Why Letting Go is so Hard, and so Important

It is the nature of the mind to seek out things to hold on to.

Every child enters the world swimming in an ocean of uncertainty and is prone, or perhaps even programmed, to cling to anything that can float its new mind, and these become its first unquestioned premises about reality. As an adult, Rene Descartes recognized that knowledge was built upon premises and consciously struggled to find something unquestionably solid. He famously reasoned that the only thing he could know for sure was that “I am,” and this insight is the key to why we cling so desperately to things: almost nothing is certain and yet we need to make sense of the world in order to survive.

The revelation that “I am” is the only certainty upon which knowledge is built leads one into the wild and dangerous territory of complete freedom of mind. It demands a radical level of letting go that many people would find too terrifying to contemplate because it brings one face to face with the fundamental truth that we must walk alone and naked on our journey to the self, and to God.

A child has no access to this depth of thinking, so when the reality of an external world as vast and daunting as the ocean dawns, it grasps at the first available mirage of certainty like a man overboard grabs the nearest floating object. This may include sweeping unconscious generalizations that come with dangers of their own, for instance whether the world is friendly or hostile and whether one is loveable or detestable. For better or worse, many of our deepest cognitive commitments are made prior to having developed the ability to judge their validity and may remain unexamined throughout life.

Similarly, the roots of religion reach far back into murky prehistory. Emerging within human communities uninhibited by modern biases about how reality “must be,” our first mythologies provide us with a window into the psyche since we tend to project our own nature onto the universe around us. Religion thus emerged from the deep unconscious and served to orient the individual to reality as it was imagined by one's clan. This makes the study of religion important to psychology, and thinkers like Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson have explored the meaning of these early myths.

Conversely, some argue that psychotherapy is a modern secular spiritual discipline, and its concepts often do seem to parallel traditional religious ideas. For example Freud's id, ego and superego could be seen as secular approximations of soul, spirit, and God.

Being present at birth, the id represents the psyche's experience of the body's primal urges and can be considered the most fundamental driving force that gives rise to the rest of your personality. The id is equivalent to Schopenhauer's will, discussed in my essay, “Schopenhauer's Hidden Soul.”

The following quote from verywellmind.com provides a concise description of the id's relationship with the ego and superego,

“The ego eventually emerges to moderate between the urges of the id and the demands of reality.”

“The superego, or the aspect of personality that encompasses internalized values and morals, emerges to try to push the ego to act in a more virtuous way. The ego must then cope with the competing demands presented by the id, the superego, and reality.”

In the above context, “reality” is a secular word for “God,” which is to say that both words refer to the same thing: everything that is. Reality is the all-powerful, uncompromising, immutable entity that we must accommodate and “appease” even though we never fully understand what it is. It places demands and boundaries upon us, and we create an internal working model that is riddled with errors. These internal representations form part of one's hallucination of reality, a concept that I first described in “God, Where's the Evidence.” Even though it evolves as we grow, we live our entire lives within this hallucination and we cling to it as if our lives depended upon it.

Connecting Freud, Schopenhauer and Christianity

The unconscious id/soul enters the world with no sense of separation. In the beginning it is everything that is and demands that its urges be satisfied, not unlike God of the old testament. But it becomes confused and threatened when it comes face to face with an external reality that doesn't immediately fulfill its desires, and this generates feelings of anger and fear. The soul then “creates” the ego to take care of external interactions and retreats from the world. The soul, which includes the id /will, can thus be thought of as God the Father who retreats from the world after having created mankind: the ego.

Since external reality, which Schopenhauer referred to as unknowable manifestation, is inaccessible, immutable and mysterious except as representations in the mind, it too qualifies as a form of God, which we can call God the Son: the manifested universe that is born of God. Now that we have the Father and the Son, we are left to ponder the Holy Spirit.

Ideas carried in the mind form part of the noosphere – “the planetary sphere of reason” – which is a concept put forward by biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and philosopher/Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. If the Holy Spirit is thought of as the spirit of faith and love within the noosphere, then it becomes the unifying force that connects the manifested universe (the Son) to the feelings of the soul (God the Father). Thus the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes equivalent to Soul, Manifestation and Mind, which is popularly known as “mind, body and soul” – the complete person. Integration of this triad into a unified whole is the definition of nirvana, Buddhahood, etc.

