Letting-go or Striving

[Wayfarer64]

This has come up in a few topic threads already, but it may be useful to mull- it over in ernest.

 

There is a tangable yearning for answers to questions about humanity's spiritual potential here. Generally we have been calling it seeking enlightenment or awareness, as a way to express the subject in words. For some it would be called something else yet still have a primarily spiritual component.

 

Several techniques and methods have been shared. It has struck me that there is a gulf between the striving methods and the letting-go methods.

 

It may be that these techniques have there place at different times in one's search. It may be that the imagined "goals" are very different for each of us. Each being may have a very different experience of awareness and spiritual realization. Or it may be the difference between self-realization and the loss of self in the One/All...

 

I think that we each continue to evolve as spiritual beings while having our various human experiences. Our human potentials seem so vast, there is room for huge variations on every level of those potentials.

 

Can one strive to let go? Or is it let-go to attain?

Is there a Taoist middle way for us to travel?

[forestofsouls]

Can one strive to let go? Or is it let-go to attain?

Is there a Taoist middle way for us to travel?

 

I would say you need both. You need to make constant effort. I think if some one just sits around and does nothing, then nothing happens. However, making an effort doesn't mean seeking a result. I think this is where letting go comes in. You make the efforts without expectations, and let come what comes.

 

"You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty."

Bhagavad Gita, 2.47

[thelerner]

"You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty."

Bhagavad Gita, 2.47

 

Thats pretty deep. Quite the opposite of modern rationalistic thought. A pretty useful tool, a hammer in the war against ego.

 

We have so many threads on enlightenment. I don't know if its 'true' enlightenment, but getting awareness to orbit something other then the ME ego and stop seeing the world through the prism of self is a step in the right direction.

 

 

Michael

[Spectrum]

"It has struck me that there is a gulf between the striving methods and the letting-go methods."

 

 

I'm reminded of the saying "In Stillness there is Movement, in Movement there is Stillness. "

[Taiji Bum]

Good topic. I am with the "it takes both" opinion. In my personal practice it has seemed that I strive, strive, strive and then when I get what I was striving for I have to "let it go" and once I let it go I seem to move to the next level.

 

I see it as a succession of yin and yang phases. Hold your focus intently on the third dan tien to move the chi into it and then once its there let it grow on its own. Like preparing a piece of land for a garden. There is a lot of hard work before you put the seed in the ground but once its there its mostly maintenence with water, feeding and weeding.

[Wayfarer64]

Thank you each and all for your thoughtful considerations. It seems there is a unity of purpose found in any number of approaches, and a mindful application of this variety offers us each options that may transcend the paradox tendered here... Everything in its own time and way.

 

Such an open-minded acceptence of both doing and not doing as viable paths; also bridges the gap that I noticed and seems to free us for (and from) the utilization of those various techniques at any given space/time coordinate, at least it seems to for those answering these questions.

 

The steps and timing may be critical in minimizing wasted energy and time, but it would seem many paths lead to our better selves.

[minimoke]

I don't know if its 'true' enlightenment, but getting awareness to orbit something other then the ME ego and stop seeing the world through the prism of self

 

Getting married and having kids shrinks the ME ego. Reading TheTaoBums everyday helps also. I bet cow pasture mushrooms would also dissolve the ME ego. Not really going anywhere with this except to say ME ego is overly rated.

 

Bartlett Bruce

[Ian]

I think letting go requires quite a lot of work. It is initially very very hard to do nothing, because there is an enormous momentum of doing which carries on quite happily without us.

 

So for the first few years there is an effort of vigilance continually required to keep returning to a point where one can let go, even for a moment. The practice is to keep minimising the force of that effort.

[forestofsouls]

 

So for the first few years there is an effort of vigilance continually required to keep returning to a point where one can let go, even for a moment. The practice is to keep minimising the force of that effort.

 

I agree.

 

Personally, one of the most helpful things I learned about letting go is physical relaxation. I find that letting go of muscular tension is a pre-requisite and useful forerunner for inner letting go. It's just easier if your body is relaxed, and the mechanisms are the same. It's also a lot easier for me to see physical tension in my body than the tight mental attitudes in my mind.

[raymond]

[Ian]

I agree.

 

Personally, one of the most helpful things I learned about letting go is physical relaxation. I find that letting go of muscular tension is a pre-requisite and useful forerunner for inner letting go. It's just easier if your body is relaxed, and the mechanisms are the same. It's also a lot easier for me to see physical tension in my body than the tight mental attitudes in my mind.

 

Absolutely. I'm given to understand that they are really one and the same, that the bodily lump is literally where the attitude has moved in. But I don't experience it like that yet.

 

I don't know how to work out how often, in a given meditation period, to actually adjust myself to drop physical tension. Sometimes it seems that the tension is something I've dug up through the process and need to detach from such that it dissolves, rather than just a bad posture habit creeping in. In that case adjustment seems like an inappropriate response.

 

I suspect that there is a more open perspective which renders such distinctions meaningless. Suggestions welcome....

[Wayfarer64]

I like how this thread has aspects that now relate to the recent thread about our recollection of dreams from Lerner...

The wakeful mind and the sub-conscious mind often seem to vie for attention within me.

 

And therein is the crux of seeking for me!

 

The attention given to any aspect of existance is what being in the moment consists of.

 

Our attentive mind is the observer that can look down on our bodies as we have out of body experiences or near-death incounters...Our attentive mind is that which our conscious and sub-conscious seek to occupy.

 

If we stay aware of the attentive aspect of our nature- or that which holds the reins of being in the now, perhaps this is when we can consider ourselves to be awakened??!

 

How we let ourselves flow or drive ourselves into this level of wakefulness seems to matter very little.