“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by subtracting.”
– Meister Eckhart
“Our most valuable freedom is the liberty to understand and thereby rid ourselves of our identifications.” – Wei Wu Wei
“Letting go is the whole of the dharma.” - Rob Burbea
Summary
The German spiritual leader and nearly-heretic Meister Eckhart wrote of Gelassenheit (“letting-be”) as the spiritual posture of unclenching every white-knuckled claim upon the world until only availability to God remains.
He did this without any meaningful exposure to Buddhism, creating a way of being that led to D.T. Suzuki to say, “If Eckhart had been born in the East, he would have been a great Zen master.”
I think Eckhart will matter a lot in the coming years. In an economy that monetizes attention and a culture that measures worth by control, gelassenheit is a jailbreak: the quiet courage to dwell unguarded, to meet reality without demand, and to let the Divine speak its own name in the silence left by our surrender.
I wrote this rule to try to capture some of my sincerely held beliefs about the way he points us forward. It takes the shape of a rule of life.
Why now?
The twenty-first century is starved for meaning. The most basic human faculty, attention, has become a raw material strip-mined for profit.
The result is a civilisation both hyper-connected and existentially alone, capable of contacting anyone while touching almost nothing. We are losing meaning itself. Even the Church itself is tempted to mimic the attention economy.
I am proposing a way of life, a prototype of an antidote. A lab where presence is rehearsed until it becomes culture. A sense of place and community where the rhythm of love sets the daily cadence.
I propose a monastery-without-walls. Its foundations are prayer hours that interrupt productivity with contemplative practice. Its vows are surgical instruments precisely calibrated for the diseases of our age. It dismantles the reflexes of greed and fear that drive collapse.
It refuses to be possessed by the tools it builds. In a landscape soon to be cohabited by artificial generalized intelligence, this Rule functions as a firewall for the heart. AGI may eclipse us in pattern recognition, prediction, even creative pastiche, but it cannot kneel, cannot weep, cannot adore. By rhythmically emptying our attention of noise and filling it with loving awareness, the monastery inoculates humanity against the most seductive risk of super-intelligence: the outsourcing of meaning itself.
We rehearse freedoms no algorithm can simulate: the freedom to choose wonder over efficiency, covenant over convenience, and self-gift over self-optimization.
In the end, this is nothing more or less than love arranged into ritual. And when the world emerges from its next cocoon, may our shared stillness prepare it for a wild and vivid future.
What is a Third Order?
There's something romantic and deeply compelling about the total renunciation of a monastic. It promises clarity, purpose, and intensity—an antidote to life's ambiguity. But those desires can come with a drive to be spiritually heroic. Sometimes our ego sneaks in the back door, quietly insisting that only the most radical, pure form of spirituality counts—that anything else is "bush league."
More than that, full renunciation isn’t right for everyone. Only a few are truly called towards a cloistered or mendicant life. The rest of us embrace the spirituality of daily living and loving, “in the world but not of it”.
Third Orders provide a spiritual structure for every day living, while still providing the rigor, intensity, and seriousness that meets our spiritual hunger.The objective is to cultivate a rhythm of spiritual practice that anchors humanity in contemplative intimacy with God amid the profound uncertainties of our collective future.
This document is the scaffolding of one such potential order.
The Rule of Gelassenheit
Rituals create holy time. They allow us to live ourselves, instead of being lived by the expectations of others. This is an outline of suggested protocols to explore that time. It is a rule, meant to generate freedom from the practice of obedience.
Gelassenheit: Letting-Be
Gelassenheit is the core of the practice. “Elassenheit” is derived from the German verb lassen, meaning "to let," "to allow," "to leave," or "to release." The prefix Ge- typically creates nouns in German that denote the outcome or state of an action. The suffix -heit corresponds roughly to the English "-ness," denoting a state or quality. Thus, Gelassenheit means something akin to "the state of having let go", “allowing-ness”, or "the quality of release".
Gelassenheit is not passive resignation. True letting-be is confronting reality without defenses.
It is not about subtracting concepts merely to build a new spiritual identity out of poverty or silence. It is a playful, active surrender of all attachments. To practice Gelassenheit is to imitate the Divine self-emptying (kenosis), opening ourselves entirely so divinity may freely inhabit, ground, and move through us.