The self is the whole iceberg in the Freudian diagram and it is afloat in the ocean that is the universe. It emerges as an infant with only an id, exists as a distinct but integral part of the ocean for a time, and then returns from whence it came: "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" as it is described in the funeral service of the Christian Book of Common Prayer.

The soul (id /will) is the deepest part of the self – the fully submerged part of Freud's iceberg – and its denial is often rewarded by society because this gives the appearance of honorable piety and service to the community. Thus it is the soul that must be nurtured and made conscious, which requires the submission of the ego.

It is necessary to integrate the iceberg of our being into a functional, energized, joyful whole if we are to bring peace and fulfillment to ourselves and to our community because a fractured being can only create chaos. Thus the culture that we create should recognize the need to prioritize the journey to wholeness – the journey to God / holiness – for every person, in every walk of life. The central importance of this is beautifully captured in the biblical verse,

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" KJV, Mark 3:36

Not mentioned in this verse is the fact that if a man were to gain the whole world he would inevitably become a tyrant who lords his power over all of humanity. Thus the individual and the community both lose when we abandon our central goal: holiness.

Our culture's present failure in this regard is in part a consequence of our inability to adequately reform traditional religion after its arguable fall from grace during the enlightenment, and this accounts for a great deal of unnecessary suffering. Even though the impact of religion has been far from wholly positive, it played a central role in reconciling our inner world with our outer reality throughout history, and there now exists a vacuum. Despite the central importance of individual growth, elements of our culture serve to prevent self-actualization. Some of this is happening under the guise of religious piety and some is due to the secular sophistry of atheism.

The Enlightenment, for Better or for Worse

Scientists won the status and credibility once enjoyed only by the clergy prior to the Scientific Revolution. Atheists immediately emerged to steal the aura of scientific authority and convinced many that the discoveries of science led inexorably to the conclusion that there was no God, a claim that no deep thinking scientist would or could defend.

Both science and religion have enjoyed such exalted status in segments of our culture that declarations from leadership are often taken as unquestionable truths. In this sense, The Enlightenment has failed to deliver on its most important promise: that we should have faith in our own capacity for reason rather than rely upon authority.

Seeing the rise of atheism and a shrinking congregation, some theologians of the late 1800's began to reinterpret scripture in order to bring Christian belief into alignment with modernity. This provoked a powerful backlash that took the form of Christian fundamentalism, in which the Bible was declared to be inerrant. Fundamentalists then insisted that the Bible was to be read literally, which encouraged the congregation to believe that God had been captured in their sacred text, which is a monumental error.

Both atheism and fundamentalism are misguided and yet both thrive because uncertainty is frightening – letting go is frightening. Between them, science and religion now serve to distract our entire culture away from the journey towards wholeness, self-actualization, nirvana, mental health, holiness – oneness with God – and I will describe how this happens, particularly in the final section of this essay.

It is inordinately difficult to go against the grain of one's own culture, and in this case one must abandon both secular and religious popular tradition. In doing so, the intrepid adventurer must choose to reenter the same sea of uncertainty that he faced during infancy. Except that this time, if he has followed the call of the enlightenment, he will have learned to swim on his own. This is when the journey to God truly begins.

Submission, and the Miracle of Existence

The ego must accept the role of servant to the soul. Everything else – family, work, the Church, etc. – must be secondary, and full submission to this role marks the beginning of self-actualization.

The importance of submission is codified in the traditional religious practice of requiring postulants to adopt the literal role of servant in the community. The wisdom of this practice is that the physical experience of servitude helps break the stubborn pride and arrogance of the ego, thus facilitating its submission to the soul within.

But why is it still so hard to “let go” even after the ego submits to serving the soul, especially given that the reward for doing so is glorious self-actualization and the rise to Buddha-hood?

First of all, it is not so glorious and exalted. It is a humbling process because you must face the fact that you have been wrong about so much – perhaps especially about the self-aggrandizing or self-pitying fantasies that distract you from the fear that gave rise to the ego in the first place. This primordial fear is the principal barrier to holiness, and anger is its twin. It must be confronted and the confrontation can feel lethal.

