Third Week of Advent, Tuesday: Letting Go

In the Heart of Winter: A Meditator’s Guide to Advent

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us now go… 
—Luke 2:15

Many of the Advent stories involve leaving home and venturing forth to meet the unknown. The change of seasons before us reflects the call to inner transformation. In the West, the muted landscape of late autumn is particularly beautiful. The stark contrast of the last deep colored leaves that remain on the deciduous trees against the dark grey skies announces: change is coming! With the support of the cold and the wind, the few remaining leaves drift, twirl, and dive toward earth. This exquisite dance of letting go is a prelude to the stillness of winter. The bare trees will work in silence, gather inner sustenance, and burst forth with wild green in the spring. The letting go must come first.

I suspect most of us could learn this very simple lesson from nature: letting go is essential. For us, it must happen on many levels—letting go of things we no longer use or need, letting go of old ideas that no longer serve us, and letting go of our attachments to particular outcomes. The deepest letting go is freeing ourselves from identification with the false self. The Buddha said, “You are as the yellow leaf…What will you take with you?”

The world of nature, which includes our bodies and our minds, constantly changes. Only our essential, spiritual nature remains. After the metaphor of the yellow leaf, the Buddha concluded, “All things arise and pass away. But the awakened awake forever.” Our venturing forth into the unknown is paradoxically to meet that which has always been and ever will be.

Practice:

Contemplate the nature of change in nature and in your life. How do you relate to change? Are you able to welcome it? Meditate until you experience That which does not change, the ground of being. How does the experience of changelessness affect our ability to move through life’s seasons and changes?

Contemplate:

God works without instrument and without image. And the freer you are from images the more receptive you are to [God’s] interior operation…the closer you are to it. All things must be forsaken. –Meister Eckhart

Reflect:

Am I trying to hold on to something that is ready to change? Am I willing to let go?