How to Let Go

I have told people you before I am not much on meditating.  I have nothing against it, but I see it as wasting time.  Well in the sense that the western world meditates.  Meditation in the western world is an escape mechanism.  People concentrate on something, someone or some event and think it is making them present to the moment when all it is doing is letting them escape their problems temporarily. It will help you concentrate but not make you feel better.  If you really want growth you must use mindfulness.  Instead of trying to forget your problems you need to focus on your problems directly.  

I have shown in previous post that the voice of the Goddess is soft and subtle.  Until you calm your mind you will not hear her.  I have also shown that if you focus hard on something you want to find answers to, she will bring the answers to you.  This includes focusing on your own problems.  Diving deep right down into that darkness and confronting all those things that are running you, all those worries, all those fears and all the things you have disowned, will cause you to start letting go so that there is nothing left for you to escape from.  You will not need to concentrate to be present, you will just be present.  All because you let go of the things that are pulling you away from being present.  

This is how you work on yourself internally.  Being mindful of what you have in the darkness has three steps.  The first is be aware of what you want to let go of. The second is to allow yourself to experience it fully. The last is to let it come up and let it out.  You may lie to yourself and say you don’t have a dark side, but we are all moons everyone of us has a dark side.  Im not sure where I read that but it is a gleaming truth.  

Being aware of what you want to let go of may sound very simple, but I just want you to be aware of it.  Understanding how the mind works will help with being aware.  Our minds have a conscious side and a subconscious side.  The conscious mind is everything you are aware of right now.   The subconscious side is everything you are not aware of.  If I ask you what you did over summer break, you will become aware of what you did and tell me but before I asked you it was buried in your subconscious.  Body temperature, breathing, digestion, heart rate, etc. is taken care of by the subconscious mind.  If you had to be aware of everything all the time then you could not function.  

We all have a split in the mind, conscious-subconscious.  Being aware of this then you can understand that the subconscious is where you banish all the things you think are unacceptable.  Unacceptable thoughts, actions, emotions, beliefs, experiences, etc.  Anything you think is not you.  The worse you think it is the deeper you will throw it down into the depths of the subconscious.  You want it as far out of your awareness as possible and you will throw layers and layers of resistance on top of it.  This is why it is a big challenge to be aware of what you want to let go of, you are not aware of what you want to let go of.  All the unacceptable things down there you are not aware of them.   They are so far down there that even if you tried to consciously remember them you would not be able to.  

There are ways to bring light into the dark depths.   Remembering your childhood and bringing certain memories up to the surface, seeing the patterns in your life,  understanding that what you do not like about others you do not like about yourself, but the biggest one is to notice what triggers you.  Triggers remind us of past traumas.  It causes responses in us that is disproportionate to reality.  See what triggers you as messengers that enable us to become conscious of what we have buried deep in our subconscious.   If you over react to certain things its because something inside of you got poked at and you think you have to fight for your survival.  Until you deal with it then it will amplify itself over the years and you will eventually become a Karen on the internet.  All kidding aside, you will over react more and more until you deal with what is triggering you.  

Most people will try to design their lives where they are never triggered.  They pull people in their life that think like them and create a safe space so they are never triggered.  This is why most people want ‘yes men’ around them.  People want validation.  This is the worst possible thing to do but most do it.  Others will try to fight against themselves being triggered.  They will try to desensitize themselves to something that triggers from.  Like just looking for arguments from people who think differently or putting on a mask in crowds to make people think they are out going.  This requires a lot of effort but eventually you will go back to ground zero.  

Instead of avoiding getting triggered or fighting getting triggered, see being triggered as a great time to be mindful of something that was out of your awareness.  Something you disowned that is now having light shined on it.  When the light is on it that is the best time to see it and let it go.  Don’t fight against it, just let go of it.  If  meeting new people gives you anxiety, don’t fight it.  Try to see what made you have this anxiety and let go of it.   If you had a bad break up in your life, don’t let it run your life.  You will see people who never love again because they can’t get over someone else.  That is a disproportionate response to reality.  People not liking their body is a disproportionate response to reality.    You are trying to hide yourself.  Whenever your response has nothing to do with what’s out there and everything to do with what’s inside catch your response and let go of what is triggering you.  

If you think that positive thinking and law of attraction are the way to go then you need to drop all of that garbage.  People who believe that think that becoming aware of negative or unacceptable things will cause more negative and unacceptable things to manifest.  This is not true.  The things you are not aware of are active right now.  They manifest things into your life until you become aware of them.  Becoming aware of them lets you let go of them.  Stop denying the dark side and dive right into it.  

When you get triggered and the survival instinct kicks in, you must face the fear.   Fear has a poker face like no other. Fear makes you believe things that are not real.  Like a monster under the bed when you were a kid.  Im telling you to look under the bed when everyone else has been telling you to not look under the bed.  Face the fear and dive right into what you have stuffed under the bed.  We think that by bringing aware of the darkness within we will manifest more darkness.  That is simply false.  By bringing what’s in the darkness out into the light it fades away.  

When you are mindful the first step is do not fight the thoughts and emotions.  Just let go of the sensations that rise up.  Emotions are the labels we put on certain sensations.  Fear is an emotion.  It is very vague.  A sensation is very precise.  It’s a rapid heart beat, you get a tingling and tightening in the stomach and you start breathing fast.  When these sensations happen your mind kicks in and tells you its fear.  Go past mental labels and focus on the sensations directly.  

Second, allow yourself to experience it fully.  Once you are aware of what it is you want to let go of and the sensations start then just experience them.  Do not judge them, don’t analyze them, don’t try to understand them, don’t try to figure them out or try to get rid of them.  Just experience them.  Letting go is the act of not doing.  It’s not the act of  trying to get rid of or trying to let go of.  It’s letting go of the attachment or resistance to something.  By default you are attached to certain things and you resist certain things.  Letting go is bringing something into your awareness and instead of hanging on, resisting or getting rid of it you just allow yourself to experience it.    I know it’s easier said than done.  The mind will analyze and resist.  Don’t let the mind do that.  Be with it.  Letting go is that simple.  By letting your mind and body experience it the charge you have associated with it will just fade away.  Nothing is permanent.  In order to let go you just have to stop hanging on to it or resisting it.  If you do that it will run its course and fade away.  

The last is to let it come up and let it out.  This can be powerful.  Imagine it leaving your body.  In any way you want.  I like to envision me healing a part of myself then letting it release out of my mouth.  Like the move The Green Mile.  In the video the character screaming, Del, is your conscious mind.  That is what this movie is all about.  You keeping yourself in your own prison, for something you might or might not have done, while trying to heal parts of yourself.  What most people do is they actually kill the John Coffie within.  They may heal certain parts but they never really forgive themselves. It’s why the movie ends that way.  You do not have to kill John Coffie.  You can heal yourself and release yourself out of your prison.  This is how you free yourself from the floor and ceiling I referred to earlier.  Bring your awareness to all the shackles holding you down and by letting go you release the charge.  By releasing the charge, those things that ran you loosen their grip and you become free.  

If you have a bad memory and it makes you uncomfortable by releasing the charge that memory simply becomes information. Once the charge is gone and you think of it again it’s like any other information coming into your mind.   It will no longer have a hold on you.  The same goes for challenging your core identity or core beliefs.  By releasing the charge to them you are now free from the shackles or prison cell of those things.  The beauty of this is that it’s permanent.  True long lasting self esteem is subtle and it sneaks up on you.  Grab it and don’t let go.