The whole business of making a stark contrast between the lower and higher self is futile to begin with. There is no separate, all-good, all-wise part of you that you must either win or lose. Life is one flow of awareness. No aspect of you was constructed out of anything else. Fear and anger are actually made from the same pure awareness as love and compassion; erecting a barrier between ego and soul fails to recognize this simple fact. In the end, letting go is achieved not by condemning what’s bad in yourself and throwing it away, but by a process that brings opposites together. Your ego must see that it belongs to the same reality as your soul. It needs to find so much in common with your soul that it lets go of its selfish agenda in favor of a better way of life.
Jordan’s story
Letting go is often a last resort, but then something magical can happen. Invisible powers that you never expected can come to your aid.
Jordan is a successful career woman in her late thirties, and she has just saved a marriage she had almost given up on. “Mike wasn’t my soul mate. We didn’t fall in love at first sight,” Jordan said. “We met at work, and he asked me out several times before I said yes. I had to learn to love him, but once I did, it felt very real.
“A year later we took the plunge. Mike was twenty-nine, I was twenty-six. We were in love, but we also sat down and discussed what we wanted out of this marriage. So when all the trouble began, it really caught me off guard.”
“How did it begin?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell you exactly,” Jordan said. “But Mike started behaving like my father, a man who never listens and never gives in. I had married Mike because he seemed to be the exact opposite. Mike was gentle and open. He listened. But then he changed. We started fighting a lot, and I got very upset.”
“Did he accuse you of changing?” I asked.
“He got very bitter about it. I never gave him enough space, he said. But ‘space’ doesn’t mean brooding about your work for hours on end and pushing me away when I wanted to make up after a fight. Mike would hold me for a minute, maybe two. But I could tell he wanted to be alone, to go back to his computer or his video games.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I didn’t sink into despair. I told Mike that if we loved each other, we should be able to ask for what we wanted emotionally. I’m not needy, but for God’s sake, if I felt like crying or wanting to be held, he barely responded.”
“Maybe he saw your emotions as weak, or as a threat,” I suggested.
Jordan agreed. “Mike’s scared of emotions, and he can’t stand weakness. I was expected to make him feel like a winner. Anything else was a betrayal. I should have seen that sooner. Mike came from a very rigid family where nobody thought that showing your feelings was a positive thing.”
“Eventually you considered leaving him?” I asked.
“It happened one evening. He was eating dinner in front of the football game, and no matter what I said, he barely nodded. I stood up and told him to turn off the damn TV. He just gave this little dismissive laugh. I thought to myself, ‘I’m not turning into a cliché. I’ve got my whole life to live.’
“It took me a long time to stop feeling sorry for myself. But I had been reading a lot about self-development, and one thing I’d read stuck with me: Accept total responsibility for your own life.”
“What did that mean to you?” I asked.
“What it didn’t mean,” said Jordan, shaking her head, “is that everything was my fault. I was encouraged to looked at things more positively. I was the creator of my own life. If I wanted my life to change, the means were inside of me. Once I stopped pitying myself, I realized that this was a test. Mike was in total denial. Could I save the marriage myself? Think what a triumph that would be. I didn’t consult Mike or anybody else. This was my own secret project. So I started in on it.”
“What did you do?”
“I had learned a new term, ‘reactive mind’; this is the mode you’re in when you constantly react to the other person, which gives them power over you. When Mike pushed my buttons, arguing over who was right and who was wrong, I couldn’t help but react. When I was growing up, my mother only had two ways of dealing with a bad situation. She either tried to fix it or she put up with it. There’s a third way, which is to leave until you’re able to cope. So instead of getting angry at Mike or sulking or complaining, I kept my cool, and as soon as I could, I’d get away and be with myself.”
“What did you do then?”
“I processed my feelings on my own. The reactive mind is quick to respond, but when your first reaction dies down, other responses have room to show up. I examined anger as my issue, not Mike’s fault; self-pity came from me, not from what Mike did to me. When Mike and I fought, everything was about defending myself, because he can’t stand to lose. The great thing about learning that you can look inside yourself is that you can give up being so defensive.”
“How did your husband react?” I asked.
“At first Mike didn’t like that I was holding back. He thought that by not fighting back I was acting superior. But that didn’t last long. After I dealt with my feelings, I went back in to be with him, and he liked the fact that I didn’t return with resentment or bottled-up frustration.”
“Once you quit tugging at your end of the rope,” I said, “there was no more tug-of-war.”
“That was a tough lesson to learn, but yes. Also, we hate in others what we deny in ourselves. I hated it when Mike would come home and instantly start complaining that he wanted a warm meal and a loving wife, two things I wasn’t providing. I felt attacked. But then I asked myself if I wasn’t passively attacking him by withholding those things. I was defying him, which made my ego feel good, but all it led to was a hostile standoff.”
“You don’t mean that giving in to Mike was the solution, do you?” I said.
