You have probably heard that spirituality is about simply letting go of your ego and letting your original face appear spontaneously – that you don’t need to do anything to become who you are because you are already perfect.
By Kenneth Sørensen, MA, Psychosynthesis
As promising as this sounds, it is just not real. Letting go of the ego demands a huge effort, as the story of Buddha so vividly demonstrates. Letting go might sound like an effortless action, like dropping a stone out of your hand, but it is not that simple. The art of becoming who we are – realising our true nature as consciousness itself, demands a continual practice of dispassion and detachment because the root cause of suffering is our identification with desire and illusion. To wake up to our original face requires strenuous acts of will, making conscious choices to disengage from the multitudes of identifications we have created in past lives and in the present. Waking up takes discipline, discrimination and a one-pointed purpose to strive for that kind of attainment – which is the exact opposite of what is often proposed.
We are perfect from a transcendental point of view
Yes, we might argue that we are perfect from a transcendental point of view because we all belong to the One Source behind all manifestations of life. And, indeed, we are pure being, part of the innermost life force that connects and upholds all there is; we are the ground of being which lives in the bosom of the heart, and when we dive into this bottomless ground of love we get the essential experience of being immortal, timeless, perfect and without origin or end. This is true.
However, we are also a manifested spiritual being having a human experience in an evolving and changing universe. We are consciousness embedded in flesh, desires and mental thoughtforms, which clouds and inhibits our divine nature. From this perspective, we are not perfect because we cannot bring our divinity through. Some argue that we must transcend these limitations and escape into heaven, nirvana and nothingness through the act of surrender and letting go – but what if it’s the other way around? Perhaps we are here to bring divine power, love and light into the world and, if this is the case, our goal is to transcend by descending as a spiritual being. We touch heaven and let it flow through. We let go of our attachments to the little love, so our personality becomes a refined channel for the big love.
This is not an easy task; it is actually the supreme creative act to transform ourselves into a refined vessel – a personality – which has the purity of a diamond to reflect our true spiritual being.
The path of purification
Some spiritual traditions call this the path of purification because we know that a diamond takes millions of years in the becoming, and so do we. We need the pressure of life’s circumstances and the polishing of our rough edges so we can become transparent to the divine light which we essentially are. We need to expand our love and wisdom to include wider and wider spheres of life, from the egocentric to the cosmo-centric.
This noble path of purification demands all our effort and will-to-become-a-diamond and all of the unconditional love of the heart. We need the fiery will of action and the watery surrender of being in order to become all we have potential to be in action.
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