The Spiritual Background
| The Sage has let go ... rejoicing in life as it is. |
-Tao Te Ching |
| Religion with God is surrender. |
-The Koran |
| Thy will be done. |
-The Bible |
| Live joyfully, without desire. |
-The Dhammapada |
| Let go and let God. |
-A.A. |
The great spiritual traditions of the world agree: relax, let it go, turn it over, and trust -- and life is transformed into a thing of grace and beauty.
God's will, karma, the Tao, unfolds moment by moment. Struggling against "what is" in this moment can cause great tension, while accepting "what is" -- for the time being -- without criticism or complaint, can drop the tension level dramatically.
This is the lesson of the story of Job, who suffered for a far longer time than he needed to by insisting on his own righteousness, and found peace only in total surrender to God.
The Upanishads of India are all about relaxing our hold on the small self.
Martial artists know that the winner of any contest will be the one who is the most relaxed and energized, i.e., the most empty of self (ego, tension, fear) and the most trusting in the force (ki or chi).
Spiritually oriented psychology aims us at finding the higher self by transcending the ego, and the ego is nothing but our personal collection of chronic tensions.
There are degrees of trust in God. The deeper the trust, the deeper the body's relaxation. Relaxation is our measuring rod of our trust in God.
Furthermore, surrender, letting go, relaxing tensions is the master key to religious ethics. For example:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
In a high-energy/low-tension state, this is what we do naturally, spontaneously, easily, effortlessly. Love is the overflowing of our joy, the sharing of our happiness. We can hardly help ourselves.
In a low-energy/high-tension state, we try, but we can't sustain it. And when this state is chronic, we may give up on ourselves and each other and -- sadly, tragically -- adopt a pessimistic view that human nature is flawed and weak and helpless, which then becomes a self-fulfilling belief, and makes faith harder and harder to hold on to.
All the instructions we're given by all the traditions -- don't fear, don't worry, don't judge, don't avenge, don't envy, don't covet -- none of these things happen when we're deeply relaxed and energized.
|
