going to totally suck until I achieve some kind of enlightenment. Like in 70 years or so.
But it is far more subtle and a lot more rewarding than that. I have more moments when something that once made me nuts now just slides off my back. Based on what I defined as “success” earlier this year, that is quite an achievement because for me, the greatest freedom is to be able to be with any person or in any situation and be in a place of peace and service.
And from a business and prosperity perspective, I am far more empowered when I’m calm and lucid and I make way better decisions.
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