I don’t just mean the sort of weightlessness you experienced floating in your mother’s womb but deeper and richer weightlessness.
There are many religious traditions that profess that we are all created in the image of God. In other words, we are created in the infinite freedom, wisdom, and power of existence.
The moment each of us was born, the world, filled with seemingly solid and separate people and things, starts to mold us into their image. The world convinces us that we have limitations, and our boundless freedom starts to constrict around our self-identity. We solidify moment by moment and day by day into a lesser existence. We take on layer after layer of thick and heavy crust that weighs us down–that pins us to our apparent ground-level hamster wheel fate.
When I first arrived in space and shed every ounce of my weight, I initially experienced exhilaration. Everything was new and exciting. When I first gazed out through the window of our spacecraft it was obvious that I was physically detached from the only world I had ever known. I was thrust into a new existence. But not long after I arrived in space my body caught up with the fact that the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. The entire foundation of my existence up until that point had vanished. I started to physically clench up. I constricted into myself as if I was turning inside-out. This was all accompanied by periodic retching and vomiting.
Eventually, I let go and surrendered to the experience and the feeling of vast freedom returned. There was absolutely nothing weighing me down. Surrender allowed me to experience weightless, effortless, euphoria.
Similar scenes play out with the mice that we occasionally bring to space with us. Some cling to the wire of their cages frozen with fear. Others seem to frolic in the boundless freedom of weightlessness, effortlessly flying here and there throughout their environment. Those that do not eventually adapt to their new environment perish.
When we are faced with challenges in our lives, when the rug gets pulled out from under our feet and we are completely disoriented, we have a choice. We can cling to the way life was before or we can surrender into what is. Suffering is generated through our reluctance to accept what is. We have absolutely no control over what is (it already is). But we do have control over how we perceive what is.
A weightless life is yours if you want it. It is within your power to make the course correction that will take you there.
In space to begin to enjoy weightless freedom, we first must give up the need to have solid ground to stand on. We must accept the weightless freedom of movement. Likewise, here on Earth before we can enjoy the weightless freedom that is our birthright, we need to realize and embrace our true underlying unity. To see it in everyone we meet and to live it. We need to understand that the gravitational pull of our limiting beliefs, thoughts, and emotions weighs us down and keeps us pinned to our egos.
Imagine you are sitting on a beach looking at a beautiful sunset. Or maybe you’re standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon and are moved by the exquisite beauty of that ancient gorge. In both cases, gravity is pushing you down into the scene. Gravity keeps you pinned within the frame of the masterpiece. When we float weightlessly in space we are detached from Earth. We are outside of the world looking in. We are outside the frame of the masterpiece. Like detaching from Earth in space we can detach from our thoughts, emotions, and sensations. We can become the silent, non-judgmental watcher of our own minds. When thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise, don’t ignore them, or try to suppress them. Just observe them but observe them from a dolly-zoomed outside vantage point. Step outside the frame and look in.
Weightlessness is a lack of foundation. It is an ungrounding. The spiritual journey is also an ungrounding. At first, it is incredibly disorienting to have the foundation we’ve known for our entire lives pulled out from under us. When the bottom drops out, we frantically grasp for some measure of control that provides grounding. We return to the illusion of permanence and fall back into our old habits and routines. We wrap ourselves in the false comfort provided by the illusion of separation and double down on our entrenched opinions about how things should be. When this doesn’t work (and it never does), we seek to distract ourselves with comfort foods and/or numb ourselves with alcohol or anything else that provides an inkling of certainty or comfort. These distractions are the source of anxiety, procrastination, intolerance, unhealthy habits, unhappiness, and much more.
But what if, instead you muster the courage to surrender to the reality of the moment and embrace weightless, groundless, boundaryless uncertainty? Only then will you realize the freedom that comes from being liberated from the gravitational pull of the material world. Imagine being on the ISS with a death grip on the handrails, never letting go of one before grabbing the next. To experience weightless freedom, you must let go (you must surrender to the weightlessness).
Never pass up an opportunity to let go. Surrender each moment to the “good” and the “bad” to the “desirable” and to the “undesirable”.
This post is an excerpt from an upcoming book with the same title. “Weightless” is Ron Garan’s guide to true freedom that illustrates how we can overcome the limitations imposed by the world and rediscover our infinite potential.
