The 2nd Threshold on the Journey:  
​Knowing you are held - surrender 

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Letting Go. . . 

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: 
to love what is mortal; 
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; 
and when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.   
- Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

Moving beyond a small self

Moving from the "field of openness," we are now ready to let go into the BIG story.  We can only go so far on the path without a "divine" encounter.  We can't create or guide our own transformation.  If we try, our so-called transformation that is self-centered and well-controlled, will have many of our preferences and addictions still fully in place but now well disguised.

Its like an active alcoholic trying to determine his own rules for sobriety.  In AA they call this "stinkin´ thinking."

​There is a letting go into the mystery of God, or the Universe, that transcends our inherent capacities for change.  Some call this Grace.

Opening the Will

"​Fear is the cheapest room in the house.  I would like to see you living in better conditions."  Hafiz

At this place on the journey, we are near the threshold of transformation.  Meister Eckhart wrote, “The spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition.”  Transformation is always letting go.  Growing up in the West, we tend to think at almost every level that more is better, even though at some level we know “less is more.”

We are nurturing a worldview in which all of us can succeed.  We are practicing a posture that isn’t a win/lose game where only a few win and most lose.  We are working toward a win/win world.   But we have to be willing to let go.  We have to practice knowing that right here, right now, is enough.  We have all we need.   Shifting from only doing and acquiring, we are now called to let go.  We experience  abundance, more than enoughness.  

Courage and Vulnerability

​Longing for transformation, a new way will not produce it.  Only ending the old way can do that.  We cannot hold onto the old, all the while declaring that we want something new.  The old will resist the new.  The old will deny the new.  The old will protest against the new.  There is only one way to bring in the new.  You must make room for it. 

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Challenge: Fear

​Practice: Surrender.  Courage

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Encountering the Sacred