Letting Go - An Act of Love

The phrase ‘letting go’ perhaps tends to be used rather casually. But there surely is a difference between letting go an unkind remark someone might have said to us, between urging ourselves to ‘let it go’, and the letting go of something so deep that it feels like death. This type of letting go is never easy and requires enormous courage. This type of letting go takes us on a journey that is highly personal, and only the person involved can do this in her or his own time. It is a lone process: no one can do it for us.
It is the act of letting go of a loved one. 
As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in one of his poems: "We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go." Letting go of a loved one is a recognition that we never really owned anyone or anything. It is a conscious act of great love and faith. For no one wants to part from a beloved one. 

The act of letting go itself seems to be an ongoing state of being; like the tides, one's emotions tend to ebb and flow, and these processes never seem to go quite in a straight line. But slowly, slowly, a little drop becomes the ocean and things find the level which is intended for them.

Often we have dreams of what we want in life, including who we want to be with, and how we want things to be. But sometimes life itself says 'no': we realize with terrible finality that our dreams are not to be, and our most sought-after aspirations are doomed to remain unrealized. Then what?
The author Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes such a situation as: "leaving what cannot be." But what is this "leaving?" How do we stop reading the same chapter again and again? How do we stop the same looped recording playing over and over in our thoughts?

This more profound act of letting go is a deep acceptance, a surrender to what is, a realization of how things truly are, and a leaving behind of any desire for how we would like or prefer things to be. Saying ‘yes’ to this type of letting go irrevocably changes and transforms us. It is not a matter of hardening our hearts, of closing them so that no pain can enter. For if we close our hearts in this way, and with this intent, then not only do we not let pain in: we allow pain that is there to become trapped and to find no escape. The pain stays within us.
Instead, if only we open our hearts completely, if we open our hearts as wide as the summer skies, then not only all our joys and loves are embraced, but also all our pain and suffering and emotional turmoil. This is the marvelous paradox: in embracing our pain we also truly ‘let it go’. Inner freedom comes from this.

And so letting go is a deep acceptance, a surrender to what is. Every living soul on this earth, whether in physical or in spiritual despair or distress, is walking this road at some stage in her or his life. And it is up to each and every one of us to break through that hidden isolation and take that one step nearer to the real freedom which comes with truly ‘letting go’

Painting by Isil Gönen

Annunciation ~ Words of the Angel

You are not nearer God than we;

he's far from everyone.

And yet your hands most wonderfully

reveal his benison.

From woman's sleeves none ever grew

so ripe, so shimmmeringly:

I am the day, I am the dew,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

Pardon now my long journey's done,

I had forgot to say

what he who sat as in the sun,

grand in his gold array,

told me to tell you, pensive one

(space has bewildered me).

I am the start of what's begun,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

I spread my wings out wide and rose,

the space around grew less;

your little house quite overflows

with my abundant dress.

But still you keep your solitude

and hardly notice me:

I'm but a breeze within the wood,

you, Lady, are the Tree.

The angels tremble in their choir,

grow pale, and seperate:

never were longing and desire

so vague and yet so great.

Something perhaps is going to be

that you perceived in dream.

Hail to you! for my soul can see

that you are ripe and teem.

You lofty gate, that any day

may open for our good:

you ear my longing songs assay,

my word - I know now -  lost its way

in you as in a wood.

And thus your last dream was designed

to be fulfilled by me.

God looked at me: he made me blind....

You, Lady, are the Tree

- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Winding Path

The winding paths of labyrinths fascinate us, and seem to pull us into their mysterious patterns. Following their paths carries us to their heart, whether those paths can be traced with a moving finger (as with the engraved labyrinth on a column in San Martino cathedral) or are large enough to be walked around (as with the famous labyrinth set into the floor of Chartres cathedral). But what was the original significance of these patterns?

The labyrinth is an archetype. It is a tangible metaphor for one’s own spiritual journey through the winding pathway of one’s life. The point of building a labyrinth, as emphasized in myths and dances, was always about a process of initiation. When you walk a labyrinth, you follow a single circuitous path winding inwards and out again in one direction. The way to the centre of the labyrinth leads to the experience of the turning point. Without this turning point it is impossible to leave the labyrinth.

In Ancient Greek Asklepieions - sanatoria founded on the healing principles of Hippocrates - the labyrinth had an essential function as part of the healing process. Then as now the philosophy was that the true essence of initiation into the hidden knowledge is knowledge of the Self. In order to achieve this knowledge, one first has to meet one's lesser self, one's personality. And so, after the patient had gone through the first three phases of treatment in the Asklepieion, he was brought into trance by way of a dance of progression through the labyrinth. The parts of his being - his physical, etheric and astral bodies - had already been  'loosened up' during the first three phases. Now his spiritual core - his 'I' or self - became the crux of the therapeutic process.

And while the person snaked on to the sounds of solemn music, approaching the centre of the labyrinth in a meditative follow-up of steps, the dancers saw specific images appear before their mind's eye. Then they would become aware that they saw, not just the labyrinth of their surroundings, but the labyrinth of their own life-walk. The catharsis comes with the discovery that they did not lose themselves in the labyrinth, but instead found their own inner selves. In the labyrinth we do not meet the Minotaur - we meet ourselves. Only through the purifying effectiveness of the catharsis do the inner transformations become possible, which, according to Jung, is always considered a profound religious experience. 

When we walk the labyrinth, we are engaging not just our senses, but our whole bodies, our physical selves. And so walking the labyrinth becomes a form of prayer which is prayed, not just with the mind, but with the whole being. It is this physical involvement which the labyrinth demands of us that becomes a form of ‘body prayer’, allowing the process of the turning point to become a real and vivid experience.

But even a physical labyrinth need not be necessary  to achieve the experience which a labyrinth has to offer. For life itself is a labyrinth, a winding path which all of  us tread, and ultimately it is up to us all individually to what extent we choose to make that experience a conscious one.

Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame

in which a thing escapes your grasp

while it makes a glorious display of transformation.

That designing Spirit, the master mind of all things on earth

loves nothing so much in the sweeping movement of the dance

as the turning point.

Rainer Maria Rilke