Letting go is an act of faith.
But we often lack faith, even though we profess how much of it we have.
Perhaps it’s convincing ourselves that if we proclaim things loudly enough we will
believe in something. Anything. “Make America great again!” is a great proclamation
to distract people and make them forget what’s really going on. I get it. To walk the
walk of life realizing that we enter and leave this existence alone is scary. Who
wants to face the truth that things are constantly changing? That life itself is
impermanent? So we accumulate things on our journey to make it feel less scary.
That’s important. We want to accumulate good stuff. Friendships and love. Support
and a spiritual practice. Insight and awareness. Courage and humor. Expansion in
our consciousness. Empathy. Grace.
But we also take on a shit-ton of other stuff too and before we know it we’re
weighed down. Emotionally. Spiritually. Physically. Psychologically. By dogma and
narratives that are based in some other time and are often limiting and
marginalizing.
We take on people’s anger and fear. We hold on to past experiences. We cling to bad
habits and thoughts, tendencies and resentments. Before we know it, we’ve amassed
this armor that almost seems to be protecting us from the loneliness of the world,
but is actually doing the opposite. Weighing us down so much we can barely see our
own beautiful, vulnerable, naked souls.
Letting go is not an act of passivity. It’s actually a conscious act of detaching from
those things that bring us pain, worry and apprehension. It’s actually letting go of
the things we accumulate that actually aren’t even a part of who we are.
It’s like when you take a walk through the brambles and you end up with all kinds of
prickly, thorny stuff sticking to your jacket and pants. How do we remove the things
that don’t serve us? And actually hurt? They hurt!
So why is it so hard to let them go?
As a kid, an adult told you that you were stupid. Maybe you did something that
wasn’t well thought-out. You conflated the stupid act to mean that you are stupid.
Somewhere you hold on to that belief and it takes up residence in your life. It’s
called shame.
A girlfriend told you that you were ugly and you stowed that away in a trunk you
carry on your shoulders. Her view of you makes you feel unlovable and has changed
how you view your own world.
Holding on to things makes us feel safe. It’s counterintuitive because often the things
we’re holding on to are simply outrageous! But because we’ve familiarized
ourselves with them over the years and had experiences with other lonely people
who trigger our stuff and seem to reconfirm that they’re real, we cling on even
tighter. Beliefs. Opinions. Negativity. Fear. Shame.
Marry that with our own self-worth and what we feel we (don’t) deserve and we’re
looking at a Molotov cocktail that only Vladimir Putin could concoct.
If I don’t believe I deserve something more I’ll hold onto what I have now, even if
it’s not so great. Even if it makes me feel like shit. Even if it’s toxic and causes me
harm. It’s got to be better than the alternative, which appears to be nothing at all. So
I’m not letting go of this one tiny thing that is mine.
But the beautiful, simple, restorative act of letting go ushers in the space for
something else to come.
So you drop your toxic boyfriend who’s been locking you up in a closet for years.
That doesn’t mean a new one is coming to take his place tomorrow, who won’t lock
you in a closet.
It’s not a literal match up. Life doesn’t work that way. It’s not literal. Life often
reveals itself to us in metaphor and symbols. Forms come in different ways.
You have epiphanies. You get new information. A new “Ah-ha!” occurs when you
make the space to allow them. You learn. Maybe it’s creating time to be alone for a
while. Or heal. Or go to therapy. Or get help. Or forgive. You begin to see that what
you need isn’t always what you want, but what serves your higher purpose as you
keep moving forward in life. (And the thing about higher purpose is you’re never
going to be able to figure it out from the juncture you’re now witnessing it, so it’s
another act of letting go and having faith! See how that works?)
Also things take time. Don’t punish yourself for taking the time to be in process of
letting go. Nowadays, everything seems to be happening so fast that you’re
abnormal if you aren’t processing stuff as quickly as your latest tweet is posted.
Process. Takes. Time.
Life is process. Letting go is an unfolding. It’s process! No matter how much
technology seems to be shortening the time it takes to experience things or get
information, the truth is life unfolds as life unfolds. You can’t rush life. Life does
itself. Stop letting your life and your journey be ruled by a Bot!
Allow yourself to be wherever you are because ultimately that’s your starting point
anyway. And the only place from which we can practice the art of letting go.
