our minds are given over to judging and being right, individuals of any age think they know how they want the world to look. But now their attention is riveted on what is outside of them. To “look in their hearts” becomes a strange, even frightening concept. It has been so long since they cast their gaze in that direction that they doubt that anything but darkness is there.
Letting Go of the Fear of Letting Go
Letting go of judgment and control has no downside. What possible harm could come from practicing the simplicity of not having to be somebody, and of not requiring our friends and family to be other than who they are? We can cross the street without becoming a “pedestrian.” We can drive to work without becoming a “commuter.” We can walk the dog without becoming a “pet owner.” And we can extend our hand to our child without becoming “the parent.”
We only need to be as we were created—effortless, present, and free. No additional history, status, or attitude is required. What need have we to make money, education, religion, or race the banner of our righteousness? What need have we to stand apart from one another, wrapped in our childhood damage like a bloody cloak? Our childhood is over. All our accumulated differences are like dust on the skin, and the members of our human family hold out their hearts to us each day.
If we could dine out without turning into the “customer,” we would have a chance of feeling our equality with the person serving us. If we could report for jury duty without turning into the “citizen” who must deal with a “county clerk,” we would have a chance of seeing our oneness with the person who stands before us. Our identity can change like the distorted reflections in a line of storefront windows—or it can remain the same, like the lovely image of a child held forever in the heart of a parent.
Those in our lives who make the most meaningful and enduring contributions to who we are have dared to take their place among equals. The world stares in amazement at the glittering adornments of the ego, but only those who walk beside us in love and equality reach our hearts and transform us.
Suggested time: 1 or more days
The next time you are in a store, restaurant, mall, workplace, or just walking down a crowded sidewalk, pick out one or, if you have time, two or three individuals, and, in turn, practice becoming them for a few moments. How does it feel to wear their clothes (can you feel the cloth against your skin?), to have their hair or no hair, to walk as they walk or cannot walk, to gesture as they gesture? Do their eyes occasionally look to the side or dart around like all of our eyes do, as if the one inside who is looking out is a little uncertain, a little vulnerable? It's a very big, unpredictable world out there. Without analysis, inferiority, condescension, or perspective—in other words, without thinking about it—what is it like to feel as they feel and think as they think?
Try doing this today, and if it is enjoyable, for the next few days. Perhaps you will be struck with ordinariness. Perhaps you will sense that we are pretty much alike, and that we are all in this together. And perhaps you will feel a little sad for the occasional person you see who tries so hard to stand rigidly apart, only to find loneliness and isolation.
Two
Letting Go of Mental Pollutants
Cleansing the body of toxins and releasing the muscles of tension are familiar procedures in holistic medicine. The need for physical purification is so obvious that, as a concept, it has become a dominant goal in self-treatment practices and within conventional medicine as well.
For example, many brand-name vitamins and nutritional supplements found in chain drugstores now are advertised as purifying and cleansing agents. Within alternative healing circles, numerous cleansing procedures such as fasting, high-fiber and raw-food diets, enemas and high colonics, saltwater baths, and numerous “therapies” such as heat, breath, Vitamin C, and water are recommended and trusted. Within the body-mind-spirit movement, everything from exorcisms to the burning of sage is used to cleanse rooms, residences, and buildings of their negative forces.
In the mornings, we shower and brush our teeth. During the day we wash our hands after each visit to the restroom. We use special antibacterial products to cleanse “kitchen surfaces.” Our laundry detergents include disinfectants. Our dishwashers super-heat the water. Many homes and even some cars now have air filtering systems. Tap water is out and purified water is in. A growing number of people carry liquid “hand sanitizers” to cleanse their hands of germs after coming out of a store or restaurant.
It's curious that we are so preoccupied with cleansing our bodies and environment of everything that can harm our health, beauty, and energy, yet we feel no real need to cleanse our minds of what can sour our attitudes, block our intuition, tear apart our relationships, and undermine the very aim and purpose of our lives. Yet what do those who are physically pristine gain if within their sparkling habitats they live in a downward spiral of darkness and misery? What difference does it make if a body is always scrubbed, detoxified, and all its surfaces germ-free if no living thing the body encounters is comforted?
In our houses of worship, we pay lip service to the truth that our bodies are mortal but our internal spirit is everlasting. We sing hymns and listen to words that denounce the out-ward and corruptible and praise the inner and eternal. We even say that time will end and the world will pass away but that “within us” is the kingdom of heaven.
Yet in daily life, we obviously are not concerned in the least about what is within. All we care about is getting the outside clean. Each day we walk forth with clean clothes, clean hair, clean teeth, but with a mind stuffed with worthless anxieties, dull resentments, stale outlooks, toxic prejudices, and an endless array of shabby self-images. We haven't even bothered to sweep out the mental junk we picked up yesterday, not to speak of the debris we have been hauling around for a lifetime.
Our mind is not some little unencumbered spirit free to traverse whatever airy realm it chooses. But we would like to believe it is. We see movies and read books about fantastic fantasies and unfettered thoughts. We talk to children about the “power of the imagination.”We attend seminars that tell us our minds have immense reserves of untapped capacity. All in all, we have done a superb job of kidding ourselves that in our roomy “attic” all is useful, worth keeping, and in good repair. But if we observe our minds closely for just one hour, we see that instead of a boundless chamber of magic and wonder, our minds are more like stuffed and stodgy refrigerators that emit peculiar odors. Pick any shelf and just one brief expedition reveals items in the back so old we don't even remember acquiring them.
Nor have these containers of leftovers and ancient jars of condiments been sitting quietly in the corners where they were pushed. They are now so thick with mold and mildew that they have taken on lives of their own. Indeed, the back recesses of our refrigerator mind are in revolt and have set up sour and stinky kingdoms of their own. It's so scary a sight that our impulse is to shove all the front-line items quickly back in place so that now sunny orange juice, freshly picked mangoes, and organic celery once again appear to be all that's in there.
It's not a small task to clean out our overstuffed minds. It takes a little time and courage, and we have to brace ourselves for some unpleasant discoveries. But when the shelves are once again clean and orderly, when only fresh edibles and true nourishment are on the horizon, and when soft aromas fill the air, we will know we have made a very small sacrifice for such bounty.
This book asks you to swim against the tide of opinion: Decide that happiness is an essential part
