Our path is one of descent rather than perpetual upward ascent. For so long, we strived and climbed, accumulating knowledge, possessions, and status markers. We yearned to reach higher levels of success, achievement, and recognition. Our egos were constantly seeking the next rung on the ladder, the next achievement to conquer. All the while, the wise ones taught that the way up is actually the way down. The path forward is not a straight, continuous incline but rather a winding, cyclical journey of descents and ascents.
We held tightly to our self-images, roles, and titles, putting them on pedestals. We falsely believed these things defined our core identity and worth. But the path asks us to let go of these temporal trappings that will inevitably fall away. Our deepest self is not found in titles, reputations or possessions but in something more enduring.
Our descent exposes the falsehoods we have believed about ourselves – that we can control everything through willpower, that we must relentlessly strive to attain markers of success, that external validations bring true worth. We are dismantled of our small selves and cultural conditionings that blind us to our interconnection with all beings.
For those of us from marginalized communities, this descent involves an especially tricky unraveling. We worked so hard to obtain educational credentials, status, and degrees of privilege in an oppressive system. To now let go of clinging to these hard-won gains feels counterintuitive and even dangerous. Yet without this surrender, we remain cut off from our true essence.
The descent asks us to release our tight grasps – on needing to be in control, on seeking safety and self-preservation at all costs, on constant needs for affection, admiration and ego-stroking. We let go of our insatiable desires for more – more money, more influence, more respect, more stuff. We release our fierce need to always be right, to have all the answers, to appear intelligent and knowledgeable.
As these false needs and wants fall away, we come face-to-face with our deepest wounds, shadows, and harmful patterns. The descent shines light on the painful parts we’ve avoided, denied or numbed through busyness and striving. With compassion, we can finally acknowledge the bitter truth about how we have consciously and unconsciously inflicted suffering on others and ourselves.
Rather than grasping to be the most special, accomplished human according to society’s markers, we realign to being the fullest versions of interbeings. We expand beyond the confines of individualistic self-concern to sense our interconnectedness with all Life. We attune to the conversation happening between the trees, rocks, waters, and skies. We listen for how we can participate in this web of interbeing in service of the whole.
Our descents are not straight, uninterrupted plunges but cyclical, spiral-like iterations. Just when we think we’ve surrendered all that needs releasing, another layer emerges for us to let go into. The descent asks us to keep dying to our small self, in all its crafty reincarnations. We need not strive, but simply embrace the seasonal rhythms of descent and arising with openness.
Though these letting-go journeys can feel lonely and endless, we are actually joined by a cosmic crowd witnessing and ushering us along the way. Our descent is guided by the Divine Presence that surrounds and sustains all Living beings. We descend in companionship with all who have walked this path before us and all who are currently being forged in descent’s darkness. Each loss, failure, and death is a holy initiation into deeper levels of wisdom, love, and soul-flourishing. We let ourselves be drawn down into the rich soils where our souls can put down new roots and be nourished for generous re-arising.
SUMMARY
The path of descent is a transformative journey involving darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness as teachers, rather than just ideas or doctrines. It requires letting go of self-image, titles, status symbols, the false self, the small ego-self, cultural biases, fear of loss and death, wanting more things, the need for control, and the need to be right and know everything. For marginalized communities, relinquishing hard-won gains in education, prestige and power can make the descent difficult, as goals of wealth, status and accumulation become moving targets to let go of in order to truly follow Christ’s path. Allowing the descent with self-compassion enables inner healing and seeing oneself clearly. Health crises can initiate this path by stripping away the delusion of being able to handle everything alone. The focus shifts from striving to be the best individual human to allowing one’s soul as an “interbeing” connected to all life to flourish, letting the seeds planted by Christ grow. Though feeling lonely, each cycle reveals one doesn’t have it all figured out and brings deeper wisdom, divine connection, and the sustaining, crowded presence of the divine companion for the jagged, cyclical descent.
KEY POINTS
1. The path of descent involves transformation, darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness as teachers rather than just ideas or doctrines.
2. Life’s rhythms sometimes put us out of tune, and we need to go back and find the rhythm again through the path of descent.
3. The path of descent involves letting go of self-image, titles, status symbols, and the false self which inevitably dies away anyway.
4. True liberation comes from letting go of the small self, cultural biases, fear of loss/death, wanting more things, need for control, and the need to be right.
5. The path requires letting go of the needs for power/control, safety/security, and affection/esteem.
6. For marginalized communities, it can be difficult to relinquish hard-won gains in education, prestige and power when descending.
7. The goals of wealth, status, and accumulation become moving targets that take time to let go of in favor of following Christ’s path of descent.
8. Allowing the descent to happen with self-compassion enables healing of inner wounds and seeing oneself more clearly.
9. Health crises can initiate the path of descent by stripping away the delusion of being able to handle everything alone.
10. Focusing on being the best “interbeing” connected to all life, rather than the best individual human, allows the seeds planted by Christ to grow.
11. Each descent brings deeper wisdom, divine connection, and cycles of realization that one doesn’t have it all figured out.
12. The path, though feeling lonely, is crowded with the sustaining, accompanying presence of the divine.
