Letting go is often hailed as one of the pinnacles of spiritual maturity, wisdom, and inner peace. “Just let go!” is advice that gets offered as a kind of one-size-fits-all solution to life’s problems.
But letting go, like most spiritual truths, isn’t always sage advice.
Take that strange piece of art in your home. For us, it’s a brown clay lizard-like-thing that adorns the top of our water heater. This oddity that came out of my 6-year-old hands is something I’m not letting go of!
Like all spiritual truths, letting go needs to be understood paradoxically. How do we sort out when it’s time to let go and NOT let go?
Experiences, like the foods we eat, need to be metabolized in order to promote personal health. This goes for experiences we enjoy, and those we don’t. Anger, sadness, fear, for instance - we’re naturally inclined to move on quickly from these unpleasant experiences.
However, hard times are like vegetables. They are full of spiritual nutrition if we metabolize them.
Anger often means we feel violated and need to set a boundary.
Sadness arises most often when something important has been lost.
Fear gets activated when we feel threatened in some way.
If we let go of anger, sadness, or fear too quickly we bypass the metabolizing process. We shut the door on the next class that life has enrolled us in. We go around a life challenge rather than through it.
The paradoxical truth is that if we don’t hold difficult life realities close to heart and mind, they end up having a hold on us. The paradoxical truth is that we embrace experiences SO THAT we can let them go.
Judy grew up in a fundamentalist church where hell-fire and brimstone were preached from the pulpit and pictured on the church walls. For years she carried anger and resentment about the church. And for years she felt a frustrating void in her life.
The time came when she opened up her anger and resentment, like a box she’d been dragging around, and unpacked it’s contents. She found many surprises, including some comforting truths from her faith that were lost in the rubble. She also found some compassion for the people who, out of fear, oriented to a fear-inducing faith.
We’ve all had our versions of boxing up painful parts of our experience. It’s only by holding these close that we have the chance to let them go or to soften their presence in our lives.
Knowing when to let go and when NOT to let go is one of the great challenges in life. Getting this balance right just might be one of the pinnacles of spiritual maturity, wisdom, and inner peace.
Exploring this balance is a big reason why I’m launching an extended book study on the topic of letting go, using a book entitled Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, by David Hawkins.
I’d love to have you join me for this Zoom Group! Here’s a link to get more information and to register.
Or click here to learn more!