We Have to Let Go…

Every now and then I’m struck with bouts of existential angst. We live in a meaningless universe that doesn’t care for us, and when we die we no longer exist except as an idea in the minds of those who knew us.

Slowly, but with terrible certainty we lose everything we’re attached to. Every. Single. Thing. There are those who say that our mind is the only thing that cannot be taken away from us, but that not true either. We can slowly sink into dotardly old age losing our memory, our sharpness and clarity. If I live long enough, I will also lose my wife. I plan to get a dog sometime in the near future, but I’m only setting myself up to lose him or her in around a decade and a half.

We Gotta Learn to Let Go
We Gotta Learn to Let Go

I like my current environment and my lifestyle. But at any time I can lose my clients and struggle to find new ones. My income stream will be disrupted. So that too is on unstable ground. And in death, I lose my life and the very awareness I treasure so much. We’re all going to lose everything that matters to us. That we care for. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

This is depressing to say the least. But what to do? Such is the nature of the world we live in. I think if we could inculcate the ability of “letting go” in ourselves, this will ease our pain greatly. But how do we do that? More importantly, isn’t it possible that in the process of developing this ability we will lose some of the enjoyment of the present? I don’t know.

Here’s what Lao Tzu had to say in the Tao Teh Ching:

Therefore, the Sage manages his affairs without ado,
And spreads his teaching without talking.
He denies nothing to the teeming things.
He rears them, but lays no claim to them. 
He does his work, but sets no store by it.
He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it.

“He rears them but lays no claim to them”. That I think is they key. Not “laying claim” to anything. As long as we have this feeling that we have a god given right to something, we’re setting ourselves up for disaster and pain. Do I have a right to my wife’s presence in my life? No. The truth of the matter is that no matter how I may feel otherwise, we are separate entities. She has her own path and her own journey in this world.

There’s more. At some point of time, our universe will become a dead dark thing – forever. No activity or movement, no stars…no light. Already 95% of all stars that will ever be born have been created. The age of the stars will end and the eternity of night will begin. I won’t be here, but it’s sad nonetheless that all the things I love are doomed. I have to let go of all of that too. At least in thought. Because it’s all passing. Only death awaits everything.

If I can just practice letting go of everything I cherish, it’ll be so much easier. It’s aligning myself with reality anyway. Nothing’s stopping me from enjoying good things when they’re there, but loss is as much a part of existence. And I have to deal with it.

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40 thoughts on “We Have to Let Go…”

  1. Scientists are of the opinion that everything is just One Thing vibrating at different frequencies and in different ways. The fastest vibration is what i refer to as the software and the hardware becomes manifest as the vibrations slow down. It’s all completely scientific !

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  2. There is no one research paper; the whole of quantum physics deals with JUST THIS. Matter and energy are interchangeable.The wave aspect of light could be thought of as the software and the particle the hardware.The properties of elements are different only because of how the electrons are arranged in the outermost orbit of the atom which determines the frequency of vibration; otherwise there is no difference between atoms at all. i am incapable of making you understand it any further.

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    • In reply to tp

      Trust me…this rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics does not at all lend itself to your interpretation. You can’t view the wave as “software” just because it makes you feel better.

      Reply

  3. tp, if you are really interested in understanding the actual science and why it does not align to your interpretation of quantum physics vis-a-vis so-called universal consciousness, please go through the below links

    http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/QuantumConsciousness.pdf
    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_consciousness (for some reason, the article spells Quantum as Qsantum throughout)
    http://www.skepticblog.org/2009/11/16/deepak-chopra-mangles-quantum-mechanics-again/

    The point here is that we have irrefutable evidence that individual consciousness exists. We have irrefutable evidence that the source of the individual consciousness is the brain. We know that injuries to cerebral cortex and/or the reticular activating system on the brain stem can cause a total lack of consciousness depending on the level of injury. We know that during the Stages 3 and 4 of our Non-REM sleep, our consciousness is at its lowest because of hormones secreted by the brain

    However, we have, till today, a sum total of zero evidence for universal consciousness. We have zero evidence of the One Thing (whatever it is) and any vibrations that is apparently supposed to affect everything. I agree that an absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. However that does not mean that there is any basis for your claims.

