Yesterday, while having lunch with a dear friend of mine, we stumbled into a conversation about "letting go", the culmination of which was a totally brilliant analogy, made by said friend, that actually resolved for me a burning inner conflict that has been bouncing around in me for years, literally...years. (I will include genius-like analogy at the end of this post).
I housesat for this friend not too long ago, and while there took the liberty of perusing her bookshelves, upon which I found the following book. Cheesy title, I know, and the guy who wrote it is named "Guy", also cheesy, but my friend owned the book, and said friend is a voracious reader, and ivy-league educated to boot, so I trusted her judgment and set to reading.
This book begins with a story about an archeologist. This archeologist has spent his whole life looking for this one ancient temple (full of treasure or something), which no one has ever been able to find. And one day, after years of searching, this archeologist gets a hot tip. This temple, it's rumored, is buried in a mountain which the archeologist is going to have to tunnel through in order to reach said temple. And this archeologist, being the adventurous type, decides he is going to do just that. But the tunneling is really hard. It's not a very stable environment and things keep caving in and he has to rebuild his tunnel over and over again. But he is determined to find this temple. So he digs and digs, it takes him months but he's just--he won't give up. And one day he gets to this point where he's too far in to turn back, and everything in the tunnel starts to cave in around him. All he can do is use whatever energy he has left (after months of digging) to throw himself up against the tunnel's center support beam, which stops the caving, but also means he is literally holding the tunnel together all by himself, with the force of his body. And as he's doing this, a thought occurs to him...as he's there, trying to hold the tunnel together with his bare hands, trying not to DIE...and the thought is:
"Why not just let go?"
And of course he thinks this is a crazy suicidal thought, but he can't stop thinking it...it's pretty persistent. So, deliriously tired from trying to hold this tunnel together, he does...he just...lets go. And everything starts caving in around him and he's pretty certain that he's just signed his own death warrant. But he hasn't--he doesn't die. And when the dust clears and everything settles he looks up, and there, right above him is the roof of the temple he's been looking for. He had been inside it the entire time--tunneling through the very thing he'd been searching for!
Now, I don't know if my re-telling is nearly as effective, but when I read that story I was so moved...I recognized it in a visceral way...that feeling of holding everything together, just trying to dig and manuever and keep the structure intact, while all the while there is this little voice saying, "why not just let go?" I recognized it. In my bones.
And my friend who I was lunching with and I got to talking about this book, and we had felt the same way about this opening story (she and I are similar in many ways--both of us carry a bit of the overachiever in our DNA) and so we began to talk about it--about this mysterious "letting go"...about exactly how it's done and what it means. A subject I never tire of exploring, but which always, for me, meets the same impasse.
The way I see it there are two camps, on this subject of letting go--one which says, you know, the whole DEAL is about letting go...that all of spiritual practice is really just about relaxing, and that the letting go is king. And then there's another camp which says, no no, it's all about ALIGNING--it's about lining up with "the divine" or whatever you want to call it, and that it's an active process, one of figuring out what you want and then lining up with that desire in order to find liberation. To me these things feel in contradiction, and I find myself swinging from one to the other...neither ever feeling totally comfortable. Never quite sure if I'm supposed to be doing less or doing more.
And this is where my friend's brilliant analogy comes in.
First let me say that my friend is a gifted actress and singer, and over the last several years she has become more and more devoted to her singing, practicing every single day, and so it's not surprising that right now her vocal work is the lens through which she is veiwing the world.
"Singing is the only way I can think to explain this." She said.
(Surpriiiiiiiiise, surprise).
She said that you have to have energy in order to produce sound...you can't just sit there with your mouth open and wait for music to come out...you have to engage...you have to move air from one spot in your body to another and that has to be active, and conscious. BUT, she said, you also have to relax the right parts of your anatomy in order to produce the sounds you want. If your vocal chords are tense, they aren't going to be able to vibrate, and if they can't vibrate, they won't produce clear sound. There has to be an openness, in your mouth and your head, in order for the sound to be rich.
So, she said, it's definitely not possible to produce with apathy...but you also have to relax, and the things you have to relax are usually the things that people habitually tense. For her, she said, the letting go is really about learning to let go of the things you hold on to which get in the way. That archeologist still had a quest...he was still actively seeking something, with energy...but what he didn't realize is that he didn't have to do ALL the work himself. And she, my dear brilliant friend, if she attempted to force the vocal chords do what they so naturally do without her input...she would never be able to produce beautiful sounds.
I don't know if I found this explanation so enlightening because she used something I don't do, singing, as the form through which to explain, but I thought it was one of the best explanations I had ever heard about this sweet-spot/middle-ground of both doing and not-doing. Doing, without over-doing.
And it made me think of yoga, and of how this play of muscularity and openness is constantly happening--how the body is constantly in dialouge--you're seeking out the pose, you're seeking out the pose and then you find it and in order to let it sing, you have to release into it--and that's the real moment of connection. Your body is lined up, but you are letting go of everything that is unnecessary...because if muscles are being recruited that aren't required, you'll feel it, and you'll feel it in the form of tension or aggravation or just plain ol' pain.
And same goes for singing.
And same goes for...everything.
It's not about just reeeeelaxing into some lump of goo on the floor, it's about doing with trust--trusting that your body knows what needs to be done (or your vocal chords or your heart or whatever it is) and that you do not have to do all the work yourself. You do not have to hold the entire tunnel together, and in fact, if you do...you're probably going to miss the exact thing you're looking for...
