Letting go of God

[anna]

I made this a separate topic, because it seems to me we misunderstand the meaning of this often repeated requirement for the intellectual, or understanding, approach toward God. It is an essential step to take, if one approaches spiritual understanding intellectually, as opposed to devotionally. If the latter, which is an emotional method, then there is no need to let go of God, because the devotional path is only and simply devotion to God, with the mind focused on the image of God, to the exclusion, eventually, of everything else, at which time, the devotee BECOMES the object of his or her devotion. This was what, for example, Saint Francis achieved toward the end of his life through devotion. It is what Jesus did and was, and what he promised his disciples as a result of their devotion to God (either in the form of Jesus, or in any other form of God) as well. It is what Jesus also meant by God is within, or God is closer than your heart.

The intellectual approach has the same goal, or ending, as the devotional, to find God within, but is approached with intellectual understanding (mind) as opposed to devotion (heart). None is better than the other, just different strokes for different folks. The requirement to let go of God is to stop the mind from interfering with the on-going de-conditioning of the mind, which is the purpose of the intellectual approach. Said another way; if we wish to find God within, by understanding, then those concepts of what God is, or those expectations, all created by mind, get in the way of the purification of the mind, which said another way is to clean up the mind so that God shines forth through us in a kind of “default” if you will. (It is “programmed” to occur, it is what we ARE already, by default, but if there are other pre-existing conditions, or “programs”, superimposed, then obviously, the default can’t operate.)

The purification of the mind is the letting go of concepts, including God, in order to clean the window through which we see God (the window being the mind.) So, letting go of God is not necessarily stating that there IS no God, but it is stating that so long as we have concepts of God (which are conditioned thoughts, and therefore by extension, limited), the brightness of God in reality (truth, God, reality, or whatever we call it), cannot shine forth, because it is obscured by the chatter of mind’s thoughts, and limited by that chatter. God is unlimited, and to be allowed full expression of that unlimited state, we must stop limiting God. If we are limited, (if we have limited ourselves by use of the limited mind concepts) how can non-limitation shine through a limited mechanism? The mechanism of limitation is, obviously, mind concepts, thoughts.

Since, in the case of the intellectual approach, understanding or Realization occurs through the mind, but that understanding comes from “beyond” the mind, or in spite of the mind, the mind is the major source of obstruction, which, in fact, is what is also bypassed through devotion, but by means of focus upon God, to the exclusion of all else. Both methods act similarly in this way.

So, it seems to me that there IS God, but not the limited concepts that most of us have about God, and it is those concepts that need letting go. And to find God within, which is the goal of all spiritual effort, the mind -- which is the source of concepts, confused, separated, and limited, and therefore, ignorance, or misunderstanding, and thereby is the obstruction toward true understanding -- needs to be cleaned up and shut up…put in its proper place!

If we look deeply at both these methods, we will find that surrender is the primary, and probably only, requirement for success. The devotee surrenders all of his or her life in pursuit of God, including secondarily her mind and body, but firstly, her heart and emotions. The intellectual must also surrender completely, but her surrender is by means of a conscious or knowledgable relinquishment of her attachment to mind and body, rationally realized, by understanding, in pursuit of God as well. One is done with the heart, or emotions, the other done with the mind, or intellect. In other words, it is one’s belief in one’s knowledge that gets in the way for the intellectual. I think it was Nisargadatta that believed that educated people had a tougher time with realization than the lesser educated, in finding God, just because of the reliance we place on intellectual solutions to problems. It is a kind of conceit of the mind. In the final analysis, both devotional love of God, and intellectual pursuit of God require relinquishment of the mind’s dominance and position, to allow God to shine forth. Remember God is always there shining forth, it is only we who believe we can’t see it because we have been told it is outside there, somewhere, and it is that very basic belief that obscures God from us. Quite frankly, I believe that this is what the “Fall” refers to, and that is all the Fall is about.

[Speculum]

Here's a thought for tea drinkers: When you make a pot of tea, do you put the tea in the pot and then add hot water, or do you pour the hot water into the pot and then add the tea? To enjoy its cup of tea, the mind needs to consider that question, otherwise it will always wonder, and so it will make comparisons, try different ways, study the physics of it, read the experiences of others, and so on. The heart doesn't care; water first, tea first, what's the difference? But Anna's right; either way, the result is the same: a nice cup of tea.

[Speculum]

A few additional thoughts, if I may – (you see, this subject, raised here by Anna, is one that is very close to my, uh, heart).

