A Quick Rant About Letting Go
Everyone has heard about “letting go” even if only as a cliche or as a saying. Some common ways in which you might have heard this idea are when people say things like; “just let it go”, or “you're choosing to hold on to it”. But what does “let it go” mean, and how can we learn to let go of things in a practical way? I personally have known about the very practical self help method called “releasing” or “letting go” for a little over 10 years now. I can't remember exactly when I first came across it, but the first thing that I do remember studying was the book “The Sedona Method” (which is found here on Amazon, if interested), which serves as both a fantastic introduction and overview of what releasing and letting go is all about, and how to apply it in your life. Put simply, in my own definition here, releasing allows us to remove the feeling blocks that get in the way of us doing, being, (and a little more questionably) having everything that we want to do, be and have in life. I believe that emotional “mastery” is truly one of, if not THE most important skill to learn and get good at if you want to live a happy, more freedom filled life. To quickly further define here, ultimately I think that “freedom” is the freedom to feel and go through experiences with an openness and positive attitude that doesn't get stuck in negativity. Pain in life is very much a certainty, so learning how to relate to that inevitable pain is of the up-most value. Releasing or letting go, is probably THE MOST POTENT skill that I have ever come across for learning how to process emotional and mental pain, and therefore to process the painful events of life themselves, as and after they have occurred. The powerfully visual analogy that Hale Dwoskin uses in the book The Sedona Method to simply describe what letting go is, is of a kettle that builds up steam pressure being similar to the emotional pressure and negativity that gets built up inside of us as repressed negative energy if we don't let go. Luckily, SOME level of letting go is very much a natural phenomenon, like when we laugh deeply and authentically for example, we release some of that “steam” and we feel a natural easing and healing of our inner world take place, although it may be very much a subconscious feeling. According to Lester Levenson, the founder of the technique or method (who's magnificent story I won't go into right now, but can be read about here) we can simply call releasing from here on in, all of our subconscious programming from childhood, and our entire lifetime of experiences get “stored” as feelings. These feelings accumulate and collect within us basically, and this repressed crap eventually leads to not only emotional and mental health concerns, but also could be simply labeled as “stress”, which as many of us are familiar with, leads to a very high degree of our physical health issues too (I believe it's something like 90% of Doctors visits are related to some kind of stress related issue – don't quote me on that). Just one quick thing to say about Lester, before I move on – apart from urging you to read his story, or watch some of the below YouTube videos, is that his book “Keys To Ultimate Freedom” is a really great read, and summarizes everything you need to know about the process in terms of the overall picture, how we got to where we are now, and how letting go can be used as one of the fastest ways to spiritually advance ourselves, much faster than the traditional methods of meditation, etc. BTW – If you search Google, you may just find a free PDF version of said book 😉 (having said that, the courses that Hale Dwoskin, and Larry Crane (who are both teachers of “letting go” but with completely different styles, and under different company names) are still helpful for actually learning and applying letting go to your life). Here's some great videos of Lester talking, so you can get an idea (you can easily look up the other parts of these videos on YT, so I won't post all of them here): Lester Talking About Freedom Lester Talking About Getting “Off The Rollercoaster” (of unenlightened human experience) So although as I mentioned, we have this natural ability to let go of stuff, and not build up too much “pressure”, the problem is that we kind of get programmed out of the habit of letting go all the time, and so this natural process doesn't happen with enough regularity for us, and we build up stress and baggage more often than we release and let go. Children are a great example of what it's like to be good at letting go. They can have a fight with one of their friends, be crying one minute, and then the next moment they have seemingly “let it go” and are once again playing and laughing with the same person. You don't see many adults who are able to let go so easily and just “get over it”, we tend to hold onto things, and this is really at the core of the issue, and why I feel that just about everyone would benefit from learning to release their feelings consciously. So recently, I've moved back into a desire to merge with the teachings of letting go (which by the way, is similar to the idea of “forgiveness”, the type that I believe that dude Jesus was really talking about so much) and is such a fundamental teaching in many spiritual courses, like A Course In Miracles, Attitudinal Healing, etc. I've had a lot of anxiety and difficult feelings in my life (not saying any more than anyone else) but they've been a sizeable part of my reality, and releasing (when I actually do it) seems like the most natural way I've ever come across to help me be with my feelings. I still value things like ACT (which I've written a bit about here on this site, and often recommend people look into as well for their own healing), but I believe that in terms of “spiritual power” releasing is much more powerful, because it's dealing with the root causes of our mental/emotional patterns of difficulty, while ACT is a more “heady approach”. There's also some really innovative ways that Hale (of The Sedona Method) especially has come up for releasing, like Holistic Releasing as he has named it, which is basically seeing that everything we experience in life is somewhere on a scale of polarity, if we're happy, there's still some sadness, if we are resisting, there's still some acceptance there etc, as hidden as these other polarities may be at times. Anyway, that's my rant on releasing for now, though I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic in the future. If you've read this far, here's some useful links to further your studies in this area, and I really hope you get familiar, as it's such an amazing experience to learn to let go consciously, and I think it's something that the world needs more than ever. I believe that every person who's released has a positive impact on those around them, and so the good vibes keep spreading. Here's some links to continue your “letting go education”:
