The Untethered Soul (16 page)

Now you guess who God wants to hang out with. One of the ancient names for God in the yogic tradition is
Satchitananda
—Eternal, Conscious Bliss. God is ecstasy. God is as high as it gets. If you want to be close to God, learn to be joyful. If you remain spontaneously happy and centered, no matter what happens, you will find God. That’s the amazing part. Yes, you will find happiness, but that’s nothing compared to what you’re really going to find.

Once you have passed through trial by fire, and you are thoroughly convinced that you will let go no matter what, then the veils of the human mind and heart will fall away. You will stand face-to-face with what is beyond you because there is no longer a need for you. When you are done playing with the temporal and finite, you will open to the eternal and infinite. Then the word “happiness” can’t describe your state. That’s where words like ecstasy, bliss, liberation, Nirvana, and freedom come in. The joy becomes overwhelming, and your cup runneth over.

This is a beautiful path. Be happy.

One should view their spiritual work as learning to live life without stress, problems, fear, or melodrama. This path of using life to evolve spiritually is truly the highest path. There really is no reason for tension or problems. Stress only happens when you resist life’s events. If you’re neither pushing life away, nor pulling it toward you, then you are not creating any resistance. You are simply present. In this state, you are just witnessing and experiencing the events of life taking place. If you choose to live this way, you will see that life can be lived in a state of peace.

What an amazing process life is, this flow of atoms through time and space. It’s just an eternal sequence of events that take form and then instantly dissolve into the next moment. If you resist this amazing force of life, tension builds within you and gets into your body, mind, and spiritual heart.

It is not difficult to see the tendency toward stress and resistance in daily life. But if we want to understand this tendency, we must first examine why we are so resistant to just letting life be life. What is it inside of us that even has the ability to resist the reality of life? If you look carefully inside yourself, you will see that it’s you, the Self, the indwelling being, that has this power. It is called willpower.

Will is a real force that emanates from your being. It is what makes your arms and legs move. They don’t just move randomly by themselves. They move the way they do because you assert will to make them do so. You use the same will to hold onto thoughts when you want to concentrate on them. The power of Self, when it is concentrated and directed into the physical, mental, or emotional realms, creates a force, and we call that force “will.” That’s what you use when you try to make things happen or not happen. You are not helpless in there; you have the power to affect things.

It’s amazing to see what we end up doing with our will. We actually assert our will in opposition to the flow of life. If something happens that we don’t like, we resist it. But since what we’re resisting has already taken place, what good is it to resist? If your best friend moves away, it’s understandable that you don’t like it. But your inner resistance to that event for years to come does not change the fact that they did, indeed, move away. It does not do anything to the reality of the situation.

The fact is, it cannot even be argued that we’re resisting the actual situation. For instance, if somebody says something that we don’t like, obviously our resistance won’t stop them from having said it. What we’re really resisting is the experience of the event passing through us. We don’t want it affecting us inside. We know it is going to make mental and emotional impressions that will not fit with what’s already in there. So we assert the force of will against the influence of the event in an attempt to stop it from passing through our hearts and minds. In other words, the experience of an event does not stop with our sensory observation of it. The event also has to pass through the psyche at an energetic level. This is a process we experience every day. The initial sensory observation touches our mental and emotional energy pools, creating movements in the energy. These movements pass through the psyche much like physical impact ripples through water. Amazingly, you actually have the ability to resist these movements of energy. The assertion of willpower can stop the energy transfer, and that’s what creates tension. You can wear yourself out struggling with the experience of a single event, or even a single thought or emotion. And you know that all too well.

Eventually you’ll see that this resistance is a tremendous waste of energy. The fact is, you’re generally using your will to resist one of two things: that which has already happened or that which hasn’t happened yet. You are sitting inside resisting impressions from the past or thoughts about the future. Think of how much energy is wasted resisting what has already happened. Since the event has already passed, you are actually struggling with yourself, not with the event. In addition, contemplate how much energy is wasted resisting what might happen. Since most of the things you think might happen never do, you are just throwing your energy away.

How you deal with your energy flow has a major effect on your life. If you assert your will against the energy of an event that has already happened, it is like trying to stop the ripples caused by a leaf dropped into a still lake. Anything you do causes more disturbance, not less. When you resist, the energy has no place to go. It gets stuck in your psyche and seriously affects you. It blocks your heart’s energy flow and causes you to feel closed and less vibrant. This is literally what is happening when something is weighing on your mind or when things just get too heavy for you.

This is the human predicament. Events have happened and we continue to hold their energy inside of us by resisting them. Now, when we face today’s events, we are neither prepared to receive them nor capable of digesting them. This is because we’re still struggling with past energies. Over time, the energies can build up to the point that a person becomes so blocked that they either blow up or shut down completely. This is what it means to get stressed-out or even totally burned-out.

There is no reason to get stressed-out. There is no reason for blowing up or shutting down. If you do not let this energy build up inside you, but instead allow each moment of each day to pass through you, then you can be as fresh every moment as you would be on a stress-free vacation. It is not life’s events that are causing problems or stress. It is your resistance to life’s events that is causing this experience. Since the problem is caused by using your will to resist the reality of life passing through you, the solution is quite obvious—stop resisting. If you are going to resist something, at least have some rational basis for resisting. Otherwise, you are irrationally wasting precious energy.

