"Letting Go" is a hacked term in my opinion. I hear people using that everywhere. For me "Letting Go" holds profound truth and meaning and I would not use as a commonplace phrase but a phrase that I would strive to incorporate into the way I live for as long as I live.
Letting Go, as Buddha said is Renunciation. Letting Go happens in all parts of life starting from material possessions (what is outside) to immaterial possessions (what is inside). Without both there is no letting go. Letting go of what is inside is also very difficult without being able to let go of what is outside, our material possessions.
My own life experiences have taught me that letting go is not easy be it what is material and/or especially what is immaterial. I have always been a giving person from the outside as well as from the inside. I was generous in giving and was always kind to people no matter who they were.
However, during a certain period in my life I realised that I had serious limitations/boundaries to my giving. When it came to people, situations I did not like I found it hard to let go. I also found it difficult to let go when things were close to my heart. Again people and situations I liked were instances where I found it hard to let go. What was it that I struggled to let go?
I dug deep inside to see what was going on, because I was being crippled by the power of not being able to let go. At the time I didn't understand that it was not being able to let go that was making me suffer. But I felt like being inside of a prison cell or not having enough air to breath. I was suffocating. It took a while to realise what things. But when I did boy was it like a light bulb going off in my head. But at the same time, it felt like a daunting task.
I realised that deep within, not wanting to let go, were my immaterial possessions. Those were like deep rooted roots. They have spread all over my heart and my life essence was being sucked out of me. That was the reasons for the feeling of suffocation (in the words you might understand, anger and resentment towards others, feelings of isolation, loneliness, sense of fear of future, uncertainty, depression, being envious and a sense of even everyone have better than I have kind of feelings). So, I started digging deep and looking for the roots. I realised that I was struggling to let go of my views, opinions, judgements, prejudices and my sense of who I was and my sense of self worth and importance in my own eyes and in the eyes of the rest of the world. I needed to be seen and heard by the world but in that struggle the goodness in my heart was dwindling. My views, opinions, judgements, prejudices brought forth anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, and all the rest of the negative emotions. I was drowning.
I had to learn to let go. I promise you that the journey was not an easy one. Letting go is not easy. It take courage. It took me much courage and confidence in something I could not see. I gave into something not knowing but believing that it was bigger than me and because of it, it had to be better. But that simple act held me up somehow, somewhere and now I feel a sense of being cradled by it.
Initially I started letting go of my anger. But instead of striving to do something, the Buddha's path teaches you to cultivate. So you are not raging a great battle to destroy anger. All you do is quietly cultivate metta. Over a period of 6-8 months I found that my burning anger was being subsided without doing much to get rid of anger. All I did was cultivate what was good that was already in my heart. My heart was like a garden. All this time I was allowing the weeds to grow but not allowing the sun to shine on the beautiful seeds. Finally I was focusing the sun shine on my heart's garden and the flowers were thriving and the weeds could not be seen.
Then along with that I started working on my weeds now that my heart was no longer throbbing with anger and all other negative emotions. The little insights along the way helped me to shape my life to path of transformation. Slowly the weeding work began. Weeding is continuous work, as all gardeners must know. One can never sit back on ones laurels and think that all the weeding is done and that for the rest of their lives their garden is free from weeds. From time to time we all need to put on those gloves and start weeding.
But my heart was gotten rid of it's most darkest and disturbing weeds over a period of 2-3 years. And I felt a sense of ease and peace like I never felt before. I also realised that I had changed over this period. I was no longer seeing the world through the same perspectives. I had mellowed. My views, opinions seems like clay. They are more bendable and mailable. I have also dropped some of the views and opinions along the way. My attachments for them have becomes less burdensome that I am not aroused in the same fashion that I once was be it a person/situation that I like or dislike.
I am no longer so bent on being heard or seen, or being someone or showing who I am or with this idea of self worth. Therefore I am in less of a struggle with myself and the world. I feel an ease with which I walk my path. I am less moved my what happens around me and opinion of others. While I listen to them, I am not swayed and bounced around from one wall to another and my sense of who I am or what I am or how I ought to be is not touched (really I don't think I have much of a concept of that compared what I used to have).
My heart is not closed. I don't try to find way to reduce myself in order to escape anyone or anything. In fact I always strive to extend so that I can get bigger and open up to the greater mysteries that lie beyond my current reach. The only way, I know I can do that is by opening up my boundaries (like I did once) and not my diminishing no matter what life presents. But I do this in my own time according to my own heart and not to the demands and expectations set by the world and roles of society.
I believe these are the ways of letting go and results of letting go. When I hear people say "let go" or that they have "let go" I hope they feel the same sense of ease and peace in their very being and not a sense of justification and a sense of worry and a sense of diminishing of their spirit.
Something that I have understood is that letting go can be done in the head. That means logic can be used to let go. But that letting go, will reduce your heart and eat you away with time and life will spit the remnants out and you will only be hurt by it. I know this to be a truth because this kind of letting go is easy to do. We as humans like to do what is easy and fast. But something what is easy and fast isn't what is good in the long run. It leaves indelible marks. The real letting go must involve the heart. The heart has to open with all of it's love and kindness. This is the hard part. This is why only a few humans dare or even endeavour to strive for letting go. When you let go involving the heart then life opens up to you. The beauty and the immeasurable treasures of the human heart are revealed to you.
