The mythical act of letting go

Gratitude for growing pains

As we near the Fall Equinox in the northern hemisphere, I am in the midst of a massive burning and ground-clearing for next season’s planting.

Over the last month or so, there’s been a lot of grieving in my personal space. I have probably been crying more days than not. I have been reliving losses from almost a decade ago as simultaneous echoes of those tragedies are re-occurring right now. And minor triggers in my daily life have sparked an emotional flood of disaster proportions — drawing out many years’ worth of accumulated resentments to be re-examined. Ultimately, all of the messiness points back to the same source of suffering: me; my particular habits of thinking and feeling and moving in the world; my own unique combination of addictions and neuroses. 

The term “letting go” suggests there is some external object that we are un-grasping. But letting go is not something that we choose to do, in my experience. In fact, the shedding that we can see is merely the most visible symptom of an internal process of alchemy. That alchemy is marked by a return to innocence, and the forgiveness of an earlier version of ourselves that we are outgrowing. 

We see the leading role that we have played in creating our own pain and suffering. Anger softens into compassion. Resentment melts into forgiveness.

We forgive those who cut us blindly with the sharp edges of their own sad stories. We forgive the parade of younger selves, who couldn’t choose differently. We hold the inner child, who memorized misunderstandings in the school of survival. We love the innocence that settled for ego validation in place of soul recognition. We accept the addiction that got us hooked on codependency as a good-enough substitute for true connection.

Whether it’s our learned impulse to possess or to defend, to withhold or to manipulate, to coerce or to fawn, we all make waves in the same ocean of suffering. There’s no way out from pointing fingers of blame. Only when we calm the storm inside can we see the horizon clearly.

I am not letting go of a specific person or situation or dream, but rather letting go of the “me” that conjured all these figments of imagination into lived reality. I am letting go of a younger me. The one that so ardently pursued that unreachable thing. The one that loved that particular person so deeply. The one that invested so much energy into being a success according to those twisted rules of society.

In defense of the earlier self, there is a momentum that perpetuates what I now know as insanity. But when I take a pause from defending that younger me, I remember the innocence that lies at the heart of her ignorance. Then I can stop justifying her behavior by continuing to repeat the same story over and over. 

What happened back then was guided by a certain level of awareness and maturity. It was the wisdom of that age, which was perfect in steering me towards the experiences that would bring me the most growth. And what is happening right now is guided from another level of awareness and maturity. In this moment, I launch myself from the platform of that hard-earned learning. 

I don’t think it’s possible to let go just because we tell ourselves to let go. If the mind issues a command to “let go” of the thing, our grasp does not differentiate between that and a command to “hold on” to that thing. They are different in semantics but not really in energy. In the language of energy, both commands are simply sending that thing more energy. The energy only maintains the object of suffering, the way our breathing and beating heart sends blood to feed a tumor body. Against our preference, that feeding mechanism keeps it alive and thriving.

When we truly let go, it is not much of a letting go, really. Letting go is not about the un-grasping of some external thing. It’s part of the ongoing natural process of death that happens in its own time, internally.

Something that once lived inside us dies, often without us noticing at first. That dead thing starts to grow heavier day by day. Until one day, with our face on the ground, we look up and realize we’re not actually being held down by it. Still, we might stay in that place a little longer, flattened under the weight of the dead and decaying thing. Because the weight and the warmth of the old thing is comforting. 

Yet as time passes, in accordance with the laws of nature, the dead thing starts to stink, because it’s rotting. And then the day finally comes when the stink becomes so overwhelming that the comfort of its weight on us is no longer appealing. Only then do we start to wiggle out from under the old thing. Only then do we venture out into unknown open space. Only then do we free ourselves, so we can keep moving.

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