Can you let go? Can you take a leap of faith and become voluntarily passive in front of the life that lives you right now? Becoming voluntarily passive is a notion that comes from Gurdjieff and has greatly illuminated the role that my ego plays in daily suffering. Here's how I understand the notion in a nutshell: Every day I am impacted by life. I (little I/ego) instantly judge those impacts as being something pleasant or unpleasant. Based on these judgements I react to the impacts in all sorts of neurotic ways to keep myself from experiencing the unpleasantness or to grasp the pleasantness. Essentially, I never actually feel the resonance of life's impacts in my body because I instantly judge and react. This ends up keeping me a few steps away from life and as a result I feel estranged, isolated, depressed, anxious, crazy (which I judge and react to and the whole thing starts again). A simple example: I get behind someone really slow in traffic. I feel anxious to get to my destination. But, I don't stop at simply allowing the anxiety to pass through, instead, because I don't like the feeling of being anxious or held up I react, speeding past, road raging, trying desperately to discharge the unpleasant feeling. Multiply this by a hundred impacts a day and I end up wound in a bundle of judgements and reactions divorced from the feeling of life moving within me. The point in this example isn't just that I end up with a speeding ticket or in an accident but more fundamentally that I lose my onnection to the feeling of my aliveness.
What happens if the ego concedes and instead of trying to control life, becomes voluntarily passive in the face of it? Ego's got a new job: voluntary passivity. I feel the anxiety, staying connected to the force of my life and in staying, listening, feeling and seeing something new, wiser, stiller arises to help me move through life. There is something else that waits to live you, will your ego move over to let it through?
It feels to me that voluntary passivity is a leap of faith. The last willful act of the ego is to let go of it's will. Thy Will be done, not my will. In class lately I've been playing with how to cultivate this letting go and share below a meditation practice to help:
Laying comfortably flat on the floor begin to feel the force of gravity. Become aware of the places that you are tense, up tight moving away from it's force. Begin to play with the idea of allow the force of gravity to fully affect your body. Become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of gravity. Watch the resistance, but commit again. What is it like to completely let go to this force?
Spend five minutes, fifty minutes, with this, watching how you move in and out of voluntary passivity.
And then, experience the breath. My yoga teacher friend, Treva, the other day said, "let your breath find you". Can you also let it breathe you? Breath moves, uncontrolled and unforced, in and out over and over again. Can you become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of your breath? Watch the resistance, but over and over again, let your tired ego fall. Do you notice that even when you're not controlling the breath it continues to move? Something besides your will is at play. Can you let it dance?
Finally, after many minutes of letting the breath breathe you begin to feel the other forces within your body. Emotions, physical sensations, then begin to become voluntarily passive in the face of these dynamic forces. They move, they ebb and flow, and you simply receive. Watch as thoughts come to you, then let them through you. Watch as emotions and sensations come to you then let them through you. Reassert the last act of your ego's will time and again - I become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of my LIFE.
When the ego moves out of the way, what does it make space for?
What happens if the ego concedes and instead of trying to control life, becomes voluntarily passive in the face of it? Ego's got a new job: voluntary passivity. I feel the anxiety, staying connected to the force of my life and in staying, listening, feeling and seeing something new, wiser, stiller arises to help me move through life. There is something else that waits to live you, will your ego move over to let it through?
It feels to me that voluntary passivity is a leap of faith. The last willful act of the ego is to let go of it's will. Thy Will be done, not my will. In class lately I've been playing with how to cultivate this letting go and share below a meditation practice to help:
Laying comfortably flat on the floor begin to feel the force of gravity. Become aware of the places that you are tense, up tight moving away from it's force. Begin to play with the idea of allow the force of gravity to fully affect your body. Become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of gravity. Watch the resistance, but commit again. What is it like to completely let go to this force?
Spend five minutes, fifty minutes, with this, watching how you move in and out of voluntary passivity.
And then, experience the breath. My yoga teacher friend, Treva, the other day said, "let your breath find you". Can you also let it breathe you? Breath moves, uncontrolled and unforced, in and out over and over again. Can you become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of your breath? Watch the resistance, but over and over again, let your tired ego fall. Do you notice that even when you're not controlling the breath it continues to move? Something besides your will is at play. Can you let it dance?
Finally, after many minutes of letting the breath breathe you begin to feel the other forces within your body. Emotions, physical sensations, then begin to become voluntarily passive in the face of these dynamic forces. They move, they ebb and flow, and you simply receive. Watch as thoughts come to you, then let them through you. Watch as emotions and sensations come to you then let them through you. Reassert the last act of your ego's will time and again - I become voluntarily passive in the face of the force of my LIFE.
When the ego moves out of the way, what does it make space for?
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