Neither will holiness transport you to some other universe of unimaginable bliss. The bliss you experience will be the simple sense of wholeness in your own being, and the reward of this journey is that your eyes will open to the miracle that is already in front of you every day. I say this in order to dispel the notion that some dramatic, otherworldly mystical magic awaits, although it may be experienced that way initially.

It is our blindness to the miracle of existence that motivates us to insist upon some new miracle to prove that reality is indeed miraculous – to prove that God is real. This is a direct consequence of the fact that the mind holds only a hallucination of reality, and it is this hallucination that is mundane because it is not real. It is a veil that covers the real – it covers the miraculous.

Even if some new miracle did materialize it would be absorbed immediately into your hallucination of reality and become just another ordinary thing – exactly as we see with every new technological marvel that becomes an everyday fact almost as soon as it is released. You would not be convinced nor changed because you would quickly fall back under the spell of the same hallucination that veiled the miracle of existence in the first place.

This veil completely surrounds the ego and hides the soul from consciousness. It falls upon death of the ego, which then comes face to face with its own soul and the revelation that existence is miraculous, and this opens the door to the peace and contentment of holiness. Upon “rebirth,” the adventurer is both changed and the same as he ever was. He has become aware of the gnostic dimension of the universe – the soul, the self – and he is filled with the peace and joy described in my essay, “Is The Universe Meaningless?”

I reluctantly use such mystical imagery for fear of implying that this is a rarefied state accessible only to an elite, heroic few. It is not. You cannot be outside of the miracle of existence, but we are typically stuck in a mirage that hides it from view. Seeing the miracle of your own existence will open your eyes to the miracle of everything else, even your enemies, because existence itself is the miracle. Furthermore, dropping the hallucination won't make you special or set you apart, that is an ego problem: you will be tempted to see yourself as special, but this would only serve as a new veil hiding the miraculous nature of existence once again. This is captured in the following quote by Yogi Bhajan, “If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all.”

It behooves us to learn what we can about those we consider Holy, as we would about anything else that is important to our well-being, but they should not be envied or worshipped. This is a common error of Christianity where followers are encouraged to worship Jesus as Savior rather than “walk with Jesus” as friend and guide. Savior theology is misguided, or misused, to the extent that it obscures the truth that no amount of sin can undo the miracle of your existence – “original miracle” precedes and supersedes original sin. Although forgiveness can help one drop the veil that hides one from oneself, it is still a voluntary act that involves choice and not even Jesus can do this for you.

The Holy of Holies, considered to be the axis mundi by the Jews, perfectly expressed this idea, as I mentioned in my essay, “The Apocalypse – Where is God?”. Sitting at the center of the second Temple of Jerusalem, it was an empty room after the first Temple that contained the missing Ark of the Covenant was destroyed. The symbolism of an empty room is perfect because it demystifies the spiritual journey by eliminating all of the paraphernalia that might distract us. Its stark emptiness says, “don't look for external signs, look within.” The Holy of Holies was even covered by a veil behind which you would have been alone with nothing but your self, and that is the message: abandon every egotistic adornment.

Upon reentering the world, the ego must once again be worn like clothing in order to function in society. But know that the clothes are not you, they only give you form.

Chaos And Danger Along The Road

The ego's reason for existence, which is to protect and guide you in the world, is also its biggest danger. It tends to consider itself to be the pinnacle of your being, especially during youth, and this is reinforced in Western culture where the cult of personality reigns supreme.

The ego can even become attached to the idea of self-actualization as its own destiny, an attachment which can be difficult to detect and even harder to abandon. This creates the paradox in which the ego's desire for enlightenment prevents enlightenment since self-actualization requires the rise of the soul. The ego thus attached to the idea of its own rise to glory stands in the way of the soul's rise into consciousness. The ego, as important as it is to survival, must submit. But what does this submission look like?

The ego chooses what to think about, and this is accompanied by feelings that arise from the soul. If it ignores the discomforting feeling that the soul provides in response to bad ideas, then its path will lead away from fulfillment. If the ego abandons what it senses in the soul to be bad and honors the feeling of goodness that accompanies truthful thought, then its path is towards enlightenment. The ego's free choice lies in whether to honor the feelings that arise from the soul in response to its thought, and submit to the path that it feels in the bones to be right. This is the gnosis that goes back to preconscious infancy when “I am” was all there was. In order to do this the ego must invariably let go of stuff, some of which may be universal but all of which will be experienced as personal.

