A listener emailed me and said that he was reading my newest book The Gospel of Nonduality, and he had a question. He wrote: “The question that keeps popping up as I read is how does one die to self (or forget self or get out of the way, etc.) How does one completely surrender?” I responded back to him saying that this is the most important question one could ask. It showed me that he was serious about this.
I get a lot of questions that miss the point. This man went directly to the main point. He wasn’t messing around. He wanted to know how. When Jesus encountered a man like this he responded, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” This is what it is all about. You have to keep your focus on the main thing and not get distracted by all the sidetracks in spirituality and religion.
I answered the man this way in part: “The answer is that there is no technique to die to self. It is something that happens rather than something we bring about. It is not a matter of which spiritual discipline works best. It is all a matter of intent, perseverance and courage.”
I would like to expound on that answer in this episode. How do we die to self? How do we wake up? How do we break through this world of seeming duality into nondual awareness? To use terms from Eastern Traditions, how are we enlightened? How are we liberated?
A listener emailed me and said that he was reading my newest book The Gospel of Nonduality, and he had a question. He wrote: “The question that keeps popping up as I read is how does one die to self (or forget self or get out of the way, etc.) How does one completely surrender?” I responded back to him saying that this is the most important question one could ask. It showed me that he was serious about this.
I get a lot of questions that miss the point. This man went directly to the main point. He wasn’t messing around. He wanted to know how. When Jesus encountered a man like this he responded, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” This is what it is all about. You have to keep your focus on the main thing and not get distracted by all the sidetracks in spirituality and religion.
I answered the man this way in part: “The answer is that there is no technique to die to self. It is something that happens rather than something we bring about. It is not a matter of which spiritual discipline works best. It is all a matter of intent, perseverance and courage.”
I would like to expound on that answer in this episode. How do we die to self? How do we wake up? How do we break through this world of seeming duality into nondual awareness? To use terms from Eastern Traditions, how are we enlightened? How are we liberated?
The Courage to Be
This topic originated as a question asked by one of my listeners. I read every email that comes to me, and I respond to them all. I do not usually respond to comments posted on my blog site or YouTube videos. I don’t even see comments posted to the podcast services, if there are any. But whenever someone takes the time to email me directly, I respond. I answer questions. Sometimes the answer will turn in an episode on mu podcast and You Tube channel. That is the case this time.
A listener emailed me and said that he was reading my newest book The Gospel of Nonduality, and he had a question. He wrote: “The question that keeps popping up as I read is how does one die to self (or forget self or get out of the way, etc.) How does one completely surrender?” I responded back to him saying that this is the most important question one could ask. It showed me that he was serious about this.
I get a lot of questions that miss the point. This man went directly to the main point. He wasn’t messing around. He wanted to know how. When Jesus encountered a man like this he responded, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” This is what it is all about. You have to keep your focus on the main thing and not get distracted by all the sidetracks in spirituality and religion.
I answered the man this way in part: “The answer is that there is no technique to die to self. It is something that happens rather than something we bring about. It is not a matter of which spiritual discipline works best. It is all a matter of intent, perseverance and courage.”
I would like to expound on that answer in this episode. How do we die to self? How do we wake up? How do we break through this world of seeming duality into nondual awareness? To use terms from Eastern Traditions, how are we enlightened? How are we liberated?
Language is clumsy in talking about this because there is no I or we to be enlightened or awakened or even to die. We wake up from the I and we. We die to the I into an awareness without an individual sense of identity that we call the self or ego. As I said in my email, there is no technique. No three easy step program to Enlightenment. So surefire proven method. There cannot be because there is nothing to do, nothing to accomplish, nowhere to go spiritually. It is all a matter of noticing what is already present.
Dying to self - or seeing through the self - is something that happens. In my life it happened when I was not expecting it. I have related in other episodes that dying to self happened in three different experiences during my life. Each one of them was a spontaneous dissolution of the sense of a individual self. These three experiences happened twenty years apart, 40 years from the first to the third.
The first was brief but powerful and happened out of the blue when I was in my early 20’s. I encountered the Divine, and in Isaiah’s words, “I was undone.” I ceased to be, and it left me literally trembling in my shoes. The second occurrence happened twenty years later at a spiritual retreat where I was in training to be a spiritual director. It literally shook me to the root of my being.
