Anyone who has dipped a toe into any of the world's spiritual traditions knows that letting go and letting be are key. But how? In this fresh, frank, and powerful guide, Peter Russell allows readers to see that the things we get hung up on are generally not tangible problems in the present, but are instead thoughts, feelings, inter- pretations, beliefs, or expectations we have about them. These are not actual things, they exist only in our minds. And we can strip these "no-things" of their power and let them go by making a simple Bhange of and. Russell boils this letting Deo down to remarkably casy methods of accepting, acknowledging, recognizing, and even befriending what we tend to run from This paradoxical practice generates peace of mind, fresh perspectives, and wisdom in action. In turbulent times like ours, this is a true power, one available to us all.
PETER RUSSELL is an author, speaker, and leading thinker on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. Russell earned a first-class honors degree in theoretical physics and psychology as well as a master's degree in computer science at the University of Cambridge, England. He also studied meditation and Eastern philosophy in India. The author of twelve books, including Waking Up in Time and From Science to God, he lives in Northern California.
SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, the practice of letting go has been recognized in both Eastern and Western religious traditions as a prerequisite for self-transcendence and spiritual awak- ening. It was usually equated with giving up all the things the egoic self derives its sustenance from. The sadhus (ascetic mendicants) of India, the Islamic Sufis, and the Buddhist monastics all shared this practice, as did some ancient Greek philosophers such as Diogenes and the early Christian her- mits known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers, whose life- style and practice evolved into the monastic tradition of the Middle Ages.
They all held the belief that to make any progress on the spiritual path, we need to give up everything the worldly self could attach itself to and feed on: first and foremost our material possessions but also our home, rich food, comfort, sexuality, personal relationships, and all pleasures of the senses. The idea behind it was that these practices would deprive the ego or false self of anything it could identify with, thus starving it to death, so to speak. The idea is by no means as absurd as it might appear to us in the twenty-first century, and some of these intrepid explorers of the inner realms, so it seems, did indeed attain self-transcendence and realized "the peace that passeth all understanding," to use the words of the Bible.
It is safe to say, however, that the vast majority of them remained confined in their egoic sense of self. Many would identify with their religious belief structures, which is to say ideologies, and mistake them for "the Truth that makes you free." Others developed a strong self-image based on their perceived spiritual status as humans who have renounced everything. In other words, the ego was able to sneak in again through the back door, as it were. Without realizing it, these spiritual practitioners had found themselves trapped again in a conceptual identity. Most of them tended to place excessive emphasis on letting go of externals, thus neglect- ing the inner aspect of letting go. One could say that, seem- ingly paradoxically, they let go of everything but failed to let go of no-thing.
THE CALL TO LET GO lies at the heart of the world's spiritual traditions. Not being attached to outcomes, surrendering desires, accepting the present, opening to a higher power, relinquishing the ego, practicing forgiveness-all entail let- ting go.
Why is letting go deemed so important? Holding on, these teachings repeatedly affirm, limits our perception, clouds our thinking, and lies behind much of our suffering.
Letting go, on the other hand, brings relief. The mind relaxes, and free from tension and the energy that went into holding on, we feel more at ease. We see things as they are without any overlay of fear or anxiety. We are more open to others, and to love. We realize that what we were seeking by holding on safety, happiness, joy, peace of mind-was there all along. But our holding on veiled its presence.
Letting go can take many forms: letting go of fixed be- liefs or points of view, letting go of being right, letting go of ego, letting go of the past or expectations of the future, letting go of attachments to possessions or relationships, letting go of judgments and grievances, letting go of un- healthy emotions, letting go of assumptions about how things should or should not be.
In these and many other instances, we are being called to let go of beliefs, projections, expectations, interpreta- tions, attitudes, and attachments. These aren't things in the way that objects like a book, a house, or a person are. They exist only in the mind.
We are not letting go of things themselves as much as the way we see them. Hence the title of this book: Letting Go of Nothing. Or, as I sometimes like to put it, "Letting Go of No-Thing."
**Contents and Sample Pages**
Hindu (1769)
Philosophers (2217)
Aesthetics (311)
Comparative (74)
Dictionary (12)
Ethics (51)
Language (323)
Logic (82)
Mimamsa (60)
Nyaya (138)
Psychology (529)
Samkhya (62)
Shaivism (70)
Shankaracharya (224)
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