Letting Go

Recently I’ve been playing around with and contemplating an idea that I think we all work with, and thats the idea of letting go. “I have to let this go…”, “Why can’t I let this go…”, “Everyone says I should let this go but I can’t…”

The deeper playing with this idea came about because of a song that came into my spotify feed a few weeks ago. It’s a song in french by Kolinga called, “Te Laisser Partir.” I speak french but I wanted to be clear on the translation so I put it into google and got back, “let you go.” Its a beautiful if somewhat haunting song that stuck with me after I heard it. So did the idea around whether or not that translation seemed correct to me. In french partir really means something closer to leave. And the word that means to go is aller. That day or the next day I was still thinking about that song as I was working with a patient. The pondering led me to an insight I often have that certain words can be fraught for us, or get in our way. We develop an attachment to their meaning that can then make the very thing we are trying to do impossible.

So I started playing with letting go, saw that what often gets in our way with this idea is the thought that we need to let this idea, feeling, thought; leave, disappear, never to return. But what if we change the way we think about the word go? What if we understand it to mean move. Suddenly, I think, this idea becomes less fraught. I don’t have to make these thoughts, feelings and ideas leave, I only have to let them move in me, allow them to come and go as they wish, change and transform as they need. What a relief.

This all touches then on something I have often talked about with many of you. My belief that when we can allow feelings and thoughts to move inside us they become much less uncomfortable. To do this, it helps to relax our belief that we are certain what a specific feeling is, and this in turn can be helped by returning to the tidal movement of our breath. It helps if we can be with a feeling, thought, concept as it is in this moment, see that it is not solid, or permanent. That everything is changing and transforming, even this discomfort we currently feel. That there is nothing stopping grief from transforming into gratitude and praise, or stopping praise and gratitude from transforming to grief. And. That sorrow, joy, anger, fear, can all exist together in the same moment, transform into each other, or just flow around and by each other. That we can be with everything in its very early, primordial, unlabeled, energetic state, and that all of it, in this fundamental form, holds the potential to unfold into anything. Most importantly, that this energy/(qi)/feeling/thought running through us is ours, is us. That if we distance ourselves from parts of our qi, we lessen our access to our full compliment of qi. All these things ARE us. May we allow ourselves to move, freely, joyfully, and full of ease. May you all be happy, healthy and safe through the holidays.

With warmth and in good health,

Teo