It was a terrifying experience. I powerfully experienced death of self. I no longer existed. That experience could not be forgotten, although I tried to do so. I abandoned contemplative spiritual practice and immersed myself in conservative evangelical Christianity. But it didn’t work. You cannot forget something like that. Truth breaks through even the tough shell of Evangelicalism, which for me was a way to hide from True God.
The third time, which happened forty years after the first, was different. It was a repeat of the first two in a way. Fear definitely was present again, but it became acceptance. This acceptance is what I call faith. Paul Tillich calls it absolute faith when it is faith in the absolute and not a lesser god. I accepted fear and my death and embraced it. The fear that was the main characteristic of the first two episodes gave way to peace. In the nine years since that happened, there has been continued opening up and exploration of the fullness that was seen and continues to be seen. These years have been a time to find a way to articulate it in some way. Initially there were no words, but in time words came.
So when people ask me “How?” How do I bring this about? How do I die to self? How do I see through the self? How do I wake up? I say just keep on doing whatever you are doing. If what you are doing has brought you to this question, it will happen. When it happens you see it was not because of anything that you did. To use the Christian term for this, it is grace. So here are these two important terms: faith and grace.
I say there is nothing we can do to bring it about. Yet I don’t think it would have happened if I did not make the quest for the Pearl of Great Price (a Jesus called it) my Ultimate Concern, to use Paul Tillich’s term. I have made the spiritual quest the prime focus of my life. Everything else comes second. That is what Jesus was asking for from his twelve disciples, telling them to drop everything they were doing and follow him. That is what I did. Thank God, my wife was fine with that. For that was her passion as well. She loves God with all her heart and mind and soul and strength. So we were blessed to find each other.
I told this listener that there were no techniques to bring about spiritual awakening, but there are three qualities that help. They are intent, perseverance, and courage. It does not matter what religious and spiritual practices you do, but how you do them is important. The intent has to be Truth. This has to be the passion of your life. If spirituality is a pastime or hobby, then find another hobby – go skydiving or video game or something. This is not a pastime. This is a passion. The Buddha referred to this as right intent or right resolve.
The second quality is perseverance. This quest is long. This is a marathon, not a sprint. This is a lifetime pursuit, not just a phase of life. Jesus told parables about this, like the women would not stop coming to a judge until she got justice. And a man who would not stop knocking on the door of his neighbor at midnight until he got out of bed and give him what he wanted.
Jesus taught, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.” The Greek text actually says, “Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.” That is perseverance. It took me forty years before the door opened. Forty years to see the door was always open and there is no door. The Buddha called this right effort.
The third quality is courage. “The Courage to Be” is the title of a book by Paul Tillich, a book has been important to be. One of my religion professors in college was a disciple of Tillich at the University of Chicago. Tillich’s thinking has influenced me and I use a lot of his terms. Courage is needed because spiritual awakening involves facing death. You need the courage of a soldier going into battle. Perhaps more courage, because a soldier does not plan to die. In the spiritual quest you will die. So it is more like going on a suicide mission.
The spiritual life is to die to self. Jesus said it over and over. He said we have to lose our live to gain it. Lose self to gain eternal life. He said that to be his disciples we have to pick up our cross and follow him. Jesus was using death by crucifixion as a metaphor for the spiritual quest. We are talking about death of the separate self.
The death of the self takes courage. I was never more afraid in my life than the second time I clearly experienced the death of self. It was “fear and trembling” to use Kierkegaard’s phrase. It scared me so much that I ran from it. I tried to deny it happened. I was scared enough to retreat back into a safe evangelical form of Christianity, where the self is prized is thought to live for all eternity. It was a pleasant delusion, but I had already seen the truth. Once the Truth sets you free, as Jesus said, you are free indeed. There is no going back into the bondage.
So you need courage. The courage to be. The courage to be Being Itself and not just a human being. The courage to be one with the Ground of Being. The courage to look in the mirror and see exactly what you are and not flinch from that vision. As Paul said, to remain faithful to the heavenly vision. It is so tempting to settle for religion or spirituality. Just enough spiritual sight to make you feel better and take some of the edge off the suffering of life. If that is what you are looking for there are plenty of teachers, preachers, gurus, and self-helpers that will sell you a program. Pay the money and take their course. I am not talking about spiritual self-improvement. I am talking about the end of self.
This takes courage. It take the courage to die to everything you think you are. Everything you think the world is. You die and then see that you are Life Itself. That is Eternal Life. You are the Goal you have been reaching for. You are the One you have been searching for. It takes courage to be.