Doesn't this statement make you cringe or make you angry? Sure, it does, and I'll tell you why. Because we humans love collecting things, we collect ideas, theories, mannerisms, personalities, feelings, people, homes, problems, past lovers and troublemakers. Don't we? And after we collect the big things, we collect little things like babies, iPhones, cars and all the little material objects we claim as our own. Of course, we don't collect bad habits, difficult personality traits, feelings or problems by choice sometimes, but trust me when I say we are always collecting something, we're just unaware. We can agree that most material things are easy to let go of rather than mannerisms, personalities, our egos, ideas or our feelings.
It's not bad to collect things, it's bad believing you need these things to be happy, healthy or peaceful. I'll give you two personal examples of letting go of something big, big trauma or an emotional trigger. I'll also give you an example of something little, but still causes us much grief. For me when I was molested this was a past event trauma that I had to let go of. I had to begin feeling compassion for other people and the person that caused the pain I had to look at it through a different lens even though it was extremely difficult. I had to set aside my pain and ignorance. When I gave my feelings of anger space, I was able to heal myself and help others, certainly I have an emotional scar, but it doesn’t feel like an open wound anymore. Going back to step one, I had to take responsibility for my own healing and find the seed of compassion in this trauma. This is what we do with scars of the past we learn from them, we learned to transcend bad feelings, because when the past trauma isn't our fault, and the drama is over we suffer from the emotional trauma because we don't know how to feel the feelings and let go. We hold on, creating guilt, shame and blame.
As for small things that cause us daily stress, let's take controlling time.
There are so many things we cannot control, especially time. Every minute we witness the coming and going of time, so to think we are controlling time is silliness. Once you sit quietly to reflect on this you will see that Life happens with us or without us. when we think we are controlling our time it's just an illusion and one that stresses us out. Letting go of this "time control" doesn’t mean we don’t plan or do our daily duties on time. What this means is not being attached to the outcome so much. For me letting go began with practicing these three steps, and I truly believe you can learn to let go also. Of course, there is some understanding that must take place such as the easiest and first concept to grasp is being OK with the good and the bad, we must understand that these two situations or feelings are impermanent. Yes, I know we are brought up thinking we should always have good times and feelings, but we must understand that there will be bad too. Actually, most of our growth comes from overcoming our negative situations or emotions. Letting go of the notion we are supposed to always have good times is fundamental towards your steps to freedom.
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