Having failed—as all but the sincerest, most blessed humans fail—at the art of letting go, you are now prepared to approach your everyday life with an acceptance of how deeply and greedily you cling to it. Even after this dedicated time of jettisoning the self, this dispassionate labor of forgetting being, you cling to that being like a dying animal clings to its own pulse.
At this point, however, you may let go of one more thing: your lingering guilt at not having achieved dispassion. Spend Day 8 acquiescing to the fact that your wish to achieve release from your desires in this lifetime is as greedy as your former lust for power, outward manifestations of worthiness, etc.
The most dangerous clinging of all is the desire to relinquish clinging. Most of us live our lives chained to this conundrum, which we cannot outfox or outrun.
Uses of Chant:
- Temporary severance of mind/body connection for purposes of re-immersion in the now.
- Significantly increase “freewheeling” attitude when your friends see through your strained attempts at being a “freewheeling” kind of person.
- Recalibration of ego protection mechanisms after systemic failure.
- Achieving comfort when there just isn’t enough self to let go of anymore.
Methodology:
- In sitting rooms, though not while sitting.
- Under a sky that forbids you access to its secrets.
- Imagine holding, in the center of your palm, the eyeball of an enemy or someone who makes you jealous. Squeeze occasionally. Caress occasionally.
- Start with the title of the chant and a cleansing breath. Repeat the title at the head of each cycle and whenever you feel uncertain of your intentions.
The Chant Itself: “This I Know”
This I know:
- God loves me because I endure the world for its own sake.
- God hates me because of fundamental internal incoherences that I can endure no longer.
- I’m going to heaven because small children bless me with their innocence every time I walk past them.
- I’m going to hell because I teach people to find things in themselves that I don’t even have within me.
- I must fear myself above all because of the fortresses I’ve built around me without knowing, calcified from my soul’s detritus.
This I know:
- God loves me because I can crush those fortresses in an instant, with a single breath, if my intention is pure.
- God hates me because my intention will never be pure enough, and I will always rebuild those fortresses from memory.
- I’m going to heaven because my fortresses are not who I am, nor who I’ve become, nor who I’m meant to be.
- I’m going to hell because I approach eternity with a metaphorical eighteen-wheeler full of my earthly possessions, all of which I discarded beatifically in life but will cry for in the moment of my death, thus attaching them to my person forever.
- I must fear myself above all because I’m trying to fit that metaphorical eighteen-wheeler through a very tight gate, and I’m making lots of noise as I do so, and I just don’t care what people think of me as I melt down so spectacularly.
This I know:
- God loves me because he/she/it/them just laugh(s) whenever I melt down.
- God hates me because this laughter will continue when I collapse, head in my lap, and consider killing myself with the poisonous gases emitted from the metaphorical vehicle that bears my earthly belongings.
- I’m going to heaven because if I do manage to kill myself in this way, I will have died in beauty and suppleness.
- I’m going to hell because suicides reject life, and rejection of life equals darkness, and darkness equals hell. Any kindergartener knows as much.
- I must fear myself above all because I presuppose human callousness—for instance, believing that kindergarteners are so knowing, so cold.
This I know:
- God loves me because otherwise I wouldn’t be basking here in the truth of this body, in the beauty of this language.
- God hates me because otherwise I wouldn’t be stuck here with this walking corpse and all its seeping holes, with this oozing mumble of primordial words that gives me no peace.
- I’m going to heaven because I’ve learned to accept my ambivalence about my body and my language.
- I’m going to hell because my ambivalence about my body and my language is false, superficial, designed only to assuage my fears of meaninglessness.
- I must fear myself above all because I enjoy this meaninglessness, enjoy being stuck between two poles with no idea what to do, no commandment to do anything at all.
This I know.
- This I have always known.
- This knowledge is the only birthright of mankind.
Post-Chant Reflection:
If your urge for dispassion is neither lifted nor assuaged by this chant, consider a round of the “I must be” or the “I still desire” (see Day 6). Masturbation and a hot bath may also be helpful.
Then write, if you must.
Steven Wingate | Contributor
Steven Wingate's debut short story collection Wifeshopping won the Bakeless Prize for Fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008. His fiction, poetry, cross-genre work, and reviews have appeared in Gulf Coast, Witness, Mississippi Review, The Pinch, Colorado Review, The Journal, Brand (UK), Waccamaw, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. His column on the writing craft and life appears regularly in Fiction Writers Review. In 2010-11 he will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.
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