Holding On and Letting Go
by the Rev. Robert McCluskey,
minister of the Swedenborgian Church in New York City
In the June, 1996 Issue of Our Daily Bread

Our New Testament reading gives us two images: both about holding on and letting go; about holding on to God's presence in our lives, to heavenly influences, and letting go of the ill will and illusion that is generated by our proprium [ego].

The ability to let go of certain attachments is crucial to our spiritual growth. Still, for most of us it is a complex, subtle and often difficult task. Why is it so difficult. We all hold on to things we should let go of - past regrets or pleasures, grudges, fears, pride, etc. We also let go too easily of things we should hold on to - the love of truth, our sense of compassion. In fact, the most important things we should hold on to in life are love and truth; and yet these are precisely the most difficult. The things we should most let go of are evil and falsity; and these are equally difficult.

In Matthew we hear the Lord calling to us to move forward into the next stage of spiritual growth: "Let us go over to the other side." The first response of the unregenerate mind, represented by the scribe, is unqualified commitment: "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go!" We all know what it is like to be so inspired by spiritual truth that we feel sure we can follow. But notice Jesus' reply.

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." In its spiritual sense, the Son of man represents the Lord as to the Word, revelation: Divine truth accommodated to human understanding. Jesus was referring on one level to his own treatment as a representation of how the people misunderstood and mistreated the Word. On a different level, though he was referring to the more universal teaching that Divine truth cannot coexist with or dwell in the unregenerate mind, in one who looks only to self in all things. (Arcana Coelestia #9807) With such a person, or attitude, Divine truth is all but extinguished. The motives and principles of the proprium [self] cannot reflect God's love, because they are based entirely on how things appear; it is the realm of appearance, ego, and deception. Foxes have holes to hide in and birds are protected by nests. The deceptive ways of the proprium are not easily found out, and its ideas are easily justified through rationalization; but the Son of man, Divine truth, represents a state of openness and light, and stands as easy prey to the lower levels of the mind.

In its unregenerate state, the human mind is incapable of following the Lord to a higher life, regardless of what it says. It keeps us holding on tightly to our self-image and world view, so tightly we are unable even to know where the journey will take us, let alone hold on to the Lord. The Lord's journey is inward, and involves the apparent death of the ego.

Next a disciple, also eager to follow, asks, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And the Lord responds, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead." While this may seem harsh in its literal sense, the inner meaning reveals two very important, and very compassionate lessons. The first refers to the fourth commandment, to honor our mother and father. The church teaches that relative to the Lord's power, an earthly father is "dead." (Arcana #3703) We can only truly honor our parents when we acknowledge that the good and truth they give us comes ultimately from God, not from them. We must never be so attached to our parents that we would violate God's truth and love.

But there is another, related teaching here. One's father refers, on a larger scale, to those ideas and ways of thinking that are rooted in our proprium, that exert such a strong and compelling influence on how we feel, think, speak, and act. It is the authoritative voice of our lower self, which we find so hard to disobey. In other instances Christ spoke of his presence as bringing dissension within the family, turning child against parent. Unquestioned obedience to the thinking of our proprium must be left behind: We can't fix it, or ultimately make it compatible with God's truth.

In the language of Scripture, the word "dead" refers to that which is devoid of God's love and truth; it refers to a life rooted in ill will and deceit. The father to whom we cling, even in death, is our rigid expectations, prejudices, and beliefs that are based in appearances, and by which we define who we are. We are created to grow and move more and more away from this way of living, and into one that is open, free, and caring. But before we can do that, a new start is called for; we cannot reconcile God's new life with our old one. What is it we so identify with that we cannot let it go and leave it behind? This passage suggests that more than any external attachment, it is our own belief system, our own way of looking at the world, that we hold on to most tightly. We don't want to go over to the other side if it  means leaving the familiar shores of our externally grounded world view. But we cannot do both.

To detached ourselves from the influence of our proprium involves more than simply looking at the world objectively. It requires us to look at ourselves objectively. It means allowing ourselves to be seen in the light of God's truth. We do not do this willingly; but it must be our choice.

The Lord is that inner presence, deep within us, who sees and knows us as we really are, devoid of pretense and false appearances. He longingly reveals us to ourselves, with the one hope that we might recognize and acknowledge our need of Him enough to let go of our attachments and willingly turn to the light.

