Letting Go

Babies do not need to be trained in “letting go”. Initially, letting go is their natural state and they are being trained to focus here in order to grasp and get some relative stability in the wavelengths at which we operate. But once they are well grounded adults, it seems important to bring that finely-honed cognitive ability to bear on the choices that were made both before and during the process of bringing our focused attention to this “place”. It is my view that we consciously chose to be here and that part of the process of acclimating to these frequency ranges is to bring that same conscious capacity into our cognitive awareness here. If we are to fulfill our intention for being here, we must first and foremost become conscious of what it was. Regardless of whether we came to play, create, observe or whatever, in order to actively participate in the completion of our intent, the first step must certainly be to sensitize ourselves to the direction in which our preferences – the nudging of our earlier choices – lead us, and to deliberately choose to move in that direction. Ideally, it would behoove us to be consciously aware of our intent for this particular life and re-choose it in a form that will most fully manifest it here.

So, how do we come to dis-cover the choice or choices that resulted in this life? There are an immense number of layers of choice but I examine most of the ones that I come into contact with in a similar way. Some show up as broad and subtle preferences, which become apparent by observing every-day life. Others may better be described as habitual behaviors. Here I’m not referring to something repetitive in the sense of putting fork to mouth but habitual in the sense of something automated and not preferred. In both the broad and the particular I’m looking for what it is that is recurring. Examining them will reveal choices typically laid down behind the manifestation of the behaviors themselves. The first aspect of the examination is to cognitively observe the habitual behavior, see what patterns are visible within it, what repeats. The second is how do those habitual actions or preferences feel? What is the flavor of the experience? This begins with choosing to sense what is present in the moments that you find yourself in a repetitive behavior. Whether it is gross, subtle or causal, the body is the only input device that we have, so the simple sensing of what we “feel” must be the place to start. This is not how we feel about it but what sensations are being felt. What is important to note here is that you cannot examine feelings unless you are in the experience. If you are angry you could try and examine your thoughts and actions after the fact, but you can only observe the physical sensations that are manifesting in the body during the experience. So, if you want to fully unpack something, it is best that you be cognitively conscious during the event but it is essential that you be sensually conscious during it. The first requires active inquiry and the second only observing. But, as I pointed to in Language and Reality, the words and the energy are linked by cognitive association and so what you hear in your head is directly connected to what you are feeling in your body so it’s best to do the work in the moment that the experience is occurring. I do realize this isn’t pleasant or easy but it is useful in making distinctions.

The overall purpose is to discover deep choices and in order to sense the subtle, one must reduce the activity in the foreground. This is typically achieved by some kind of emptying. If you’ve got a great listener in your life, this can be a wonderful thing but they must empty you without adding other anchors. Anchors will provide you with a landing place rather than having your next threshold reveal itself in the silence in which the emptiness leaves you. Most people need some kind of letting go practice. There are many but here I just want to look at the basic process. You cannot let go of something unless you first have a hold on it. So in order to let go one must first have at least a mild interest in a particular outcome. Its simplest form seems to be observing something with little concern about what transpires, but not none at all. This is like watching a sporting event in which you have some preference for who wins but would not be bothered by either team winning. The more investment one has in a preference, the more deliberately one must act to release oneself from that entanglement. The more energy applied to intention, the more natural gravity is accumulated and the more of an anchoring quality results. Thus, the more gravity that exists, the more effort is needed to extract oneself from that attachment. The point I want to start with is that some level of choice initiates the energy which generates the attachment and that “letting go” also requires a choice, a choice to let go. Letting go may appear to be, and in a way is, passive – a form of allowing – but it is initiated by a choice, which is active.

Letting go is a transition from focused to not focused, from activity to rest, working to vacation. The narrowing of attention required to intentionally create is released and the narrowed intensity of focus is freed to expand back into an effortless appreciation, or perhaps just observation. That release, the movement away from a creative act, is typically pleasurable. But letting go of a workday does not occur at the same frequency range as letting go of some habitual behavior. This letting go requires stepping out of your normal range of attentiveness and viewing the behavior from behind, as something distinct. If you are to discover what lies at the source of the behavior, you must be able to examine its contours and discern the components traits. It starts with the recognition that something is occurring that seems to be automated. You don’t remember deliberately choosing the behavior. In that moment, the observer appears in the opening and distinguishing begins. Letting go is a practice of repeated emptying and requires the recognition that some form of “holding on” is occurring.

For me, my yoga practice took deliberate choice for years. Sometimes I struggled to do it as often as part of me wanted to, other times it was almost effortless. But now it seems more like an addiction, though a healthy one. It has a momentum of its own but achieving that momentum took concerted effort over a long period of time. Like a rocket escaping gravity, the initial thrust is immense but once a certain altitude is achieved, less effort is needed to maintain forward motion. I practice every morning with just a handful of exceptions each year. Within the practice, though sometimes just for ten seconds or so at a time, I lose touch with the experience of a body or thoughts and am floating free in ways I described in “Preferences”. In that quiet freedom, there is not only a feeling of being boundless, but insights arise after thoughts return and much of what I’ve written in these essays began in those reentry experiences. The insights provide toeholds in the new territory. Both the pleasure and freedom of the experience, and the grounding nature of the insights, have created a habit of letting go that is now preferred.

In one of my first “est” seminars the leader said “I can’t tell you how pissed off I was when I realized that there would never be a time in my life when I could sit back and put my feet up.” Though I took that to be a recognition of the path of evolution going on forever, being a young yogi I still held to the premise of yoga that enlightenment was an achievable destination, one in which I would excise my experiences of the world’s suffering and my own. It’s interesting that I could understand that the universe was infinite yet still expect to reach a stationary experience of the infinite. But with my continual energetic experiences into the infinite variability of flow, one day I simply knew infinity. It was not what I expected. I was immersed in the fascination of this endless path on which I traveled and marveled at its wonders and endless nature. My insatiable curiosity did not disappear with this experience. I could still be urgently drawn to investigate and be transfixed and delight in what I found but I let go of seeking a destination. Within the infinite, I also realized that there is likely an infinite number of ways to experience the infinite and I was not limited to that particular taste of it. And it seemed that letting go to that degree was a result of years, perhaps lifetimes, of intentional choices. It was as if some aspect of this I was intent upon a broad creative act and that creative action allowed “me” access to the inverse portion of that waveform, appreciation. Active choosing seems to create the possibility of the equal and opposite level of letting go into appreciation. The amount of energy used to create will be reflected in the amount of appreciation derived from that intent. We choose, then we release in balanced amounts. Given that we are the end result of eons of intent, we certainly have the capacity to let go into that expanse and appreciate vast amounts of creation. Yet, we have chosen to be focused here so it would seem prudent to either deliberately continue on our chosen path or accept that we are complete with it, let it go and be emptied again.