Some say that the way of the heart is easier for women than men, on the theory, I suppose, that women are presumably more naturally submissive, more comfortably devotional, more willingly vulnerable. Personally, I do not buy that. I think it has nothing to do with gender, but with personal characteristics, DNA, what we are born with (what we brought in with us?). Like right-handed or left-handed, some people – men or women – are more predominantly cerebral in focus, others are primarily cardial (if I may coin a word).

As Anna wrote, neither is better than the other. Just different. And, to be sure, this is not a black or white situation. All of us are some of both, I'm sure.

A mind-oriented seeker will want to know if there is a God. And specifically, is God personal, does God know me, know who I am? Or is God impersonal, to whom I am a nameless drop in a nameless ocean? How was God created? What existed before God existed? Where did that creator exist, and who created it? Where does God exist? What have Christian mystics said about the existence and nature of God, and Sufis, and Hindus, and the Tanakh, and et cetera? A mind seeker is always reading dusty tomes. Throughout, the mind seeker will lean toward God, will even love God deeply and intensely, but all the while the mind will be restless until answers to such questions are found. If you ask a mind seeker about God, he or she will launch into an impressive, well-considered, enthusiastic, even inspired explanation, and while of course it will come from deep within, it will be mostly words.

The heart seeker does not ask the kinds of questions that concern a mind seeker. If the heart should stumble upon the answers to such questions, it is delighted; but if not, that’s fine, too. It is not that the heart seeker has no curiosity; rather, it is that the heart does not question the existence of God. Not because of faith, which is something else altogether, but because of certainty. It isn’t that the heart is braver or more focused than the mind; it is simply that it never occurs to the heart to wonder if God exists. If you ask a heart seeker how he or she knows that God is, he or she will say little, for the heart knows few words, fewer theories. “How can God not exist?” is sufficient explanation for the heart. To the heart, God is like the sun: “How do I know it exists? Well, look, there it is!”

Where the mind’s devotion is intellectual, the heart’s devotion is emotional, in the best sense of both those words. If you say the word “God” to a mind seeker, he or she will respond “What do you mean by that?” If you say the word “God” to a heart seeker, he or she may very well come to tears.

[phyllis]

I find this thread, short as it may be so far, to be extremely thought-provoking. I wonder if that makes me a seeker by the mind? My first reaction is that I am a little bit of both, too. Anyway, thank you for these posts, which I have printed for further consideration.

[Ihavesayso]

How can I let go of what I AM? I cannot even let go of my concepts of God. All I can do is change them, for as soon as I "let go" of one, another promptly replaces it!

[jenjulian]

I think it is a combination of both the intellect and the heart. As S. Weil stated, 'the attitude of intellect and position of soul'

I see letting go of God as a process that is necessary. Just as the Buddist talk of letting go of all attachments, this is an attachment. I think it is the final attachment to let go of, because it is letting go of the whole purpose of the journey.

[W4TVQ]

"How can I let go of what I AM? I cannot even let go of my concepts of God. All I can do is change them, for as soon as I "let go" of one, another promptly replaces it!"

I guess that is what is called "the human condition"... a state of affairs that comes packaged with the body in which we reside. If Suzanne Langer is right, the brain, through the operation of which we perceive the "world" in which we apparently dwell, is simply and solely a symbol-making organism, so it will continue making symbols no matter how hard we try to silence it. And that is what our "concepts of God" are, symbols. The brain continues making symbols 24/7; whle we are asleep, it is manufacturing dreams, which for some folks are useful: my dreams are absurd compilations of nonsense that my brain is making just because it has to keep making symbols.

IMO the point is that whatever concepts we have of God say nothing about God at all, but they say a great deal about us. As James Dillet Freeman said, we know God "only as a feeling and a faith." And that is not an activity of our brain or consciousness, but of His Grace sneaking around our consciousness to reveal Himself to a level of our being below consciousness. Or, if you prefer the Freudian approach, revealing Himself to the subconscious by circumventing the ego and the id. Ruby Nelson talks of the "surface mind" and identifies it as the source of our troubles. And, ACIM reminds us that "the part of you where Truth abides is in constant contact with God, whether you are aware of it or not."

I am constantly harassed by the "concepts of God" that my mind wants to propose ("Oh, look, here's a good one, this explains Him"). But occasionally there comes one of those "eureka" moments when the Light peeks through the cloud-cover of thinking and reasoning. And that "eureka" moment could no more be put in words, or even symbols, than I could fly to Saturn. In the interim between those moments, it is entertainng to meditate on "concepts of God" so as to keep the mind from meditating on negative things and burrowing in dark places. As the old gospel hymn says, "We'll understand it better by and by."

