The practice of the action of letting go can take anywhere from a blink of an eye to lifetimes.

Hearing someone saying ‘Just let go’ when you are battling within your stuff or your attachment to your stuff, often times leads to a reaction of anger or hopelessness.

The anger may initially be projected at the person who seems to think it’s so easy. Primarily the anger is towards the self for being unable to do something that ‘should’ be as easy as the phrase sounds.

Then seeps in the hopelessness of feeling like a failure that one cannot let go like one thinks one ‘should’.

What is that we cling onto when we don’t want to let go?

In my experience, I feel one tends to cling to reactions based on primary insecurities.

Our childhood fears float to the surface to be addressed.

• Fear of being alone on this earth, isolated, adrift on a boat with no anchor and no direction or hope
• An overwhelming sense of not belonging.
• Fear of having your mask ripped off to expose the real you inside
• Fear of being pitied.
• Fear of being rejected.

 

As children we were led by others, be that a parent, a sibling, a teacher or similar. Someone taught you to learn to ride a bike, tie your shoe laces, swim, read, write etc.

How were you taught to deal with fear? How were you taught to overcome insecurities or challenges?

To be honest I don’t think my parents were great navigators or teachers in this area of fear, but that’s the way they were taught – by example through their own childhoods.

However I did learn a great deal through what they were afraid of and have worked hard to overcome those fearful programs.

The clinging to hope that someone else will fix it for us.

In general hanging on to hope in this context can be somewhat of a straight jacket we create for ourselves. One stands on the shore, looking out to sea but one does not create ones own boat. One hopes that someone will come along and pick us up. Hope may be that someone else will do the hard work for us that someone else will change so we don’t have to.

Hope may keep us stagnant in the same spot waiting for the ship to come and rescue us. (An example of this might be that you are in a dead-end relationship but you wont get out until another more interesting proposition comes to make the transition easier)

The ship may come, however if one has not worked on rescuing oneself and building up ones inner strength then the ship may just pass by or you may get on the ship but are soon thrown to the bowels to row due to you still being so fearful.

You cannot let someone else captain your boat. One fragments and loses life force that way.

You need to be the captain of your own boat. Someone responsible for their own journey.

Letting go is a combination of the mind and the heart settling in together – in agreement.

They need to be in alignment.

They need to agree with each other.

They need to be friends and supportive partners to each other.

The mind has all the excuses. The heart is not in the battle, it just is. The mind however perceives that it is in battle with the heart. It is actually in battle with itself.

If you are looking to challenge yourself to let go of something, write out all that is in your head. The excuses, the fears, the critical self….no holes barred.

Then visually and with your breath (exhale always long and slow compared to inhale), take the stairs down from your mind into your heart and sit there breathing through the heart.

Nothing else. Just ‘be’ there.

This will assist in building your inner strength from a place of compassion both for yourself and others.

Practice this for 7 days and nourish the part of you that is beyond fear.

Letting go is not just a word – It’s a journey .

 

Blessings

Odette