We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more. --The Earth Charter, Preamble (1).
Blessed are the poor
Letting go is basically making space for more—and for all otherness—inside of my small self. Jesus made this point in his very opening line in his first sermon: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (see Matthew 5:3). We do not live in a culture that appreciates letting go or “poverty of spirit.” We are consumers and capitalists by training and by habit. Yet, just as in the Trinity, all infilling must be preceded by a necessary self-emptying—or there is never room in the inn!
Blessed are you
Most of us do not understand this awareness because we are totally identified with our own passing thoughts, feelings, and compulsive patterns of perception. We have no proper distance from ourselves, which ironically would allow us to see our radical connectedness with everything else.
Such radical connectedness is holiness. Some degree of detachment is absolutely necessary to get started spiritually. “Detachment, detachment, detachment,” taught Meister Eckhart.(2)
To many, surrender and letting go sound like losing, but they are actually about accessing a deeper, broader sense of the self, which is already whole, already content, already filled with abundant life. This new identity is the part within that has always loved and is Love. All each of us has to do is let go and fall into it.
Let it go; let it be
References:Adapted from Richard Rohr, Just This (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), 53-54, 87-88.
[1] “The Challenges Ahead,” The Earth Charter,http://earthcharter.org/discover/the-earth-charter/.
[2] Meister Eckhart, On Detachment. This treatise can be found in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed., Maurice O’C. Walshe (Crossroad Publishing: 2009), 566-575.
Blessed are the poor
Letting go is basically making space for more—and for all otherness—inside of my small self. Jesus made this point in his very opening line in his first sermon: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (see Matthew 5:3). We do not live in a culture that appreciates letting go or “poverty of spirit.” We are consumers and capitalists by training and by habit. Yet, just as in the Trinity, all infilling must be preceded by a necessary self-emptying—or there is never room in the inn!
Blessed are you
Most of us do not understand this awareness because we are totally identified with our own passing thoughts, feelings, and compulsive patterns of perception. We have no proper distance from ourselves, which ironically would allow us to see our radical connectedness with everything else.
Such radical connectedness is holiness. Some degree of detachment is absolutely necessary to get started spiritually. “Detachment, detachment, detachment,” taught Meister Eckhart.(2)
To many, surrender and letting go sound like losing, but they are actually about accessing a deeper, broader sense of the self, which is already whole, already content, already filled with abundant life. This new identity is the part within that has always loved and is Love. All each of us has to do is let go and fall into it.
Let it go; let it be
References:Adapted from Richard Rohr, Just This (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), 53-54, 87-88.
[1] “The Challenges Ahead,” The Earth Charter,http://earthcharter.org/discover/the-earth-charter/.
[2] Meister Eckhart, On Detachment. This treatise can be found in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed., Maurice O’C. Walshe (Crossroad Publishing: 2009), 566-575.
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