Excuse me, God, but can I have "by and by" now??

Namaste
Art

[Ihavesayso]

",,,the point is that whatever concepts we have of God say nothing about God at all, but they say a great deal about us."

Bingo, Art! To me, that statement sums it up as absolutly as can be expected! In actually, we know nothing about the nature of God, as we devised the idea of "God," to explain the unexplainable about existance, and how it took place. All this accoimplished, was to push back the need for explaination one level. It did nothing to solve the mystery of being!

Therefore, each person creates for himself the atributes of the "God" he accepts as his conviction, or none at all, if that is his conclusion. This holds, if we accept as true the fact that we create our reality with the thoughts we hold to the conviction level. That being so, you will get "what you expect" when you exit your physical existance and re-enter the universe of spirit. That alone, for me, is reason enough to dispose of the "Tribal God" you mention.

[anna]

Yes, I would agree completely that what we get is what we want, and what our minds dwell upon, or are attentive to, determines our reality, now, and later, and presumably, after death. Frankly, I think that after death, we awake from death to re-structure our life just as we previously left it, ad infinitum until such time as we realize that the mind is what constititutes reality "out there", and that we are thus enslaved by those concepts until such time as we escape them. Thus, if we believe in heaven, and that we will go to heaven, that's what we do. And so forth. The only problem with this scenario, as comforting as it is, is that our concept of heaven is limited by our concept of heaven, and I have yet to find a human being that has concepts so beatific and unsullied that the heaven they conceive of does not also include its opposite, those who aren't in heaven, and so forth. Consequently, there goes the dualistic universe all over again, and we are back where we started, trying to climb out of the trap of good and bad, pleasure and pain, and all the rest of it.

In the end, it seems to me that the mind is the problem with all its limited and separatistic concepts. Escaping that limitation is what interests me most, because it brings an end to all the endless dualisms and the consequences of dualistic thinking. But what do I know? Likewise, and a pro po to this discussion, of course, letting go of God concepts as you release the limited mind from all its concepts, releases me from God's opposite duality, and you know where that opposite inevitably will take you, and who wants to go there! Can't have one without the other, much as we like to believe the dual mind can have it one without the other.

[W4TVQ]

"our concept of heaven is limited by our concept of heaven"

...and that about sums it up. So long as we are in bodies and perceiving via the operation of brains, our concept of everything is limited by our concept of everything. But that does not necessarily mean we are unable to "touch" reality. Ernst Cassirer speaks about this, with reference to myth, art and language: "these appear as symbols, not in the sense of mere figures which refer to some given reality by means of suggestion and allegorical renderings, but in the sense of forces each of which produces and posits a world of its own ... Thus the special symbolic forms are not imitations, bur organs of reality, since it is solely by their agency that anything real becomes an object for intellectual apprehension, and as such is made visible to us." i.e.: the reality is contained in the symbol. All of Reality, the universe, is contained in OM. We may perceive Brahman directly and immediately once free of the body, but for now OM IS Brahman for us.

I rather like the idea I find in The Door of Everything concerning life beyond the body, the idea of the Grand Cosmic Being, something so unlike what we are now that there is no way we can imagine it. Surely that is what Jesus was trying to tell us when He spoke about the "kingdom of heaven" being like a seed. Once the seed "dies" the ensuing reality is nothing whatever like the seed; one could not be reasoned from the other. Nor was that symbolism unique to Jesus: the same symbol appears in the Chandogya Upanishad. "My son, from the very essence in the seed which you cannot see comes in truth this vast banyan tree. Believe my, my son, an invisible and subtle essence is the spirit of the whole universe. That is reality. That is Atman. THOU ART THAT." The Door envisions us as the Grand Cosmic Being, which is the Christ, soaring freely across the universe at the speed of light, nothing whatever like the "seed" from which we came (or through which we came). The Grand Cosmic Being is God is I. Tat tvam asi.

I do believe there are those moments, brief though they be, infrequent though they be, in which the essence of the seed transcends the shell and soars freely in the universe. Moments in which we say, "Oh, in that case, all is well," not knowing exactly why. The silent, awed moment when Mahler's 2nd Symphony has just ended. Previews, if you will, of what is to be ... of what is now, but not yet perceived. "You have received many answers which you have not yet heard," says ACIM. I doubt the banyan tree ever thinks back to its beginning in a seed, because it is too busy being a banyan tree. I wonder, then, If I will think back, while soaring across the universe investigating galaxies and quasars and black holes, to this plane, this seed, the instant of beginning. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond. Bodhi svaha."

Namaste
Art