Jesus has been known to say several times that “You must lose your life to find your life, and if you do not let it go, you will never find it.” Writing this we’re on the eve of Good Friday, too. Makes me think about how Christ had to lose his life to find his life, the everlasting one.
First we die before we truly live.
We’re most used to hearing we live then we die.
When we’re living from only one aspect of ourselves, we just live and die. It’s very true.
However, as we go through spiritual growth and personal development, we begin to integrate ourselves. We might have to die or lose the identity we’ve had for a long time. We might have to experience a great personal transformation and be reborn to a new reality, one where we’re not who we used to be.
With the veil of illusion pulled back, you find true life. Life in the kingdom, whatever that version of heaven looks like for you.
You lost your life to find your life.
I read a great article recently in the Spring 2011/Vol. 23 edition of the Light of Consciousness, Journal of Spiritual Awakening that I’m sharing an excerpt. The article is based on the 6 CD audios course, “The Art of Letting Go”, by Richard Rohr.
This excerpt here is about letting go of the false self (aka ego or personality) and becoming the true self (the soul).
“So you see why we are talking about letting go. If you are not practiced at letting go, you will hold onto your false self and never discover your true self. Many have said that we are all suffering from a terrible case of mistaken identity. We think we are what we have created, what our culture, our religion and our mistakes have created. We are, but we are much more than that. That “more than that” is what probably most of us mean by the soul. You do not have to create your soul. It is your inner, deepest, blueprint, your divine DNA. It is who you are before you did anything right or wrong. It is your deepest hidden and true self in God — the self beyond observation, beyond reflection, the self that can never be an object of your attention or a think that you can improve on or punish. It is only experienced when you live in a moment of pure presence, when you are not labeling, judging, analyzing, critiquing, rewarding or punishing. There, Merton says, like a small, shy animal, the true self shows itself.”
“The false self, the ego as Freud called it, ends up being the great illusion. It is not bad. You simply have to recognize that it is only a part. You do not let go of the part, you simply move beyond the part to the whole. …” – Richard Rohr