Controversially, it is the courage to release even our concepts of God, or of Love, trusting the emptiness, the “groundless ground”, left behind to reveal the Divine more truthfully than our words, concepts, or doctrines ever could.
Simplicity and Poverty
To build the easiest path to this, we start by commiting to simplicity and voluntary poverty, recognizing these as outward expressions of our inward poverty of spirit. We understand poverty not as deprivation, but as liberation from attachments that distract from the Divine.
Eckhart taught, “The poor in spirit is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing”—for in such profound inner poverty, divinity alone becomes ourinheritance.
We hold possessions lightly, keeping only what is needful and sharing or donating the rest freely with those in want. We dress simply and steward resources carefully, being careful to navigate the perils of fear and greed. By rejecting excess, we seek to imitate humility and free our hearts from worldly distractions.
Prayer
We find God by emptying ourselves of every claim we hold upon reality. Through prayer rooted in Gelassenheit, we unclench our grip on control, outcomes, and even spiritual expectations, releasing them into the silent expansiveness of Divine presence.
We commit to praying three times a day. Praying here is closer to meditation than you might imagine. It is a rhythm of intentional emptiness. At dawn, midday, and dusk, we practice becoming vessels rather than speakers, allowing stillness to permeate and dismantle our noisy internal narratives.
Fasting
We commit to fast one day each week.
On this day, we abstain from food as an act of solidarity and contemplation. This is not an act of oppression — if you eat, you eat. This is a habitual small sacrifice that allows us to empty ourselves, opening space. Our fasting is humble and without show, offered in secret.
Obedience
We commit to obedience – first to God, then to this Rule and one another in community. We commit to this openness—not to submit blindly to a rule, or authority, or even to God, but to courageously accept the tasks that life places before us.
True obedience is not surrendering our own judgment to another; rather, it's the willingness to see others as comrades, with whom we live interdependently. Any relationship that emphasizes control, power, or hierarchy risks becoming a battle for recognition and approval. We instead choose horizontal relationships, grounded in mutual respect and self-reliance, where correction is welcomed without defensiveness, and forgiveness emerges from recognizing our own freedom to interpret events. Our aim is not mere conformity to a rule, but an authentic community where each person, by courageously accepting their own tasks, contributes to the wellbeing and happiness of all.
Honoring Desire
Intimate relationships and marriage are understood as sacred covenants; those called to them live do so in fidelity and honest accountability.
Theology
All human approaches to God are finite before the infinite. They are real, though partial, paths by which we are drawn into deeper intimacy with the Divine. Theology in particular serves as a scaffold for love, shaping and elevating the soul toward its source. Eckhart was a philosopher, from a tradition of philosophy. Intellectual rigor is important to this practice.
At the same time, we commit ourselves holding this path lightly. We honor theology as a real work of the heart and mind, but we also practice holy ignorance. We are willing to lay even our most cherished understandings at the feet of mystery.
Stewarding the Earth
We spend time in nature regularly. We use this time to bathe in wonder. We steward the earth and its resources, including a commitment to providing loving care for the animals entrusted to us. We treat all lives with respect and compassion, being especially prayerful about our relationship with eating animals.
Labor
We commit to one hour of manual labor each day. Humble tasks like gardening and cooking are opportunities to practice presence. This daily labor keeps us grounded in reality and in solidarity. Idleness is avoided, and each contributes according to their ability, offering the fruits of their work to God with thanksgiving.
Play
This stuff can get heavy if we’re not careful.The mercy of God is the ability to feel all of our emotions fully. This includes pure joy. We invite joyful irreverence, remembering that spiritual seriousness quickly calcifies into egoic self-importance.
Ritual without playfulness becomes another trap. We punctuate our solemnity with laughter, improvisation, and ironic self-awareness. Humor is the sacred solvent of rigidity, reminding us to never confuse spiritual commitment with grim fixation.
The game is made up. The points don’t matter.
Silence & Listening
The language of God is silence. Outside of necessary speech, we prefer few, true, and charitable words. Silence is not the absence of love but its amplifier: it trains us to receive God, to hear our hearts honestly, and to meet our neighbour without projections.
