Encountering God in the Nothingness of Being: Meister Eckhart

Abstract

The spiritual way often has to do with letting go. To reach the inside, we have to let go of the outside. An image often used is that of an onion which has to be peeled, layer by layer. The question, however, is: what is meant by letting go. What is letting go, and what does  it entail? Eckhart uses the term ‘lâzen’, which has a good deal of biblical background, but first and foremost it refers to the evangelical  counsel to let go of everything.1 Eckhart does not confine the meaning of this counsel to letting go of worldly possessions or material  riches: what really matters is letting go of ourselves. He means that we should let go of our own free will. As long as we – uneasy  about ourselves and our own situation – think that the encounter with God depends on some particular situation or condition, we  have not yet let go of ourselves and are still seeking God outside of ourselves.