Saturday, 10 June 2017
Friday, 9 June 2017
LET IT GO
It has been awhile since
I blogged. Sometimes life gets too busy that it is difficult to satisfy
everything, even when you are good at multitasking. I am not making excuses for
being absent for awhile, though.
Today, I had some
thoughts in my mind and I want to share. My thoughts are centred on letting go. Indeed, it is difficult to
let go of things – for example people, or situations, or experiences, or problems,
or challenges, or past events. I guess at this point the relevant question to
ask is why? Why is it always hard to let go? A woman, who is heartbroken in a
long relationship, finds it hard to let the man go, why? A man, who feels that
his world has crumbled because he lost huge amount of money in an investment
cannot let go of that money, why? A guy just lost a job and he finds it hard to
let go of the feeling of frustration, why? A girl has just been dumped by her boyfriend
and she cries profusely all the time because she cannot let go, why? A boy just
expressed his love to a girl but the girl did not reciprocate; hence the boy’s heart
is shattered and he cannot let go, why? A student, who performed below his/her expectation,
finds it hard to let go, why? Parents, who have spent a lot of money sending
their kid abroad to study only for the kid to go abroad and become a drug
dealer, cannot let go that their beloved kid is in jail, why? You failed to get
that promotion, which you have waited for so long, now you cannot let go, why? It’s
been years since your partner broke up with you, yet you cannot let go, why? It’s
been years since your pet dog or cat died, yet you cannot let go, why? There are
litanies of questions of similar nature to these ones highlighted above. They are
in-exhaustive.
It is difficult to pin
down reason(s) why it is often hard to let go. However, I think letting go is
hard for two reasons.
The first is the mental
character that we create in our (sub)conscious mind. We may be conscious or
unconscious of the fact that we create this character. For example, this character
may be pain or regret or disgrace or fear or some sort of feeling that we can
give a name to. There is sense of identity that comes with creating this
character. This identity is something that enables us to sustain the character
that we create in our (sub)conscious mind over time. For example, when we
recycle the pain from losing a loved one, or the regret from an unrequited
love, or the disgrace from being involved in a scandal, or the fear of not
knowing what tomorrow brings, we sustain these characters in our minds because
of something that we think they remind us of; something that we believe that nobody
else can see or understand except us. That is the identity, and it is this
identity that isolates us from other people. Eckhart Tolle, in his book, The power of now: a guide to spiritual
enlightenment, argues that we create pains that we allow to fester for too
long and that is because of the sense of identity that we give to them.
The second is the
attachment that we give to the character. We recycle our pains or regrets or
disgrace or fear because we have become attached to them and that makes it
extremely hard to let go. In recognition of the significance of our attachment
to the character that we create, Jafree Oswald once said that “all suffering is
caused either by an attachment to a positive outcome or an avoidance of a negative
one”. This thus speaks volumes about why we cling tenaciously to past events in
our lives that we cannot let them go. Often times we are caught up in the box
where we recount in our minds the past events in our lives. By doing that we allow
the character of pain or regret or disgrace or fear that we create in our minds
to control our actions of today. This is because we often think that our
attachment to the past events in our lives will enable us to change things
today for a better tomorrow. But we end up using the past to frustrate today and
make tomorrow worthless.
In my eBook titled Speaking
from the mind: unconventional thoughts, I noted that “life is a journey
and there are challenges on the way” and as such “life will always bring
experiences that make it hard to live…” I think Lori Deschene, the founder of
Tiny Buddha and author of Tinny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, agrees with me when
she said that “there will never be a time when life is simple. There will
always be time to practice accepting that. Every moment is a chance to let go
and feel peaceful”. I think Lori is absolutely right and her view is supported
by Ajahn Chah, an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma, who once said that “if
you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you
will have a lot of peace”.
To conclude, Lori
Deschene identified 40 ways of letting go, which she categorised into four:
(a) Let go of frustration with yourself/your life (for example, learning new
skills, changing your perceptions; crying out); (b) Let go of anger and
bitterness (for example, feeling it fully, giving yourself a rant window;
taking responsibility); (c) Let go of past relationships (for example,
identifying lessons from your experience; un-romanticising your view about
love; creating a space that reflects your present reality); (d) and Let go of
stress (for example, using a deep breathing technique; immersing yourself in a
group activity; replacing your thoughts). Pamela
Dussault, also, noted that “the letting go process can feel heavy…” For
her, the process starts with “removing any personal blocks to your success”.
She identified these personal blocks as: (a) misunderstanding of love; (b) your
ego; (c) emotional misunderstanding; (d) and lack of trust.
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