Sacramental Life
We remain anchored in a local church, receiving the Eucharist regularly. We do our work within the context of communion and accountability to the authority of our Church.
Service and Interiority
It may seem counterintuitive—even scandalous—to focus inwardly when the world cries urgently for justice, mercy, and compassion. Yet, paradoxically, making virtuous service itself the immediate goal can distort genuine service into an exercise in vanity, guilt-management, or political self-justification, where our identities become entangled in appearing virtuous rather than embodying authentic goodness.
Gelassenheit includes “letting go” of being the good guy, the white knight. Service comes as a natural result of our interior path, not as an external imposition. Let virtue catch us by surprise. Do not chase it. Remember, the very act of wanting to be virtuous can be a form of subtle aggression toward yourself and others.
Virtue arises spontaneously when the heart is fully surrendered to God. By directing our attention solely toward God, we release ourselves from the egoic compulsion to prove our goodness or manage external perceptions. In doing so, compassion, justice, and mercy flow naturally and powerfully, not as calculated actions born from shame or social pressure, but as organic expressions of a heart transparently inhabited by Divine love.
Technology
As far as possible, we let go of our technological grasping. We hold that in tension with our great love for human ingenuity, and a deep affection for its promise.
A member of this Rule will refrain from unintentional technology use, and embrace carefully intentional tools. Fluency in the latest technological advances is essential. Not as an end in itself, but because cutting-edge knowledge and thoughtful innovation have immense power to alleviate human suffering, save lives, and dramatically improve the quality of our common existence. When approached with wisdom and compassion, technology becomes a potent instrument. Our disciplined detachment from technology is balanced by an equally disciplined mastery of its possibilities, ensuring we wield these powerful tools to embody love tangibly and effectively in a suffering world.
It seems prudent to avoid creating a dualistic split between technology and spirituality. Technology itself is neither enemy nor savior. To practice technological asceticism is not about withdrawal, but rather fully engaging with the tools of your era without losing sanity or presence.
This path has risks.
Spiritual growth requires fully inhabiting and facing human vulnerabilities. Practitioners would be wise to avoid "spiritual bypassing," the use of spiritual practices to avoid confronting emotional pain, confusion, or psychological wounds directly. The danger is to mistake renunciation, silence, or prayer for genuine openness, when in fact these very disciplines may feed a hidden arrogance or self-importance. Regularly laugh at your own spiritual aspirations, allowing them to dissolve repeatedly back into playful openness. Authentic action occurs in a space free from artificiality or forced intent.
Prayer can be a subtle fixation, comforting, rather than a genuinely liberating stance toward ambiguity. "Letting-be" could itself turn into a fetishized ideal, a spiritual commodity rather than an ongoing, uncertain negotiation with the wonder and void of God.
We should also use caution when holding too closely to unnecessary dualisms. Freedom emerges precisely when dualisms dissolve, and become complementary rather than competing forces.
Any contemplative path lacking playful absurdity risks calcifying into subtle self-seriousness. Our rituals should hold space for whimsy, laughter, and the unpredictable spontaneity that reveals reality freshly again and again.
This rule distrusts internalized, compulsive self-discipline. It recognizes the dangers in authoritative external discipline, but also the dangers of oppressing ourselves through the relentless internal pressure to perform, optimize, and succeed.
Over-philosophizing, as this document does, potentially limits the spontaneity of genuine spiritual improvisation. This rule itself (on a meta level) might be an implicit attempt at spiritual credentialing, precisely the spiritual pride that it exists to dismantle. These practices might reinforce a hidden pride in detachment or sanctity.
Although this text is an attempt at something radical, it does not provide the unpredictable, shocking, and spontaneously disruptive behavior designed to destroy expectations and break spiritual staleness. It may be overly domesticated.
The intense inward focus and rigorous ascetic practices might inadvertently foster alienation and an inability to participate fully in life.
Conclusion
This Rule of Life will serve its highest purpose if you allow it to dismantle itself continuously, rather than solidify into dogma. We must remain vigilant not to become spiritually materialistic. Always return to the raw experience. In this rawness alone, Gelassenheit can flourish as a genuine path of freedom, rather than another beautiful mask for the ego.
“Become pure till you neither are nor have this or that; then you are omnipresent and, being neither this nor that, are all things.”
– Meister Eckhart