Part of the difficulty in letting go of the proprium is the paradox involved. I mentioned that one of the most important things we can hold on to is truth, and yet it is the most difficult. We tend to understand truth in terms of science and certainty; we confuse truth with facts, information, and external knowledge. But our perceptions of the world are only an appearance; and when we take them for reality, for how things really are, we turn our experience into a false appearance, and suffer the consequences. "A war horse is a vain hope for victory, and a king is not saved by his army." The proprium cannot bring us peace from those things that bother us deeply.

But truth is of a different order: It involves openness, growth, movement; it is a matter of intention, commitment of choosing what we love; wisdom is a matter of the heart, not just the head. Truth that is not grounded in motives of love and service is not truth at all, but the false appearance of the proprium. Truth is more than having the right answers: it's having a good reason for having the right answer. Truth is a form of openness, clarity, emptiness, and stillness. Thinking from our propriums, holding on to appearances, will lead us to falsity, and we will find ourselves attached and rooted in old, limited ways of thinking and being. But, by letting go of appearances and holding on to God's presence, we are gradually, and eventually, led to truth.

The proprium understands heaven as the pursuit of happiness; that is, happiness as defined according to its terms. In its view, things are good or evil depending on how they support our self-image. And so we are taught to "hold on"; to work hard, never to give up, to make something of ourselves, etc. But all of this is based on the assumption that we are in fact autonomous, and that our inner well-being is entirely up to us. We know the result; the pursuit of happiness becomes an endless grind that never leads to heaven.

The spirit understands heaven as the gift of joy; something we can only experience or "gain" by letting go of our own "pursuit of happiness." Ultimately, it is the Lord who holds us in good and truth, and we who must let go of our effort to form heaven on our own. The trick of heaven is to let go so that we may be held by God. This letting go is like spiritual gravity, falling to the heights; it is the leap of faith needed to experience an entirely new perspective, one grounded in freedom and light, in which we can see that the illusions we strive for, and hurt others in the name of, are in reality dead and lifeless.

Another word for letting go is submission; this is the meaning of the world Islam, and the inner meaning of baptism, which literally means immersion. Submission, or complete and unconditional commitment, is a constant of spiritual growth. It is a principle that runs throughout all traditions, which states that we must let go completely of the lower self if we are to attain (grasp, get hold of) the new life of our higher selves. The dead must bury their own dead; the proprium must be left to pursue its own lifeless goals, and we must intentionally refrain from buying into them.

We are called to examine ourselves, to reflect on our motives and intentions, to take stock of where we are and where we are going. To look within ourselves, critically and clearly, with humility, sincerity, and care. To allow God to let us see ourselves in the light of Divine truth, as we really are: to acknowledge - that is, admit to ourselves - that which we need to let go of, and that which we need to hold on to more tightly. For this we need God's help, and each others', because it really is the last thing we want to do.

The point is not to feel guilty: It is to get rid of evil and falsity, to be free of them, not burdened by them. The experience of acknowledging how far we have strayed from God's love and truth is one stage of getting to a more positive state. A good part of repentance is to reconnect with the truth that we are only vessels: All good and truth is from God, just as all evil and falsity is from hell. We own nothing, and cannot hold on to our lives even if we tried. But once we let go, we find that God's truth is there for us.

Holding on to God's truth makes us wiser than our enemies, because it raises us above the level of hostility and violence. Holding on to God's truth makes us wiser than the elderly, because it raised us above the level of mere experience and external authority. Holding on to God's truth makes us wiser than our teachers, because it leads us from speculation to certainty, from mere knowledge to actual truth. Holding on to God's truth does all this, and more, because it reveals us to ourselves, and shows us a way out - by the way of letting go.

Scripture:

The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth - he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.

Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him; on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the Lord: He is our help and shield.. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in His holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:13-22

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, He gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." Another of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." 

Matthew 8:18-22

Reading from Swedenborg:

All who are in the hells are in the loves of self and the world, but all who are in the havens are in love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor, and these loves are direct opposites. Thos who are in the loves of self and of the world love nothing but what is their own [proprium], and what is the human's own is nothing but evil; but those who are in love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor do not love what is their own, for they love the Lord above self, and neighbor beyond self. Moreover, they are withheld from what is their own, and are held in the Lord's own [proprium], which is the Divine. Furthermore, all the delights of life are delights of love; the delights of the loves of self and of the world are the delights of various kinds of hatred, but the delights of love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor are the delights of various kinds of charity, and the former are the direct opposites of the later...Those who are in faith separated from charity have a like hatred against those who are in charity; which hatred is not manifested in this world but in the spiritual world when they become spirits.

Apocalypse Explained #758

Music: Pachebel and Me © 1999 Bruce DeBoer