What can be taken away?

We hear from the teaching that we have to be willing to give it all up–and that frightens many people. But the only “thing” to be released is the belief in the separate I. Without that false belief, life takes care of itself and rolls along quite beautifully, and with an ordinary simplicity.

It is true that other belief systems may fall away–mine dropped quite unexpectedly. My carefully constructed house of cards collapsed. But I didn’t give up my beliefs–they fell away on their own accord, rather like a cliff of ice shearing off a glacier. I believed in Santa Claus, and then discovered that my parents were the ones eating the cookies and drinking the milk that I had so carefully set out. And when I peered up the hole in the chimney, I realized my Santa–the jolly fat, forgiving Santa of my imagination–couldn’t fit down it. The illusion–no matter how delicious, no matter how much we want to believe it, simply doesn’t hold up any longer.

However, the imagined pain or loss that we are sure will accompany this shift simply isn’t there. Nothing can be taken away.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2013
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