Freedom from ‘us’ is the freedom to truly be.

Psychologically we are like a well-worn deck of cards. And some cards are more worn because we play them all the time. It’s a flat horizontal system. Over time, we study ourselves and learn our habits of mind, heart and body. This is like fanning out the cards so we can see all of them at once. We feel comfortable with our deck of cards and all our thumb marks. We walk, talk, think and feel playing the same cards over and over. And this is right action as well as the only action we can take. 

As we work on ourselves, we also try to clean up the worst stains on the cards. We work on negative emotions. Maybe we get a handle on some anxiety or anger. Maybe that becomes a reminding factor for us. And we learn to observe ourselves well enough to use our lives to feed our essence. We develop a positivity that includes self-remembering and steering clear of identifications when we can. 

But eventually we find ourselves out on the edge of this fan of cards, this field of self-observation. Sometimes intense friction brings us to this edge. Sometimes it’s recognition of the staleness of being ourselves or seeing that, as we are, our repertoire is really limited. Soon we find ourselves at the growing edge of our first line of work. We understand that we can’t grow by playing our well-worn set of cards. 

We are at that point described by the author of “The Cloud of Unknowing,” the anonymous English monk, where we see ourselves as “just a lump”, nothing more. Around us, we sense what he calls the Cloud of Unknowing. We want to leave this deck of cards, this flat horizontal experience. We want to follow the trail of finer hydrogens that leave behind the body, the known world, and our names. 

In my little metaphor, this is a vertical extension, a reach beyond the deck of cards, a prayer, a waiting. It’s a desire to reach for the deep pregnant silence that borders the normal experience of life. We realize that we are following the trail of finer and finer hydrogens. Hydrogens that we have known before but rarely. The experience had no name. But now we can begin to call them by words that remain symbols for something inexpressible: World 12, World 6, higher centers, the Gods. 

This is freedom from ourselves. This is freedom to be.