    If you are basing your beliefs on any experiences you might have had during meditation, surely you realize that your experiences are subjective and does not actually constitute proof. For eg:- you would have heard of the phantom limb phenomenon where a person who has lost a limb still feels that the limb is still attached to the body and is still functioning as it did before the loss. They might even experience severe pain on the limb that’s already lost. The pain is real, the limb is not. You might have heard of the phenomenon called Synesthesia where people percieve numbers or letters in the form of different colors because of twisted neurological visual pathways in their brain. These people have such vivid experiences contrary to the real world because that’s the way their brain is making them feel. Similarly you seem to vividly percieve some vibrant existence during meditation because that’s the way your brain is making you feel. Why do you think that your experiences during meditation are any more real than the experiences of the above people?

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  4. Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

    http://www.robertlanza.com/does-death-exist-new-theory-says-no-2/

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    • In reply to tp

      There’s no evidence in that book whatsoever that there’s anything after death. It also doesn’t teach us anything we didn’t already know.

      No physicist would seriously consider that there’ anything more to the universe than what can be observed and measured with our instruments.

      Reply

    • In reply to tp

      I’m sorry tp, I’ve gone through the Robert Lanza links that you’ve provided…not only do I not find anything even remotely scientific in his claims, but I find myself cringing everytime I read his feeble attempts to use pseudoscientific babble to justify his ill-thought out stand on bio-centrism…He uses a lot of scientific jargon to impress lay observers and make them think that he is talking science, but any physicist worth his/her salt with a basic knowledge of quantum physics would laugh his so-called ‘theory’ out the door…

      Here the basis of his completely flawed argument depends on his utterly dishonest misrepresentation of quantum physics “The trees and snow evaporate when we’re sleeping. The kitchen disappears when we’re in the bathroom. When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting—the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness—or into waves of probability”… No, no, no, no, no…while there have been weak, extremely shortlived quantum entanglement effects found at the macro level, it has absolutely nothing to do with the half-baked, utterly misleading description that Robert Lanza has provided

      “space and time fall into the province of biology…not of physics”… “logic of life, biologic”…really??? Are you sure this is the guy you wanna hold up as an example? I think he is hurting your argument rather than helping it

      I’m sorry if I come across as too intense, but when I see someone like Robert Lanza deliberately mangling science to suit his own propaganda and then trying to tell people that he is talking science, it steams me up a little…also, it’s a Friday night and I have nothing else to do…

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  5. Our real ” instruments ” are our senses. It is only because we sense that we can create other instruments. What we measure depends upon the instrument used.

    Each species senses differently. There are worlds within world,s all because each living creature’s brain is genetically different and each species “sees, hears, feels, tastes and smells ” differently.

    Our senses create. There are different levels of consciousness; bodily, emotional, rational thinking, abstract thinking, imagination, memory etc etc and the deepest is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS which is concept free which is why it is pure. It does not create perceptions neither does it care for them or about anything for that matter.

    It is THIS that remains when bodily consciousness is lost. The Hadron Collider has been created to discover more about THIS. It is at the core of everything and can be experienced if we can bring our consciousness to rest in it. It is yourself ( as you rightly said ) – perceived in meditation.

    What I DONT KNOW is whether it can be aware of Itself in the absence of a living body which has a well developed brain like we humans have. In another 1000 years the human brain might have developed further so that more of it may be perceived. Like i mentioned before it is the software that remains even when the hardware breaks down ( physical death )

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    • In reply to tp

      An instrument is anything that can make a verifiable measurement. That includes our skin, taste, smell, sight and hearing.

      It is THIS that remains when bodily consciousness is lost.

      And there is no proof of that statement whatsoever except for wishful thinking.

      Reply

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