Transcription
Sometimes we think that things need to be complicated in order to be meaningful, in order to be true. When in reality, sometimes going back to the most simple and direct approach and practice is exactly what we need to move forward and release.
There's a specific practice that has really transformed my personal life in terms of psychology and spirituality, and it's called the practice of Letting Go. The path of surrender. Dr. David Hawkins wrote this and many other books, and this particular book—I mean, wow—I want to talk a little bit about it. So, he calls it the practice of letting go.
I remember the first time I read this book. I read the whole thing through; I was fascinated. He was talking about the benefits of this practice of letting go and how he did it. It transformed his life, his health, his spiritual illumination; everything about his experience was transformed. And I got through the book, and I'm like, "Yes, I'm ready for this!" And I realized, wait a second, what—what is the practice? What is the practice of letting go?
And uh, I realized that that paradigm in me that's always looking for the complicated and the esoteric and the complex had gone through the whole book kind of waiting for, "Okay, where's the chapter where he's going to explain this, you know, extremely complex, layered, multi-step process for letting go that he's been talking about?" And so I said, "Hold on a second. Um, maybe it's not as I imagine or perceive." So I went back into the book, and I finally found it. You, if you blink—which I had evidently—if you blink, you miss it. It's on page 19 of the book, and it's about one paragraph.
This is the simple practice of Letting Go that I'm talking about, and I'm going to—I'm going to read that paragraph, recite that paragraph for you in his words, because I want to illustrate just how simple and direct it is. But just a little bit more context, so—uh, the practice of Letting Go has to do with this core idea that most of the problems that we experience in our life have to do with emotions and feelings that we've not properly processed. So, as humans, we're honestly, we're truly not trained on how to process emotions the way they're intended to flow, process feelings and sensations the way they're intended to flow as information for our awareness. And whenever there's any bit of discomfort, instead of being trained to let those process and flow, we've been trained, consciously and subconsciously, to do everything but that.
So here, here are like four different reactions we have to a feeling when it comes up, right? We might repress it, and this is at the unconscious level. Repression means that we've so trained ourselves to resist that feeling that it doesn't even get up into our conscious awareness. Our subconscious is like, "I got you covered; not getting through, right? You shall not pass!" And so it just gets stuffed down there, right? Sometimes it does make it up into our awareness, and that's when this other function, suppression, comes in. Suppression is like, "Oops, it poked through; it got through that—that wall of the subconscious," but it's like, "Oh no, not today!" Your conscious mind is like, "Not going to do it!" And so it's stuff—we stuff it back down.
Now, sometimes something does come into our awareness, and we decide, okay, yeah, let's pass this through in the form of expression. So we express that energy or that feeling in some way, and in the short term, this does give a sense of relief. But what—what Hawkins talks about is the fact that when we express, we're never completely processing or releasing the feeling. It's like a portion of it gets kind of like broken off and sent out, and the rest just kind of sucks back in. Not to mention the fact that when we express a feeling that maybe—may not be wholesome, it may even be a toxic feeling, and we express it in the form of anger or outrage, right? We're actually just passing along this feeling as a chain reaction, as this cycle just to another—another living being, right? And in the end, it's going to come back around to us anyways. And the—and the last reaction is to escape—right? Addiction, drugs, alcohol, anything that it takes to just not have to face that feeling.
So the whole hypothesis here in this letting go practice is: face the feeling. That's it. Face the feeling, let it process, and you know, he says that the average feeling lasts about 9—90 seconds. 90 seconds. That's all we're really asking is that you hold that feeling for 90 seconds. That sounds easy, but it feels—feels big. So I want to read that—that definition of the practice itself that I had missed that first time around. Now, okay, this is uh, page 19 of the book. It's "The Mechanics of Letting Go" is the title of the section.
Letting Go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling to be there and focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. I'm going to repeat that: It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates.
And that's it. That's it. Can it really be that simple? And I have to say now, after putting this into practice for years, that yes, it really is that simple. Not the same as easy. I didn't say it was easy, but I said it really is that simple. And if you've made it this far into the video and you're still watching, then I know you're the kind of person that wants to experience this. So if you're up for that, that's what we're going to do right now is I'm going to hold a little bit of space for us to do this letting go practice together. I'll guide it very lightly, but I just want you to get a taste of this so that it's not just a conceptual thing that you get from watching this video. I want you to begin to feel it. Okay, so we'll only do it for about a minute or so, but what I invite you to do is just settle, take a deep inhale through the nose now, release with a sigh, and now just breathe naturally in and out through your nose and allow your awareness to settle. Allow your awareness to settle down into your body, in particular, until—there's a feeling or a sensation there that gets your awareness's attention. So see what's there for you right now, any kind of feeling, and just notice your mind doing what it normally does. That's step one is just noticing the pattern, right? Did I want to jump straight into a story about it? That's natural, but it's not what we're doing here. So release the story, and remember we're trying to get beneath the feeling; we're trying to not resist the feeling and just let it [Music] be. We're focused on letting out the energy behind it. Release the story; it's just a feeling. Let the feeling be there; let the Feeling just exist right there in your awareness. There's nothing to stop; there's nothing to resist; it just needs to pass through. The energy behind it just needs to move through. Stay with it. We don't need to vent it; we don't need to fear it; we don't need to condemn it or moralize it; we don't need to make the movie about it. Just come back into the feeling and be with it. And Hawkins says that, you know, there's a lighter feeling that will begin to come when some of that energy has been processed, and some feelings are bigger than others, and it takes more than one session. But if you can make this a regular part of your practice, you know, step one: a feeling comes into your awareness throughout the day; there's definitely a pattern of how you normally deal with it, whether it's repression, suppression, expression, or escape. But just experiment. Just experiment. What if I don't need to fear it? What if that doesn't even really mean anything? It's just a feeling, and what if I just give it space to process and release the energy behind it? And the more you do this, you create this new pattern; you create this new groove, and it's easier to do over time, and even bigger and bigger feelings can find their way into this practice, and you begin to feel this increased sense of lightness. Give this practice a try. If you really want to dig in, you can pick up Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins, but I think I've offered you enough here that you can begin to experiment with this simple, but not easy, practice. Let me know how it goes.