Letting go

From I to we

In the beginning there was I, and I was good.

In the beginning I was one person,

hearing only one  voice.

But then came other voices,

telling me what was right

and what was not right,

 what was good for me

 and what was not,

what I should be,

what I  should

not be.

So many voices telling me

so many different things.

I became lost in the confusion.

 And then there were two, and three and four of I.

In his book, 'A Hidden Wholeness', writer Parker Palmer tells the story of how he came to live 'a secret life'. It began in late childhood. He was lucky enough to be born into a family where it felt safe to be 'the introspective and imaginative self' he was and so it was not until he was in middle school that he became what he calls 'a divided self’. There he learnt to play the part of the successful, popular student, a role he knew only too well was a sham. ‘While I played my onstage part,' he says, my true self hid out backstage, fearful that the world would crush its deepest values and beliefs, its fragile hopes and yearnings.’ While at graduate school and in the world of work, moreover, he felt even more unsafe and so came to believe that his very survival was dependent on his ability to keep his truth well hidden. Eventually, the many ‘assaults of the world’ that came his way led him to hide his true self not only from others, but also from himself. The more preoccupied he became with surviving in the world he found himself in, the more he lost touch with his soul.          

Palmer tells a story that will be familiar to many of us. The acceptance and love of others is so fundamental to our wellbeing that all too often, we learn to be the self they want, expect or need us to be, the self they think we should be. It happens in our families. It happens in our societies, in our schools, in our churches and in our workplaces. Overwhelmed by the power of others' voices, the vulnerable soul goes underground. It retreats into the shadows of our being. Our wings are clipped before we have time to learn to live the self we really are. And at the same time, another self is being born. Some call this other ‘the false self’, ‘the ego’ or 'the old self'. I prefer to call it the survival self. For it in a sense the social mask we come to wear in order to survive in a less than perfect world. The psychologist Carl Jung used the word 'persona' to speak of this survival self, persona being the Latin term for the theatrical masks worn by Roman and Greek actors when playing different characters.

The truth is, of course, that in creating a mask for ourselves, we rarely lose touch with all of who we are. In reality, the self we show to the world is a mixture of true and survival self. Some facets of our true self may be welcomed by others and so there is no need for them to go into hiding. Others may be valued by at least some of those around us and so we may allow them to be seen whenever we feel safe. And some may be so vital to us that we will continue to live them out even in the face of stringent opposition.

Letting go is the long and sometimes costly process of taking off the masks we wear. In order to find our way back to the self we truly are, we have to let go of those parts of ourselves that are not that self. This is perhaps the greatest challenge we face in our soul journeys which is why it has come to be known as ‘the struggle’. Letting go is the struggle to sever ourselves from old ways of being that are inhibiting our growth, to leave behind whatever holds us back from becoming all that we have the potential to be. In doing so, we face so many challenges – the challenge of breaking free from those distorting messages we have received that limit us, straightjacket us and constrict our growth; the challenge of stripping away those ways of seeing ourselves and the world that do not reflect the reality of who we are and what the world is like; and the challenge of of emancipating ourselves from a prison that confines us in a self that is so much smaller than it longs to be.

And so letting go is difficult. It is like trying to remove the stranglehold of bindweed from the stem and leaves of a plant to which it has bound itself. If bindweed gets too strong a hold, it becomes so entwined with the plant that it is extremely difficult to disentangle it and of course, if the root is not removed, it will simply grow back. To free the plant from the vice-like grip of bindweed is often a frustratingly slow process that needs to be done slowly and carefully so that the plant itself is not damaged. So it is with the process of disentangling ourselves from the beliefs and patterns that have shaped our old way of being.   

It is very much an ‘up-and-down’ experience. The smallest of victories may be hard won and difficult to hold on to. There may be times of slipping back into old ways of thinking and being. We advance, only to retreat. We make changes, only to revert to old patterns when we fear where the journey is leading us. It is as if there is an ongoing inner battle, an intense tug of war between different parts of ourselves that seek to pull us in opposite directions. There may be periods of ‘stuckness’ when movement is imperceptible and change feels out of reach. We may become immobilised for a time when we do not have the energy to struggle any more or when we are unsure that the benefits of making the changes will outweigh the costs. Or we may become so frustrated at the slow progress we are making that we are tempted to give up altogether.

In part, this is because alongside our deeper longing for change, there is within us a strong urge to hold on to the old self we know so well. The truth is that most of us are ambivalent about growth. The familiarity of our old self may be comforting. We may fear that if we let it go, there will be nothing to take its place. We may fear what will emerge and what the journey of becoming will ask of us. We may fear that others will not accept the new self that emerges. Or we may fear that the losses that come with letting go will be greater than the gains. And so as butterflies sometimes cling to their larval form, putting off entering their cocoon until the following year, we may cling to what is rather than embracing what is waiting to be.

Letting go is rather like unpeeling the layers of an onion. Carefully peeling off one layer discloses a deeper layer lying hidden underneath. But with each layer of the onion that we peel off, we come closer and closer to its core and that is what makes the struggle worthwhile. For underneath, there is another larger self hiding in the shadows, waiting for us to hear its voice, waiting for us to find our way home.

©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2025

Bibliography

Parker Palmer (2004) 'A Hidden Wholeness: The journey towards an undivided life. Jossey-Bass

Kaitlyn Steele

www.insearchofsoul.co.uk

kaitlynsteele16@gmail.com