Learning the Wisdom of Letting Go
To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.
— JACK KORNFIELD
Letting go, the process of not holding on, is an important facet of mindfulness practice and a key determinant in our well-being. It is the potential for how we can relate to each moment’s experience without contention or trying to grab or control it. As soon as we grasp something, it’s as if we strangle it. That is particularly true if we cling to another person or to something that will inevitably fade. A cause of so much of our anguish is this tendency to grasp after, hold on to, or reject experience. This leads to an endless struggle with what is and leaves us perennially ill at ease.
However, this habit is deep-rooted. My friend Leslie told me a story recently that points to how grasping starts when we are very young. Learning to let go can also start at an early age as well. Leslie wrote to me about her three-year-old son:
Kiko’s morning meltdown today was because he made up his mind that he wanted syrupy waffles. My “no” and offering of oatmeal with honey and a few rainbow sprinkles led to a good fifteen-minute cry. He was so stuck on the idea of syrup that he couldn’t relax enough to hear me explain that he could have a waffle after he ate his oatmeal. He’d calm down for a few seconds and look at the oatmeal just long enough to tell me how it was too bumpy or not bumpy enough. Eventually, he found a book he wanted me to read to him at the table and calmed down enough to actually enjoy the sprinkles on his oats. While his three-year-old tendency to freak out over whatever it is he wants in that moment can be challenging, thankfully it’s matched by his ability to just let it go as soon as something else shiny catches his attention.
Fortunately, we are not simply victims to this process. We can shift our response depending upon how we view each experience. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman philosopher and emperor, put it this way: “If you are distressed by anything external [or internal], the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” This is as true now as it was two thousand years ago.
What is remarkable about human beings is their ability to express this principle no matter how wretched the circumstances. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. He observed how even in the most despicable of conditions, people still had the power to decide how they related to what was happening. He wrote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Having choice over one’s attitude or relationship to experience is the potential of what mindfulness practice offers. It is the doorway to liberty.
I recall talking to a spiritual teacher in India who had been held as a prisoner of war in a brutal internment camp in Japan during World War II. He said one of his daily tasks was to be lowered into a septic tank full of human feces, shoulder-high, and to empty the tank out with a bucket. The stench, heat, and revulsion almost overwhelmed him. Yet deep in his psyche, he found the space of awareness that could hold and even transcend the toxic horror of that situation. He described how hard it was to find inner resources to face that challenge day after day. Yet the pressure of the situation birthed a realization that awareness contained within it the power to hold any experience. Despite how wretched those circumstances were, he was able to access a presence that was unperturbed and free, neither caught in reaction nor grasping for something other, even amid that noxious environment. That is letting go on a profound level!
Thankfully, we don’t have to experience such extremes to discover this. We explore this in our meditation practice and in our life on a daily basis. Ajahn Chah, a renowned Thai meditation master, once said: “If you want a little peace, let go a little. If you want a lot of peace, let go a lot. If you want complete peace, then let go completely.” That instruction is quite simple. However, like many things regarding mindfulness practice, it is hard to accomplish that level of release.
I often smile wryly when I hear the sometimes glib, co-opted New Age advice to “just let go” in response to some hardship or struggle. For example, someone may be advised to “just let go” of their fear, struggle, grief, or loss, whether they are gripped in white-knuckle panic during a turbulent flight or mourning the death of a loved one. Well-meaning people say, “If you would only let go, you could be free from pain.”
The obvious response to this is: “If I could let go, I would.” It is when we can’t let go of a feeling, thought, or reactive state that the real work begins. Of course, many reactions and thoughts can be released. We can at times recognize the futility of speculative worry and put aside those thoughts. We can see our frustration at rush-hour traffic and put it down by listening to the radio or taking some deeper breaths. But at other times, “just letting go” is not possible in the moment. For example, when we are gripped by grief, heartbreak, and loss, “letting go” of our emotions is not only implausible but often not healthy. What is required is to feel fully those painful feelings and allow them to unfold and release over time.
In this case, letting go happens through the process of letting be. The grieving process takes time and is a necessary part of healing. We can’t rush the tears, nor can we skip them. With grief and other powerful emotions, “just letting go” and trying to move on too quickly can be a type of avoidance, denial, or “spiritual bypass.” Wise mindfulness is the ability to meet ourselves as we are, with patient, tender awareness, and allow the sadness, tears, and all. It is only by surrendering to grief and heartbreak that we eventually come to resolution with loss. Through that process, we can find peace by not fighting, by not resisting or thinking our experience should be different or our emotions should be over.
Laurie shared with me her story of learning to let go during her dog’s death:
Through my practice I was able to support my beloved poodle, Peanut, through her transition without my own grief and attachment interfering. The dread of imagining my life without her initially thwarted my ability to feel the deep sadness in the moment, as well as the intense love and growing tenderness that I felt for Peanut, who became more dear to me in her final days than I ever could have imagined. Instead of avoiding the painful reality of her loss, I opened myself to the experience. I began to notice how fleeting each emotion was. Amidst the tremendous feelings of loss were moments of bliss with just being with her in her final moments. Peanut’s death and dying was one of the most beautiful and painful experiences of my life, one that was held in equanimity through my awareness of each precious moment.
