Day Twenty-Nine: What to Leave Behind: Part of "me" or all of "me"

Any change means a small or large death. Any deep change can almost feel like a death to the “me” personality behind which we hide, sometimes from others, sometimes from life, always from our really self.

Inside us is a beautiful and real part. Call it your Self, call it the innocent one, call it our awareness, call it God, or the Child of God. It is without a name.

Names are what we call each other, in both senses of that phrase. But who we all are is deeper and quieter than all that.

And sometimes the world gets too heavy with us, and we suffer and to leave that suffering behind seems like the hardest thing in the world.

Strange, because it would seem that suffering is what we would most prefer to give up. Sure, if we could give it up and stay just the same. If we could give it up, and not, as Jesus asked the rich man, “give up our possessions.” In this case, the possessions are our fixed ideas and almost always the bitter and killing us conviction that we are Right.

We are Right, and until the world shapes up, we are going to keep being Right, and even if that causes immense suffering, we’d rather be right than happy. Often. Not always.

And when we let go of that “right-ness” that “so and so done me wrong” it is like a little death.

And on the other side of that death: resurrection into love.

First we are angry/ hurt/ resentful/ bitter because “so and so did us wrong.” Maybe we do the work of Byron Katie, and see, notice, feel, understand the difference at question #3: Who are we and how do we feel and live and react when we attach to the thought that “so and so done me wrong”

That questions makes life one way. Questions #4: Who would we be without the story that “so and so done me wrong”? creates a whole new person.

Or rather liberates that real shining clear happy and loving self that is our Self.

But on the way, it can feel like a death to let go of the attachment to our belief. Death, death, death, scary, scary, scary and then we do it, and the old crusty worthless judge dies away, and we are reborn.

So today, die before you die, as many times as you can and be reborn each time closer and closer to who you really are.

Good.