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Letting Go
by Sandra Lee Schubert
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“People have a hard time letting go of their
suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer
suffering that is familiar” --Thich Nhat Hanh.
People stay in dead end jobs, loveless marriages
never leaving the boundaries of their hometowns. Why is
it so hard to let go of things that no longer work? The
devil you know is better then the one you don’t know.
People are willing to live a mediocre life for the
safety it provides. But what if you were guaranteed a
positive outcome how would you live your life
differently? What kind of choices would you make knowing
each one would turn out OK? If you can imagine this
different life then envision another a life where you
are still free to make choices but are unsure of the
outcome. Except now you accept the consequences of your
choices knowing they could be either bad or good. In
this life you feel fear but take chances anyway. Every
day we make a choice. You want to lose weight but eat
ice cream. You buy a new sweater knowing the money could
go towards paying off a painful debt. Today’s choices
may seem wrong but tomorrow is the opportunity for new
ones. Choosing means letting go of the other possibility
and what it could bring. ION’s president, James O’Dea
in the September-November edition of Shift magazine
says this about choice, “Each step has consequences
that will secure the status quo, create a new roadmap,
or possibly transform old ways in a manner that defies
our rational understanding.”
The harder you
fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more
likely there's gold in letting go of them. --John Seely
Brown, Fast Company
Assumptions: We have assumptions about
everything. We live and die by them. My friends and I
have had heated conversations about the current
political arena. Who hasn’t? We stand strong in our
various viewpoints. What surprised me most was one
friend. He did not know some really basic facts about
the candidate he was opposed to. When asked, he said he
didn’t care to know anything. Yet, he had made some
profound judgments about this person with the slimmest
of knowledge gleaned from only hearing just one point of
view. Challenge your assumptions. We go through life and
never reevaluate what we believe. The great spiritual
leaders ask us to leave the life we are living behind
and enter into a new one. Our modern leaders such as
Gandhi or Mother Theresa did just that and devoted
themselves to living a new and much more expansive
existence. They were able to increase the circumference
of what they previously knew to include the world and in
doing so changed the lives of many, many people. Give up
your old ways and take on new experiences. Reconsider
your values and find out if they support you morally and
soulfully.
Some think it's
holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting
go. --Sylvia Robinson
Letting Go:
I have been thinking a lot about letting go. In fact
it has been forced upon me. In the past months I have
broken many of my treasured and sentimental possessions.
My wallet was stolen, money, ID and photos all gone into
the hands of stranger. Projects I had hoped to initiate
evaporated overnight. I asked a trusted friend and
medium what was going on. He told me I wanted to change
my life. But my frustration was in my own inability to
make these changes. I was literally breaking my ties
with the past in dramatic fashion. This string of little
losses has added up to a big rethink about how I am
living my life. Loss tears something loose. It breaks us
open in excruciating ways. Yet it allows for new things
to rush in. How do we let go? First, acknowledge the
pain of letting go. Loss of any kind can hurt and there
is no getting around it. Allow time to adjust to the
change. In most situations we cannot control losses. I
cannot will my wallet back into my hands. But how we
react to change is in our control. My small losses
pointed to larger issues of loss in my life. Take
inventory. What is holding you back? Are there areas in
your life that you want to change but may be resisting?
List the pros and cons of each change. Acknowledge any
feelings you may have around letting go. Though some
losses are thrust upon us letting go can be something we
choose to do.
Choice: What kind of life do you want to live?
Every minute we make small choices. Reconsider how you
interact with people on a daily basis. Instead of
ignoring the person who hands you the newspaper each day
say hello and thank you. When faced with the choice
between potato chips or salad consider what has the most
value for your life. Again O’Dea says this, “We can
increase our inner strength to make critical choices for
ourselves and for the planet by refraining from
cluttering up our lives with too much superficial
choice.” When there is a strong value system in place
it becomes easier to let go of things that don’t
support your higher ideals. In his autobiography,
Benjamin Franklin outlined a very specific formula for
creating a value system of life changes that anyone can
emulate. He listed 13 virtues from #1. Temperance - eat
not to dullness; drink not to elevation to #13. Humility
- Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Franklin creates a chart
for each day of the week listing by initials the 13
virtues he has outlined for himself. Each day he would
do a careful examination of his life and puts a mark
next to the virtue when he has found fault with himself.
He then committed one week to a mastery of each virtue,
repeating the process at least fours time in a year. He
would add or subtract to this list as needed. This
formula allowed Benjamin Franklin to work consistently
on his life not in an obsessive way but in a constructed
manner. From this careful examination of his life
Franklin was able to establish a value system for how he
lived his life. Thus allowing him to make choices and to
let go of behaviors and things that did not support this
system. The result for Franklin and for us is a life
full of wonderful inventions and creativity.
What comes after letting go? Loss affords us the
opportunity for new choices. We can mourn the past and
celebrate the future. Letting go is the gateway to new
experiences. Medical breakthroughs, new thoughts, ideals
and art could not be made if we all hung on to our past
behavior and beliefs. Dare to live your life just a
tenth larger then you are living it now. Be brave enough
to let go of a bad habit, an old resentment or your old
self. We can honor that which brought us to this
point and still create a new future. Celebrate
possibility and let go into a new world.
Choice & Consequence
by James O’Dea - This article appears in the September
- November issue of Shift: At The Frontiers of
Consciousness, published quarterly by the Institute
of Noetic Sciences.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(Dover Thrift Editions)
by Benjamin Franklin is available online at Amazon.com
© Copyright 2004
Rev. Sandra Lee Schubert. All Rights
Reserved.
Sandra Lee Schubert is a creative vagabond, a poet, writer and dabbler in the arts. She co-facilitates the Wild Angels Poets and
Writers group at the historic Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. She is also the creator of the e-course Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own. Visit her blog:
www.writing4life.com
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