Be willing to examine the process of resistance. In order to resist you first must decide that something is not the way you like it. Plenty of events make it right through you. Why did you decide to resist this one? Something inside of you must have a basis for deciding when to simply let things pass through and when to assert willpower to either push them away or cling to them. There are a billion things that don’t bother you at all. You drive to work every day and you hardly notice the buildings and trees. The white lines on the road don’t stress you out at all. You see them, but they pass right through you. Don’t assume, however, it’s that way for everyone. Someone who paints street lines for a living could get very stressed-out if those white lines were not even. In fact, they could get so stressed-out that they refuse to drive down that road anymore. It’s clear that not all of us resist the same things or have the same issues. This is because we don’t all have the same preconceived notions of how things should be or how much they should matter to us.

If you want to understand stress, begin by realizing that you carry around with you your own set of preconceived notions of how things should be. It is based upon these notions that you assert your will to resist what has already happened. Where did you get these preconceived notions? Let’s say that seeing azaleas in bloom stresses you out. Surely that doesn’t bother most people. Why does it bother you? All we need to know is that you once had a girlfriend who grew azaleas, and she broke up with you when they were in bloom. Now every time you see azaleas in bloom, your heart closes. You don’t even want to go near the things; they just create too much disturbance for you.

These personal events that take place in our lives leave impressions on our minds and hearts. Those impressions become the basis for asserting our will to either resist or cling. It’s no deeper than that. The events may have happened in your childhood or at various points throughout your life. Regardless of when they happened, they left impressions inside of you. Now, based on these past impressions, you are resisting the current events that are taking place. This creates inner tension, turmoil, struggle, and suffering. Instead of seeing this and refusing to allow these past events to run your life, you buy into them. Believing they have real meaning, you put all your heart and soul into either resisting or clinging. But in truth, this entire process has no real meaning. It just destroys your life.

The alternative is to use life to let go of these impressions and the stress they create. In order to do this you have to become very conscious. You have to carefully watch the mental voice that tells you to resist something. It literally commands you: “I don’t like what he said. Fix it.” It gives you advice and tells you to confront the world by resisting things. Why do you listen to it? Let your spiritual path become the willingness to let whatever happens make it through you, rather than carrying it into the next moment. That doesn’t mean you don’t deal with what happens. You’re welcome to deal with it, but first let the energy make it through you. If you don’t, you will not actually be dealing with the current event, you will be dealing with your own blocked energies from the past. You will not be coming from a place of clarity, but from a place of inner resistance and tension.

To avoid this, begin dealing with each situation with acceptance. Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance. If an event takes place and is able to make it through your psyche, you will be left face-to-face with the actual situation as it truly exists. Since you are dealing with the actual event, rather than stored energies stimulated by the event, you won’t assert reactive energy from your past. You will find that you are able to deal with daily situations much better. It is actually possible to never have another problem for the rest of your life. This is because events are not problems; they’re just events. Your resistance to them is what causes the problem. But, again, don’t think that because you accept reality it means you don’t deal with things. You do deal with them. You just deal with them as events that are taking place on the planet Earth, and not as personal problems.

You will be surprised to find that in most situations there’s nothing to deal with except for your own fears and desires. Fear and desire make everything seem so complicated. If you don’t have fear or desire about an event, there’s really nothing to deal with. You simply allow life to unfold and interact with it in a natural and rational manner. When the next thing happens, you’re fully present in that moment and simply enjoying the experience of life. There are no problems. It’s all about no problems, no tension, no stress, and no burnout. When the events of this world make it through you, you have reached a deep spiritual state. You can then be conscious in the presence of whatever takes place, without building up blocked energies. When you attain that state, everything becomes clear. In contrast, everybody else is attempting to deal with the world around them while struggling with their own reactions and personal preferences. When a person is dealing with their own fears, anxieties, and desires, how much energy is left for dealing with what’s actually happening?

Stop and think about what you’re capable of achieving. Up to now, your capacities have been constrained by constant inner struggles. Imagine what would happen if your awareness was free to focus only on the events actually taking place. You would have no noise going on inside. If you lived like this, you could do anything. Your capabilities would be exponential compared to what you’ve ever experienced. If you could bring this level of awareness and clarity to everything you do, your life would change.

So, as your path, you take on the work of using life to let go of your resistance. Relationships are a great way to work with yourself. Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

The same is true in your daily work. Daily work is fun. In fact, it’s easy. Your work is just what you do with yourself during the day while you’re spinning on a planet through empty space. If you want to be content and enjoy your work, you have to let go of yourself and let events flow through you. Your real work is what is left to do after all else passes through.

Once the personal energies pass through you, the world becomes a different place. People and events will appear different to you. You will realize that you have talents and abilities you never saw before. Your whole view of life will change. Every single thing in this world will look like it’s been transformed. This happens because as you let go in one situation, it affects your clarity for other situations. For example, let’s say you’re afraid of dogs. You come to realize that other people aren’t afraid, and they make it through life. Since you’ve been afraid your whole life, you suffered while others didn’t. That suffering had no meaning. So you decide to work with your fear and relax when you see a dog. The way to work with resistance is by relaxing. That act of relaxing through your personal resistance not only changes your relationship with dogs, it changes your relationship with everything. Your soul has now learned how to let disturbing energies pass through. The next time somebody says or does something you don’t like, you automatically treat it the same as you did the fear of dogs. This process of relaxing through resistance is beneficial to everything in your life. This is because it directly addresses how to keep your heart open when it is trying to close.

Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself. It is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. It’s about not resisting energies as they pass through you. If you have difficulty doing this, don’t get down on yourself. Just keep working with it. It’s the work of a lifetime to become that open, that complete, and that whole.