Learning How to Fall

In early 2008, I was in a dark place in my life. My 7-year relationship had just ended badly, and I felt overwhelming guilt about my part in it. I was scheduled to take part in a silent retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and although I was in no mood for much deep reflection, I followed through with the commitment. While I sat in the days of practice, there was a discernible sense that I was in a state of free fall at that moment in my life. There was an old joke that it’s not the fall that kills you – it’s the sudden stop. My free fall never found this kind of resolution.

At the retreat, I heard a teaching story about a man who was being chased by a tiger and tries to escape by jumping off a cliff. Providentially, there happened to be a little scrub tree growing out of the sheer face of the cliff, which the man was able to grab hold of. As he hung there by one arm, he could hear the tiger pacing back and forth just above him, and when he looked down, he saw a precipitous drop with nothing but rocks and boulders hundreds of feet below him. Frantically the man started yelling. “Help! Somebody help me!” A booming voice answered, “Yes?” The man shouted, “Is that you, God?” Again the voice responded, “Yes.” In desperation the man called out, “God, I’ll do anything! Please help me!” To which God answered, “Okay then. Just let go.” The man was silent for a few seconds, and then timidly called out, “Uh... is anyone else there?”

To be honest, I did not fully understand this teaching story the first time I heard it. It was amusing, yes, but its deeper meaning eluded me at that point. Throughout the rest of the retreat, as I vacillated between various degrees of depression and self-loathing, I let the words of God in the story repeat inside me. “Just let go.” “Just let go?” Why would God want the man to let go? I imagined it was so God could catch him. Okay, so as long as he was holding on tightly to the little tree, God couldn’t help him. Oh! Right! If you want the Universe to save/help you, the first thing to do when you are dangling from a precipice is to let go. Until you do, no help is available.

There is a truth that I have lived with for many years, that when you take a step forward, the Universe will meet you and provide assistance. This is especially useful when we are stuck from clinging to wanting something to be another way, or when we are paralyzed by fears of the unknown. Unless and until we can move our feet forward, no aid is available to us. I have found this to be true in tiny ways, such as how something seems to come my way when I do something as simple as cleaning out a closet. The help can also come in big, life-changing ways, such as when I took the steps to apply to graduate school to begin my therapeutic career. The more I kept stepping forward, the more opportunities the Universe seemed to put in my way. Now, I’m a pretty avoidant person. For most of my life I have tended not to do things if I felt fearful of failing. Or, of falling. I heard a quote from the choreographer Twyla Tharp the “walking is a controlled fall.” If that’s the case, then we are falling with every step we take, anyway. What is there to be afraid of?

Well, apparently, a lot. Turns out that humans are born with only two built-in fears: falling and loud noises. The fear of falling may be related to our primate ancestors who spent a lot of their time in trees. Often very tall trees. You may have seen pictures of infant primates clinging tightly to their mother. For us, too, grasping is a central facet of our nervous system that we are born with. The grasp reflex is a primitive, involuntary clinging response; a vestige of our primate ancestors. Newborns are often given the palmar grasp reflex test where an examiner strokes the palm of the infant with an index finger. If the nervous system is intact and healthy, the infant’s fingers will enclose the examiner’s finger. Or if pressure is applied to the palm, there will be a clinging action. So we mitigate the fear of falling with the grasp reflex.

It works the same way in our mental and emotional life as well. So we are born clinging and grasping. Is it any wonder that, at some point during our lifetime, we will cling desperately to things we don’t want to lose? We imagine that this will keep us safe from falling, and then we stay stuck in this clinging mode until either our fingers are pried away from the object being clung to, or we voluntarily let go.

By the end of the retreat, where I learned how to let go and why it is so important to do so, I was ready to face my new life. Plans had begun to form as to how that might look, and some astonishing things unfolded that I could never have imagined before the retreat. I opened my tightly clinging fist from around what my life had been and the negative thinking about how my life would continue. In doing so, more blessings than I can accurately recount came my way. Within a year, I was engaged to be married to Kathy, the wisest decision I’ve ever made. My career as a therapist and as a dharma teacher began to grow and continue to flourish and thrive today. I became a college professor in a Master of Arts program for budding therapists. My deepening into the dharma in my daily life has helped me to relieve all of the suffering I was causing myself.

So it's safe to let go. 

And never underestimate the power of falling.