Letting go may eventually lead one to ego death – letting go of everything – which can be felt and resisted by the ego as strongly as one would resist literal death.

“In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described later by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey.”

After its humbling death the ego rises like the phoenix, but now it is filled with the awareness of its relationship to the soul and serves by clearing a path for the soul's full emergence. This may demand that it re-imagine or re-prioritize its previous life goals in the external world.

Self-indulgence

Western culture is not always supportive of self-indulgence, particularly in men, but self-indulgence is exactly what the id is all about. Under ideal circumstances the ego is able to find a way to satisfy the id while avoiding the wrath of a suspicious culture. But a timid person may choose to distract himself from the id's urgings, taking refuge in the safety of a pure and pious public image. Paradoxically, denial of the id's desire can impede such a person's growth because letting go of unfulfilled desire can be extraordinarily difficult, like walking away from a BBQ while starving.

On the other hand a hedonist may find it easier to let go. With the id's urges satisfied after having “been there, done that,” the mysterious appeal of forbidden desire loses its grip on the psyche. The early life of the Buddha, which is often overlooked in the popular imagination, serves as an example: he enjoyed every earthly luxury and pleasure available before he began his journey into extreme asceticism. It is even likely that he had several wives and concubines since this was a normal practice for the elite of his time. Would he have been able to let go had he not satisfied every desire? Or was his hedonism an essential step on his journey to holiness?

All of this is to say that piety isn't necessarily holy or even helpful, and that the “sinful” are not always damned. The journey is entirely personal.

Psychologist Saul Mcleod describes the tension that the ego endures thusly,

“The basic dilemma of all human existence is that each element of the psychic apparatus makes demands upon us incompatible with the other two. Inner conflict is inevitable. For example, the superego can make a person feel guilty if rules are not followed. When there is a conflict between the goals of the id and superego, the ego must act as a referee and mediate this conflict. The ego can deploy various defense mechanisms (Freud, 1894, 1896) to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed by anxiety.”

One ego defense is to ignore the id and distract oneself by immersion in the arts, business, science, a hobby or spiritual practice etc.. When reinforced by social approval, the distraction can become all-consuming and stunt the individual's growth. Science is perfectly suited to provide such a level of distraction, and scientists often do appear oddly awkward.

Scientific theories live only in the imagination and can be sufficiently complex to serve as an inescapable maze. Since scientists are generally afforded the social approval that reinforces their obsession, this can become a significant roadblock to their growth. A scientist can spend his entire life lost in the imagination of theories and models of reality, which can become his way to avoid the messy business of his id and its conflicts with societal expectations.

Religion can serve the very same purpose. The super-devout often sacrifice their id to the false external God promoted by the church and immerse themselves in an endless obsession with scripture and theology. And if they do give in to the demands of the id they are filled with self-destructive guilt. Paradoxically, their submission to church leadership leads them further away from holiness in the proverbial manner of the blind leading the blind and, like Alice in Wonderland, the faster they run the further they are from God.

There are many hazards along the road to wholeness / holiness, but it is attainable by anyone who authentically seeks the truth about themselves. The unique mix of roadblocks, attachments, presumptions, false and premature cognitive commitments etc., within each person makes this a personal journey. This is the topic of the book, “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him” by Sheldon B. Kopp, and is nicely summarized by the following excerpt,

“The most important things that each man must learn no one can teach him. Once he accepts this disappointment, he will be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru who turns out to be just another struggling human being.”

We are such marvelously unique and complicated creatures that the road to holiness can be as decidedly chaotic and unpredictable as the quantum world and the realm of Alice in Wonderland. “I am,” which is the name of God in Exodus, is the one thing that you can count on, and the one thing that remains after you let go of everything.

The road to holiness is more accurately described as the return to holiness. It begins at birth when the soul's only certainty, I am, is disturbed by the awareness of a daunting external reality, and ends when the ego lets go of its hallucinations to find that “I am” is all that there ever was.

Let this be both your map and your compass:

I am is the alpha and the omega within,

existence is the miracle, and joy is its purpose.