“In a way, yes, that’s what I do mean,” said Jordan. “I surrendered. I gave of myself. But what made that a positive thing was that first I got to the place inside myself where surrender wasn’t failure. Surrender can mean that you lost the battle. But it can also mean that you are surrendering to love instead of hate.” She laughed. “All right, I gritted my teeth the first couple of times that I met Mike at the door with a kiss and the smell of fresh-baked bread in the background. But honestly, before long I felt very good about myself.”
Jordan’s rescue mission for her marriage unfolded in many other ways, but we had covered the critical part, learning how to let go. This is more than a relationship strategy; a deep personal shift is involved. You release yourself from ego-bound reactions—what some call the reactive mind—and allow events to unfold without a preset program. The risks can be terrifying. Everyone has a voice inside warning that to surrender is a sign of weakness. Jordan had downplayed the fear that arises in such situations. I asked her if things had been at all frightening for her.
“That’s what makes it so wonderful to come out the other side,” she said. “No one knows the terror you go through. Being strong enough to risk your sense of pride, your image of yourself as a woman who won’t be trampled on—only somebody who’s gone through it knows how difficult that is.”
I agreed. The negative connotations of surrender have been drummed into us. We equate it not only with losing the battle, but with weakness and lack of self-respect. In this particular case, surrender of the feminine to the masculine raises every imaginable red flag.
“Were you conscious of that?” I asked Jordan.
“Oh yes. I had lots of fights with myself, lots of self-doubt. But the bottom line was that I wasn’t surrendering to Mike. I was surrendering to the truth, and the truth is that I want to love and be loved. I was taking responsibility for my truth, which brings incredible personal power if you can do it.”
Jordan feels proud that she got past all her inner resistance, and her pride is justified. Her marriage is intact and has blossomed into a far more secure love than she knew before. The part that n
o one else knows, the real mystery, is that when she changed, everything changed. Her husband stopped doing all the things she resented. He looked at her with different eyes, as if he was rediscovering the woman he fell in love with.
Jordan didn’t have to ask him to do that; it just happened. How? To begin with, there’s a deep connection when two people love each other. We know instinctively whether that connection is working or is broken. The connection must be restored at a deep level, a place the ego can’t reach. Here the element of the soul is inescapable. But why should another person, or an entire situation, change just because you do? If each of us owned a soul like private property, then change would happen one person at a time. But the unbounded soul connects everyone. Its influence is felt everywhere. So, when you change your behavior at the level of the soul, the whole dance must change along with you.
In Your Life: “You’re Not Me”
Life brings many situations where letting go isn’t easy. Fortunately, there’s one strategy that always works. Instead of focusing on your reaction in the moment, step back and reassert who you really are. The real you has no agenda. It lives in the present; it responds to life openly. Therefore the attitude you need to take to any preprogrammed response—which is all your ego has to offer—is always the same: “You’re not me.” Let fear, anger, jealousy, resentment, victimization, or any conditioned reaction arise. Don’t oppose it. Yet the minute you become aware of it, say, “You’re not me.”
With one stroke you accomplish two things. You put the ego on notice that you’ve seen through its game, and you call upon your real self to help you. If your soul is the real you, then it possesses the power to transform you, once you open yourself to it. You will know that you are responding from the soul level whenever you do the following:
Accept the experience that’s in front of you.
Approve of other people and yourself.
Cooperate with the solution at hand.
Detach yourself from negative influences.
Remain calm in the face of stress.
Forgive those who offend or wrong you.
Approach the situation selflessly, with fairness to all.
Exert a peaceful influence.
Take a nonjudgmental attitude, making no one else feel wrong.
These responses can’t be forced or planned ahead—not if you genuinely want to be transformed. It’s self-defeating to adopt them simply because you think they make you look good. Maddening as it is to run into people who are stubbornly petty and selfish, forced virtue can be just as maddening. The problem is that what is really needed—letting go—hasn’t happened. The publicly virtuous have simply found a new ego agenda that makes them look better than they are.
When you find yourself reacting from ego, stop and say, “You’re not me.” Then what? There are four steps that allow your soul to bring in a new response.
Remain centered.
Be clear.
Expect the best.
Watch and wait.
1. Remain centered. By now most people know the value of being centered; it’s a state of calm and stability. When you aren’t centered, you feel scattered and off-kilter. Feelings fight against each other. There’s no stability in your reactions because the next event can pull you this way or that. Panic is the ultimate state of not being centered, but there are many milder ones, such as distraction, restlessness, confusion, anxiety, and disorientation. Unfortunately, knowing that it’s better to be centered isn’t the same as getting there.
Where is this center? For some it’s the middle of the chest, or the heart itself. For others it’s the solar plexus, or simply a general sense of “going inside.” I’d suggest, however, that the center isn’t physical. Your heart can’t be your center when it’s racing or in pain. Your solar plexus can’t be your center when your intestines are in a knot. The body always reflects consciousness, therefore your center is in awareness. This points us in the right direction, but awareness is always shifting, so the question is, where can you find calmness and peace that cannot be shaken?
