{"id":19616,"date":"2020-12-16T09:44:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19616"},"modified":"2020-12-16T10:36:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T15:36:25","slug":"letting-go-of-our-very-selves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19616","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go of Our Very Selves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Self-Emptying<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Letting\nGo of Our Very Selves<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, \u202fDecember 16,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6B_iXPaoTD4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>The great task of religion is to keep us fully awake,\nalert, and conscious. Staying awake comes not from willpower but from <em>a wholehearted surrender to the moment\u2014as it is<\/em>. If we can truly be\npresent, we <em>will<\/em>&nbsp;experience what most of us mean by God (and we\ndo not even need to call it God). It\u2019s largely a matter of letting go of\nresistance to what the moment offers or of clinging to a past moment. It is an\nacceptance of the full reality of what is right here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To\nbe truly conscious, we must step back from our compulsive identification with\nour isolated selves. This may be the most difficult \u201cletting go\u201d of all, for\nthe idea of our individual \u201cselves\u201d is the primary illusion of our lives. But\npure consciousness is never just \u201cme,\u201d trapped inside myself. Rather, it is an\nobserving of \u201cme\u201d from a distance\u2014from the viewing platform kindly offered by\nGod (see Romans 8:16), which we call the Indwelling Spirit. Then we will see\nwith eyes much larger and other than our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most\nof us do not understand this awareness because we are totally identified with\nour own passing thoughts, feelings, and compulsive patterns of perception. We\nhave no proper distance from ourselves, which ironically would allow us to see\nour radical connectedness with everything else. Such radical connectedness is\nholiness itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some\ndegree of detachment is absolutely necessary to get started spiritually.\n\u201cDetachment, detachment, detachment,\u201d taught Meister Eckhart (1260\u20131328). [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\nwe meditate consistently, the sense of our autonomy and private\nself-importance\u2014what we think of as our \u201cself\u201d\u2014falls away. Little by little, it\nbecomes unnecessary, unimportant, and even unhelpful. The imperial \u201cI,\u201d the\nself that we usually think of as our only self, reveals itself as largely a\ncreation of our mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through\nregular access to contemplation, we become less and less interested in\nprotecting this self-created, relative identity. Please do not attack it;\nthat\u2019s just negative energy. When we do not feed it, it calmly falls away and\nwe experience a kind of natural humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If\nour prayer goes deep, \u201cinvading\u201d our unconscious, as it were, our whole view of\nthe world will change from fear to connection, because we no longer live inside\nour fragile and encapsulated self. Nor do we feel a need to protect our small\nand fragile self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In meditation, we move from ego consciousness to soul awareness, <em>from being fear-driven to being love-drawn<\/em>. That\u2019s it in a few words! Of course, we can only do this if Someone Else is holding us, taking away our fear, doing the knowing, and satisfying our desire for a Great Lover. If we can allow that Someone Else to have their way with us, we will live with new vitality, a natural gracefulness, and inside of a Flow that we did not create. It is the Life of the Trinity, spinning through us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"340\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-16-at-10.35.50-AM-500x340.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19619\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-16-at-10.35.50-AM-500x340.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-16-at-10.35.50-AM-300x204.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-16-at-10.35.50-AM-768x522.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Screen-Shot-2020-12-16-at-10.35.50-AM.png 1846w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-Emptying Letting Go of Our Very Selves Wednesday, \u202fDecember 16, 2020 The great task of religion is to keep us fully awake, alert, and conscious. Staying awake comes not from willpower but from a wholehearted surrender to the moment\u2014as it is. If we can truly be present, we will&nbsp;experience what most of us mean by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19621,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19616\/revisions\/19621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}