The simplest way for me to understand the process of spiritual evolution – which is the divine plan for life (1) – is to see it as a process of continually letting go.
I so like the way Ajahn Sumedho put the matter:
“There’s nothing more sorrowful than having to attend International Buddhist Conferences! Some of you might have the desire to become the Buddha of the age, Maitreya, radiating love throughout the world – but instead, I suggest just being an earthworm … who knows only two words – ‘let go, let go, let go.’” (2)
He explained, again half jokingly:
“The practice of ‘letting go’ is very effective for minds obsessed with compulsive thinking: you simplify your meditation practice down to just two words—’letting go.’ Rather than trying to develop this practice and then develop that, and achieve this and go into that; … just let go, let go, let go.
“I did nothing but this for about two years—every time I tried to understand or figure things out, I’d just say, ‘let go, let go’ until the desire would fade out. So I’m making it very simple for you, to save you from getting caught in incredible amounts of suffering.” (3)
We would say that his higher self gives his everyday self permission not to know the answers, not to be fixated at the intellectual level, but to let go of the need for explanations – in this instance.
Ajahn Sumedho approaches the subject as a teacher of life and practice. I approach it as an a student of the Natural Self.
Think of my view this way. We come in out of the cold on a winter’s evening. We take off our overcoat. We take off our sweater. It’s really warm in here so we take off our shirt as well and just hang out in our T-shirt, by the fire.
In the same way, we remove one body after another in the process of evolving back to God. Our astral, mental, causal, buddhic, etc. Or if you prefer, our Third-Dimensional, Fourth Dimensional, Fifth-Dimensional. Until there are no more bodies to shed and we stand revealed as the Child of God, the Self, the Christ, the Atman, our original face.
When Christ bends the knee to the Father and returns all that was given to him/her, including individuality, the all is All again for that soul. The journey from God to God is complete. The penultimate Christ has become the ultimate One, again.
Let go of this body. Let go of that body. Let go, let go, let go.
Or at least that’s the way it was. Now the rules have changed.
Now our resurrected Third-Dimensional body, having transmuted to crystal, can visit the other dimensions freely, apparently. This again was not possible earlier.
Not only is our universe expanding, but it’s giving rise to new dimensional environments, spaces that didn’t exist before.
***
Some time ago, Karen Bishop suggested some of the disorientation we may feel when we let go into the flow of life, which is where our detachment, our letting go takes us. I’ve felt the way she describes here.
“We may feel empty but peaceful, vulnerable but trusting, innocent but wise, and very, very simple with perhaps no desires that we can even place a finger on. We may feel as one of my readers put it, that ‘everything is up for grabs,’ that we know not a thing, and that our barometers have been dis-connected or have at least gone awry.
“These are the corresponding feelings that accompany a ‘clean slate.’ Much of our old ego states are now gone, and this is what we have wanted for a very long time. So in this way, we can know that all is, as always, in divine and perfect order.” (4)
We’re like the mussel that let go of the pier and released itself into the stream of life.
I’m taking Sue Lie’s Multidimensional Leadership Training course and Sue’s awakening capabilities that have lain dormant – apparently. What I feel as a result of the work we do is uplifted, inspired, carried aloft.
Again I’m aware that this sense of elevation is, like all good things, coming from my heart, but it helps to have an external trainer/mentor to express one’s love and gratitude to. Love flows. It helps to have people to love, who can receive my love, and who themselves can love. Often that’s all the trigger that’s needed to send me into sacred love.
Footnotes
(1) See “Spiritual Evolution: The Divine Plan for Life (Reposted),” Dec. 4, 2014, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/12/04/spiritual-evolution-the-divine-plan-for-life-reposted/
(2) Ajahn Sumedho, Cittaviveka. Teachings from the Silent Mind. Great Gaddesden: Amaravati Publications, 1992; c1984, 44.
(3) Loc. cit.
(4) Karen Bishop, “Coming Home … Re-Connecting to the Earth,” June 3, 2009, at https://www.emergingearthangels.com/2009/wings6.3.2009.html.