Learning To Let Go...Of What? | Personal & Spiritual Development

Hello,

My name is Keith Parker with Field Dynamics Energy Healing,

And I want to speak to you today about letting go.

Now,

This is a talk,

A rumination,

A contemplation,

And you can simply listen,

Or if you want to make it into a kind of meditation,

I invite you to do so.

Letting go.

First,

I invite you to let go.

And as I say that a smile comes over my face,

As though letting go is so simple.

There is a humor in how straightforward,

How obvious of an instruction that that can be in our pursuits.

In the quest to find peace and inner harmony,

To simply let go.

We all know this.

All of us who are seeking and transforming and improving ourselves,

At some point or another,

Come up against simply letting go to deepen the ability to let go.

So what are we holding on to?

Now,

A simple answer would be the word attachment.

We can work to let go of that we are attached to.

It may be the simplest answer,

Letting go what we are attached to.

But behind the investigation,

Deeper than what is known at any given moment,

Is knowing what we're attached to.

You see,

You can identify the things that you know are hindrances.

Maybe behavioral patterns,

Maybe past relationships,

Maybe emotional states,

Or expectations.

You see,

These are the things that you're aware of wanting to let go.

But what about letting go of things you don't know that you're holding on to?

And that's where things get a bit trickier.

So I'll tell you a simple story that I heard from the teacher,

Sharon Salzberg,

Years ago at a meditation retreat.

She was in New York City and going to attend a meeting,

I believe,

And had a decent-sized briefcase.

And so she was walking in the building carrying the briefcase and got into the elevator carrying the briefcase.

And as she was standing in the elevator,

She thought to herself,

Hmm,

This bag is heavy.

And then arose in her the basic insight,

I don't have to be carrying this bag right now.

And so she simply put it down.

And guess what?

The floor held the bag for her.

And so this little parable illustrates that we hold on to things we don't realize we are unnecessarily holding on to.

And so in part,

The process of letting go more deeply than that which is on the surface is to learn how to identify what it is we're holding on to.

So there's that irony in letting go of needing to find out what to let go of.

Now,

I don't mean to pull that into a mental orientation.

Something doesn't need to be rationally understood.

It doesn't need to be mentated on some kind of deep level of understanding.

But rather,

You can't let go of that which you don't know you're holding on to.

So we have to find ways of touching,

Of tensioning,

Of connecting to the things that are creating the dis-ease in us,

Connecting to that which we desire to let go of.

And so it's hard to let go.

Certain levels of letting go are very challenging to put something down.

Now,

Often the reason that the challenge arises,

A great challenge arises in the process of letting go is because we're invested in it.

The reason there is a holding on in the first place is because some part of our identity,

Some part of ourselves,

Identifies with and is invested in that aspect.

And so when you go to let it go,

To let it shift,

Some conscious part of yourself says,

I see that I want to let it go.

But some unconscious or subconscious part of yourself is holding on tightly.

In fact,

It may be that that subconscious or unconscious part exists because of the thing that's trying to be let go.

So let's say you have a relationship where things don't end very well.

There is a breakup with an intimate other.

And you feel that that relationship ended with a tremendous amount of betrayal.

And so there are a lot of feelings associated with it.

Deceit,

Betrayal,

Anger,

Sadness,

A lot of hurt and pain.

And all of that is built up in the narrative of what happened,

The past,

Not the present,

But the past,

Which is being carried in the present.

And so you go into your healing process,

Into your clearing process.

And you say to yourself,

Ah,

That relationship,

That was painful.

And I can see that I'm still holding on to some of those pains that happened as consequence of its termination.

I noticed that I have some anger inside of me,

Some betrayal inside of me.

And I want to let that go.

So why in that moment,

Why when you click the red shoes three times,

Why doesn't it just go away right then and there?

Poof.

The reason is because that level of recognition is only at the mental.

To let go of something,

Again,

Is to release what is being held on to.

And in a sense,

What happens in real time,

In present moment experience,

Is that we have a number of levels of experience.

We have a mental component and a somatic or feeling tone or body level component.

And when we have things that are unpleasant,

Our coping mechanisms kick in.

And we work out a way to get through that experience,

To survive,

To adjust and adapt.

But whenever we repress,

Suppress,

Ignore,

Numb,

Whenever we get into forms of avoidance of being with the experience as it happens,

Then we store the excess energy,

The thing that's not being experienced in real time.

We store that in our system.

And that becomes the inertia.

It becomes,

If you will,

The karma that we move forward with.

And so when we go to let go of an experience that was painful,

Then we need to actually elicit all of the components of that painful experience to the degree that they can be recognized as present here now again.

And we can then allow that to change,

Allow that to be metabolized.

Because when it first happened,

It was not.

And so that is what we're being asked to do in terms of healing and self-transformation.

So what are the deep things that we can focus on letting go of?

Consider these.

What is it to let go of control?

Control is a major topic.

What is it to let go of expectations?

Can you do in the world without having an expectation of what happens as a result?

This letting go of expectations is very antithetical to the way that our modern mind has been sculpted.

Our ambitious culture has perpetuated a kind of do and get attitude.

So what is it to let go of expectations?

Deeper than that,

What is it to let go of your narrative,

Of your personal story?

And here we get at the edge of working with identity.

What is it to let go of your sense of self as a personality and the narrative of your life as being so important,

As being self-important,

Or as being the level at which you do identify yourself?

Can you let go of that first name basis identification and drop more deeply into your beingness,

Into your I am-ness,

And into your pure awareness?

And what about letting go of existence?

To be or not to be,

That is the question.

And we can use that famous phrase to understand one of the deepest,

If not the deepest levels of letting go available.

This is subtle territory and potentially strange sounding territory.

So some practices that really help us with letting go are ways in which we investigate the body-mind connection because tension in the body is tension in the mind,

And tension in the mind is tension in the body.

And so when we get into deeply relaxing the mind,

We find correlated attention in the body and vice versa.

So letting go as a developmental process can be greatly aided by getting into practices that help you to settle the body.

If you're on a meditation path,

Then you may want to include somatic and bodily practices.

Using the breath can be very useful for helping break through barriers of perception and connecting to fields of information,

Orientations of thought and belief,

And tones in the body that when identified might be fodder for letting go.

And of course meditation.

Meditation is the high art of perceiving the moment,

Of developing the witness in an objective sense of viewing the mind,

Viewing its movements,

And seeing what it is that you most deeply are not.

So that which is seen in the meditative experience is not you.

That which is seen is something to simply allow to pass through,

To be let go of,

To not have attachment to.

And so this is a riff and has been a mini exploration of letting go.

Letting go is an art unto itself in many ways,

And as we deepen,

Let alone start off on the journey of self-transformation and healing,

Learning to let go is paramount.

So I hope this was helpful.

I appreciate your time.

My name is Keith Parker with Field Dynamics Energy Healing and I hope to see you again or speak with you soon.