I pray to rid myself of myself as I pray God to rid me of God
A journey into the abyss of Not Knowing
This reflection is inspired by Meister Eckhart’s thoughts of self-emptying(gelassenheit) and detachment(abgeschiedenheit). At this moment where there’s been a lot of disruption in society, what seems to be so palpable for me is the total shedding of all concepts, whatever they may be, to embrace that which is beyond concepts, that which is beyond experience. But what does that even mean?
In his Sermon 52, Eckhart, a 13th–14th-century German theologian, philosopher, and mystic, speaks of letting go of the ego, the personal self, to fully unite with the Infinite—a state of being where the individual dissolves into the boundless ocean of presence. To rid oneself of the self does sound like an act of total annihilation. Perhaps, it can even be perceived as a degradation. It goes counter-cultural to what we have been taught about propping up ourselves and making a name for ourselves. We have been taught to stand up for ourselves, we have been taught to leave the world with a legacy. I am not necessarily coming for these ideas which quite honestly tend to come from a sense of lack and separation. But to rid oneself of the self, I would describe as sacred shedding, a release of the great weight of personal history, identity, and the ceaseless narratives that tether us to the illusion of separateness. It is a relinquishing of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, where we have been, and where we hope to go. It is a surrender so complete that the individual life is laid bare before the Force of Life itself, unadorned and unburdened. Look at all our shoulders? Aren’t they sore enough? Don’t we all sooner or later come to the realization that that which we seek is already fulfilled within us? How would we know this if we don’t drop all of the loads of our self created narratives off our shoulders to see that we are moved by something that’s far greater than the idea of ‘our self’.
Obviously this seems like a state of total loss of ambition. Paradoxically it is anything but. You have to really come closer to see it! Come! Come closer! Lean in! See that true ambition, the kind that arises from the depths of being, does not originate from the ego-self. It is not driven by the need for validation, achievement, or the accumulation of accolades. It instead emerges as a spontaneous expression of life itself—an arising within, almost like a joyful participation and partnership in the unfolding of existence. When the ego and all its projections and insecurities are quieted what remains is a fullness that transcends the narrow confines of the personal self. This is the ambition of the soul, untainted by the grasping and striving of that separate self, flowing effortlessly from the wellspring of Being.
To rid oneself of the self is, in essence, to let God be God. It is to step aside, to cease the endless interference of the ego(this self-ownership), and to allow the Divine to move through us unimpeded. You know I still say that we never were in a position where we hindered the Divine to move through us. What I express here as allowing the Divine to move through us, it’s just the seeing that It was doing this all along. It was weaving and forming as us. It was appearing and disappearing as us, as our circumstances, as all events, as all people and as all things. It was written about Jesus to have prayed to ‘The Father’, to be less and ‘Him’ be more. Generally we take this stance a one of humility when it is infact a recognition of the need to relinquish the self so that The True Self can shine.
This relinquishing or diminishment of the self is a liberation! It’s a return to our original nature, unclouded by the distortions of egoic desire. You see, egoic desire is about the future and what one is lacking in the present. It is about wanting to control our lives as if that has ever worked. Without the distortion of ego, all things arise not because of a future desire that’s based in lack but an expression of fulfillment— at least when it is fully seen. Doesn’t that put a different spin on desire? It is an invitation to participate in the divine dance of creation, not as the dancer, but as the dance and dancer itself.
Yet, the journey does not end here. The next level of surrender calls for an even more radical letting go: the release of the very concept of God as we have imagined ‘Him’. For too long, God has been depicted as an entity—a being who sits enthroned in heaven, who possesses emotions, who acts and intervenes in the affairs of the world. Don’t we just see it clearly? How can God be an entity? The fact that what we refer to as God is an entity already puts limitation on It. In the same vein, the simple mind defends that soverignty. We then cloak This with a pronoun, Him— our subtle homage to our patriachal society. These are, of course, creative and deeply human attempts to conceptualize the ineffable. But they are, ultimately, limitations—projections of our own desires, fears, and understandings onto the infinite mystery of the Divine. To truly rid oneself of the self, one must also rid oneself of these conceptual idols, these mental images of God that confine the divine to the narrow parameters of human imagination.
What remains then when we let go of these images? What lies beyond the boundaries of our knowing? It is the abyss of Not Knowing— a vast and luminous emptiness that defies description. In this space, there are no answers, no certainties, no fixed points of reference. There is only the raw, unfiltered immediacy of direct experience—the ever-unfolding present moment, shimmering with the essence of Godness. To fall into this abyss is not to lose oneself, but to find oneself in the boundless expanse of Being. It is to become a vessel for the divine, not as an idea or an image, but as the living, breathing reality of existence itself.
Perhaps, then, we can cloak this experience in the language of Godness, not for definition purposes, but as an acknowledgment of the sacredness that permeates all things. For in the absence of the self, in the absence of even the concept of God, what remains is pure presence—a stillness that is also a dynamism, a silence that is also a song. It is here, in this unnameable space, that we discover the true meaning of surrender: not as a giving up, but as a giving over, a total immersion in the mystery of what is.
In the end, to rid oneself of the self is to return to the source, to the infinite wellspring from which all life flows. It is to become, in the words of Eckhart, “a clear glass through which God can shine.” And in that shining, we find not the loss of self, but the discovery of our true Self—the Self that is no self, the Self that is one with the Infinite.
Ah! What other way to describe this Oneness?
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