Peace and contentment come into our lives when difficult emotions and circumstances are eliminated.
While this statement seems to make sense, I think it’s actually a big misunderstanding of how emotions and peace work.
When we view personal peace in this way, it ends up creating so much pressure for us to “get through” or “get past” our feelings, that we wind up hiding them altogether. From this perspective, letting go is about sweeping the hard stuff under the rug.
But in his book Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, David R. Hawkins presents a very different point of view:
He lays out in detail the full spectrum of emotions and guides us in how to be present to them.
He helps us lift them up and examine them, rather than sweeping them under the rug.
He helps us to be with our various emotions in a way that is not incapacitating or heavy.
He helps us to hold our emotions and struggles rather than being held by them.
This perspective flips the script!
It turns out, we can actually find peace and contentment in the midst of letting go, while we’re still in process. We don’t have to get paralyzed by the pressure of figuring ourselves out, and we don’t have to sweep anything under the rug.
Whew! What a relief this is for us human beings, who are always in process.
In this way, letting go is about empowerment rather than avoidance (see next week’s blog for more on how letting go unleashes empowerment).
It’s this unique approach to managing our feelings that leads me to offer this reading group for Hawkins’ book. There’s still time to sign up if you’re interested! Learn more here: https://www.sojournersinstitute.com/letting-go-book-group
Find out more about the book and reading group here!