Freedom is insight and letting go

 A Sufi teaching tells of the man who visited a great mystic to find out how to let go of his chains of attachment and his prejudices. Instead of answering him directly, the mystic jumped to his feet and bolted to a nearby pillar, flung his arms around it, grasping the marble surface as he screamed, "Save me from this pillar! Save me from this pillar!"

 

The man who had asked the question could not believe what he saw. He thought the mystic was mad. The shouting soon brought a crowd of people. "Why are you doing that?", the man asked. "I came to you to ask a spiritual question because I thought you were wise, but obviously you're crazy. You are holding the pillar, the pillar is not holding you. You can simply let go."

 

The mystic let go of the pillar and said to the man, "If you can understand that, you have your answer. Your chains of attachment are not holding you, you are holding them. You can simply let go."

 

Dick Sutphen

 

We all have our attachments, romantic, sexual, professional, possessions and desires, just as we have our aversions and fears. If it would be only so simple to see that it is us who are clinging and all we have to do it to let go. There is an energy attached to our clinging, forged by countless conditioning of this lifetime, as well as human society more general over the eons. What to do?

 

A good step in the right direction is the realization that the attachment and the aversion is us. There is no stepping out of who we are. We have to own it. Yet, the very realization that we are this attachment sets something free in us. We discover an energy free of clinging and avoiding. We literally can see an imaginary that we mistook as us clinging to the pillar screaming for help. That’s when we can let go. Freedom is insight and letting go.