You won’t be surprised, I’m sure, to hear that absolute calm and peace are located at the soul level, which is reached through meditation. We have discussed this, but it bears repeating that no matter who you are or in whatever crisis, this place of peace and calm is never shattered. Even to come near is to experience its effects. When you want to seek your center, find a quiet place where you cannot be disturbed. Close your eyes and feel the part of your body that feels stressed. Breathing easily and regularly, release the disturbed energy from that part of the body.
Quite often your mind will contain stressed thoughts. These will usually disappear once you settle your body down. If they don’t, then breathe out the energy that lies behind those thoughts, meaning the energy of fear and anxiety. There’s more than one way to do that.
Through the crown chakra: In yoga, the top of the head is considered an energy center, or chakra. It’s an effective place for releasing energy. Close your eyes and see a beam of white light extending up through your head and exiting through a tiny opening in the crown. The beam of light is narrow, but it gathers all the swirling thoughts in your head and projects them out in one stream through the crown chakra—you might visualize your thoughts as swirling smoke that the beam of light gathers up and transports away.
Breathing: Blow out in a a steady exhale—like blowing out a birthday candle, but slower. Watch the white light of your exhalation streaming upward, taking all your stressed thoughts with it. Watch the light going up and up beyond the room until you can’t see it anymore.
Toning: It also helps to make a high tone at the same time as you breathe out, a soft “Eeeee” sound. The first time or two, you may find this exercise strange, but even if you can’t manage the toning or breathing the first time you try, just using the beam of white light to carry energy up and out of the body can be effective on its own.
2. Be clear. It takes mental clarity to let go. You must be able to tell the true from the false, so you can identify what you want to let go. When you are afraid, fear seems to be you. When you are angry, anger takes you over. But behind this drama and emotional turmoil, the real you is right there, waiting for you to connect to yourself.
I can illustrate this best through the story of Jacob, a man who came to see me after suffering from depression his entire adult life; he’s now fifty. Jacob wasn’t asking for therapy. He wanted a handle on how to achieve real change. I told him that depression can be overcome by letting it go. To do that, he had to clarify a few basic things.
“Let’s see how you feel about your depression,” I began. “Imagine that it has taken the shape of a person who walks in the door and sits down on a chair facing you.”
Jacob closed his eyes and started to visualize. After a few minutes he told me that he saw his depression as a gnarled, hunched-over old man who had shuffled into the room. The old man was smelly and dressed in filthy army fatigues.
“Good,” I said. ‘Now that you see him, how do you feel about him?” Jacob said he felt bad. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tell him.”
At first Jacob was hesitant. But with a bit of coaxing, he told the old man, “You scare me to death, and you exhaust me. My mind races with anxiety, and while others see me as someone listless and passive, I feel like I’m wrestling with a demon every moment of the day.” Once he got started, Jacob’s accusations intensified. He poured out his feelings of hostility and anguish. He spoke bitterly of how impossible it was for him to express his pain, so helpless did the gnarled old man make him feel.
I let Jacob get everything out, until he was spent. ‘You will never get past your depression unless you let this old man inside you go,” I said. “To the extent that you push this old man away and revile him, he will remain the same. The problem has been turned into a part of yourself, but it’s not who you really are.”
Jacob grew quiet. We were old friends, so I could talk to him intimately. I told him that he didn’
t think he was holding on to his depression, but this old man was an aspect of himself. It was a creation of a distorted self-image, and over the years it had gained so much energy that it seemed to have a life of its own.
“Your depression makes you feel helpless because you believe that you have no choice. You can’t remember not being depressed. In reality, you do have a choice. You can negotiate with the old man and tell him that it’s time to leave. You can release the energy of depression. You can meditate and find the level inside your awareness that isn’t depressed. But if you continue to think that being depressed is a permanent part of you, that’s a choice, too. You need to take responsibility for it.” I was trying to give Jacob enough clarity to face his depression, to say to it, “You’re not me.”
This talk was only the beginning. Off and on we made contact again, then Jacob dropped out of sight for a while. Recently he resurfaced, and it was obvious that he was no longer depressed. His energy was stronger and more positive. “Did that one conversation turn the tide?” I asked him.
“I think so,” Jacob said with quiet conviction. “The timing must have been just right, because I surrendered. The fight went out of me. I had been leading myself on with the hope that one day I’d defeat my depression. But you were right. Hating my depression had done absolutely no good.”
During the time that I hadn’t seen him, Jacob had pulled his life together. He entered into a serious relationship; he began to work for a spiritual cause he believed in. He decided to ignore his depression and minimize the hold it had over him. But the critical thing was a change of attitude. He began to accept himself, to see that depression wasn’t his real self.