The practice of letting be also applies to being with physical discomfort. I have, like many people, been afflicted over the years with chronic lower back pain. Sometimes it is worse than others. But it has also been a great teacher. Pain acts like a mirror. When I wince and contract around the spasms, it is as if my body condenses into a knot of hardness. This contraction seems like a natural reaction, but it just intensifies the sensations. The suffering worsens when I resist, judge, and fight, or if I collapse into self-pity or feel like a victim.
When I can meet back spasms with spacious awareness, I don’t resist or avoid feeling the pain, twinge, cramp, or piercing sensations. I notice it is unpleasant, and I acknowledge that I really don’t want it or like it. Acknowledging both the experience and my grumblings about it helps access a sense of ease, even though the difficulty remains. As I’ve said before, it’s not what happens that defines us, but how we relate to it.
Mindfulness helps us both illuminate our reactivity and recognize just how painful that activated state is. This provides the impetus to release the grip of whatever we are consumed by. We all get reactive, but we don’t always realize how unhappy it makes us. For instance, I have a friend in LA who loves to drive but hates “bad” drivers. As we drive, if he gets stuck behind a slow driver, he frequently has a tantrum, exclaiming about how terrible their driving is and describing everything they are doing wrong. My friend erupts in such hostility you would think the person had delivered a personal insult. These tirades are amusing from a distance, but they are consuming and painful when we are caught up in them. My friend is not alone in this. I know others who get similarly riled up watching a football game or when someone takes their parking place or expresses a different political opinion.
We can all get upset and reactive, whether about the smallest of things or over deeply important matters. It all depends on the strength of our attachment in the moment. However, it is important to remember that simply letting go, or nongrasping, does not mean passivity. We can care deeply about the world and act to change what needs improving, such as working to relieve the suffering of others and helping to end injustice, poverty, and racism. We can respond to problems in life that cause pain, not with blinkered, knee-jerk reactivity, but with passionate engagement and a compassionate desire to help. It is the space of letting go that frees us up to respond more effectively to such things.
• PRACTICE •
In meditation, the habit of grasping and holding on can be as pervasive as in life, though more insidious. Begin your meditation by turning awareness to your body. As you establish a healthy posture, be aware if there is a twinge of grasping, of wanting your posture to be more comfortable than it is. Notice if there is a trace of the fixing mind state that is rarely content no matter how perfect your posture is. See if you can simply be with your physical experience, whatever it is like.
In the same way, bring attention to breathing. Breathe naturally, allowing the breath to find its own rhythm, to breathe itself. Then notice any subtle or not-so-subtle attempts to control, change, or manipulate the breath to your liking. Are you trying, for example, to have a different, longer, deeper, calmer breath? Notice any grasping, such as wanting or demanding that the breath be a certain way.
Attending to the breath is a barometer for how we control or grasp even the smallest thing. Does what you observe in how you try to control or subtly change your breath relate, or not, to any similar impulse to control your thoughts, your spouse, your work, your children, or your environment? Notice without judgment the deep-rooted habit of grasping in yourself. Nonjudgmental awareness allows us to disengage and create some space in which to release the pattern. When you notice the grip around your breath, you can shift your attention elsewhere, to sounds or other parts of the body, which can allow any subtle urge to control to naturally release.
Next, observe any grasping or reactivity in relation to your emotions. In meditation and in life, we often try to hold on to pleasurable states and reject uncomfortable ones. Is this true right now? Do you clutch after bliss, peace, calm, or joy, and are you pushing away or rejecting fear, loss, or other more challenging emotions? Both are reactive movements toward or away from experience. Either impulse can create inner tension, or conflict with what is actually happening, and leave us restless and discontent.
As you notice this, can you release the reactivity and orient to meet and feel whatever emotion is present? If that is not possible, then bring awareness to the reactive state itself. No matter what the contraction or fixation is, like fear or longing, turn to it with mindfulness, which allows a more complete embracing and understanding of it. The more we can hold such states in awareness, the less likely we are to act out from them.
Next, notice any grasping or reactivity to your thinking. While meditating, do you resist, judge, or contract around your busy mind and its commentaries and memories? What about your thoughts themselves? Do they express grasping in the form of fantasies, rehashing an argument or desire for any number of things or experiences? Awareness can be like the sun, evaporating clouds of thought upon contact. Rather than engage or reject the flurry of thoughts, shine the light of awareness upon them, which allows the ability to release mental fixations.
Lastly, track your relationship to the environment, including to temperature, smells, and sounds. Noises you hear during meditation are an excellent place to practice letting go. Notice any reactivity to sounds: Do you grasp after silence or resist unwanted noise? If there is a contraction against certain noises, bring awareness to the aversion itself. The more we can bring mindfulness to reactivity, the less we are caught in it, which expands our capacity to be with a fuller range of experience.
We may dislike many sounds, like traffic, truck engines, people shouting, and dissonant music. Cultivating the space of nongrasping allows us to hear these sounds without becoming riled. They are just sounds, fleeting, often unpleasant, but all workable. Thus we learn to move through the world with greater peace. Notice this for yourself directly as you meditate. Notice how mindfulness gives us the ability to hold all experience with a nonreactive attention.
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