Letting Go

Letting go…What does it mean? Letting go…Why is it important?

What we experience in life is that things happen. People die, relationships end, jobs end, homes burn down, we lose things, and then we navigate these losses, and we often experience grief around them.

These are both external events as well as internal experiences and we might say that with these events we did not have a choice.

Whether it was a relationship, a job, a community, any experience in your life, what you are experiencing is…it existed and then it shifted. 

There are so many ways that we meet places in our lives and in our being where we are navigating loss, but that is not the same as letting go.

How do we both exist with and let go of what has happened?  Are we letting go or…

• Are we holding on to what was?
• Are we holding on to old hurts, wounds, pain?
• Are we holding on to memories of experiences that were so wonderful, so that we can re-live them again? 

Things happen, life happens, and we flow with it as an expansion, or we find ourselves holding on and in a state of contraction.

We are letting go when we are choosing to live from a place that is conscious and intentional, and when we see that we can choose to move through the loss.

Letting go is something that we're not necessarily taught, but we learn about it through living. In a way, we could say that letting go is a practice.

We let go of people, we let go of things, we let go of goals, we let go of dreams, we let go of jobs, we let go of homes, we let go of lives, we let go of habits. We let go when we live life as an intentional being that sees life as a series of lessons and that we are always learning.

We are letting go when we look at these questions and we navigate in these ways:

• Do we recognize that it is happening for us and not to us?
• Do we see these losses as opportunities for growth?
• Do we see our life as a series of choices and that everything is serving?

Letting go can be but isn't necessarily the same as releasing, especially when we look at that word “release” as re-lease. A lease is making a commitment, such as for a home or a car, so in a way “releasing” creates an energetic quality of putting us back into that cycle again.

Letting go is more about reframing, which is taking a look at something, in the container or the box that it was in and then adding a new box or even taking away what was and creating a new container for it.

Letting go is surrendering, it’s allowing things to shift. Shift happens!

Letting go is a recognition of being complete. What does it mean exactly to be complete? Completion is both the experience of finishing something and being done with it, it also refers to being in "wholeness."

Letting go offers us an opportunity to have a more global experience with something.

We let go, and we are recognizing that “it” was, and we are here now.

It may not be here; they may not be here.

What we are left with is what we have now, our Self, our life as it is now.

When we look at life from an expanded place, as the I Am Presence, or Soul, or Spirit, we recognize and remember that we always have us which is what we started out with, before we incarnated into this body. When we leave, we don't take this body with us, we let it go. 

Stepping into the season of Autumn, we are dancing with the pinnacle of letting go, as witnessed in nature. The leaves fall when they are complete, and they nourish the soil for more growth next Spring. The cycle is serving the whole of life.

Birth and death are at the same point in the cycle of life; they meet to complete the circle; they are the two sides of the coin that make up the whole. 

By allowing ourselves to let go, we recognize that "letting go" is an action. Think of the image of that cat hanging from a branch with the saying, “Hang in There” and think of the grip that it takes to hold on to things. To let go means to open your hands. There is an action of opening.

This is where allowing and surrendering are not passive. These are actions and they take courage. The courage to trust that as you fall you will land on your feet, you will find a way through, you will trust that all is serving.
These actions invite us to be here in the present moment, to not be attached to what was, to not be attached to what's coming. Letting go is the act of being here now, it's trusting.

I have been on the planet for 56 years and I have had numerous opportunities to be in the space of letting go. I have lost parents, partners, friends, items that I have loved and treasured. I have recognized through all of these muddy parts in my life that the statement: “No mud, no lotus” is all about growth and expansion.

This life is about witnessing how we are here to learn and grow, to allow and surrender, to be with and trust. It is all a choice.
I am so grateful to be on this wild ride of life, to NOT wear my seat belt, and to put my hands in the air. I am grateful to live, learn, experience, and evolve. 

Are you ready to be with what is, and let go of what is no longer? 

Letting go is the act of being here now.

I Am Complete and I Am here Now!