Let Go Choose Wisely

“No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.  No man is free who cannot command himself.”  –Pythagoras

 

Please inhale deeply and hold your breath. So far so good, right?

Keep holding it — check your emotions — are you getting happier or more desperate?

Are you ready to let go of something that no longer serves you?

Now exhale completely and wait a few seconds before taking another breath.

Which part of the exercise was uncomfortable for you?  Please repeat this exercise.

Do you remember the rings we used to swing on during our elementary school days? We would hold onto one ring and swing until we could grasp the next one. Once we felt that we had a good grip on the second ring, we would let go of the first one. However, if we lost our momentum, we couldn’t grab the next ring.

Trapeze artists release the first bar before seeing and grabbing the next, while soaring through the air with grace, all eyes on them.

If we imagine holding a ring, as a symbol of possession, and squeezing it in our hand, it is likely that we will capture the ring, but also the use of our hands.

Now, imagine holding a ring out in front of you with your palm down and loosening your grip. As the ring gets loose, we tend to squeeze our hands quickly, which is natural. However, some of us may feel threatened when the ring falls, and we may find ourselves wanting it more, beginning to squeeze it tighter. Grasping and squeezing something is an attempt to own it, and those who do this tend to want to keep things, even if they don’t like them. Giving up the freedom of one of our hands to squeeze something can be annoying, and it follows that those who tend to grasp and squeeze things may become annoying as well. This behavior can be indicative of lapses in ethics.

Now, imagine holding a ring in front of you with the palm of your hand facing up. Loosen your grip on the ring; you will notice that it doesn’t feel like it’s getting loose. You will feel the ring less as a possession and more as a symbol of your freedom. Open your hand, and the ring is still there.

With your imagination, allow the ring to transform into a beautiful butterfly resting peacefully and gently on the palm of your hand. Take a moment to enjoy this experience, and then watch as the butterfly floats into the sky, taking nourishment from you and sharing it wherever it goes.

Love with attachment is essentially fear in an emotional form. To expand on this idea, I offer you a quote by William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy,

Does the winged life destroy;

He who kisses the Joy as it flies,

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

 

Now, ask yourself, what are you holding onto too tightly? Is it a certain lifestyle, job, person, title, an old perspective, ego, anger, hostility, revenge, resentment, or prejudice?

Learning to live is learning to let go. When we learn to release, change becomes possible. Change often means letting go of something negative and replacing it with something positive. If we are completely full of something negative, we may not be able to make room for something positive until we release the negative. If we release something negative without having something positive to replace it, the void will be naturally filled with something else.

If our goal as humans is to evolve, then we need to think. We should incorporate our spirituality and responsibilities toward each other, ourselves, and our planet. We should be open to new information that can help us mentally, physically, materially, and spiritually. We should be balancing our lives materially and spiritually. We should be living our lives with love and without fear.

A grandfather was talking to his grandson about a negative experience he had early in his life. The grandfather was saying. “At the time, I had two bears growling inside of me. The first bear was filled with anger, hatred, bitterness, and revenge. The second bear inside me was filled with love, kindness, compassion, and mostly forgiveness.”

“Which bear wins”? The young boy inquired. The grandfather responded: “The one I feed.”

Deserving has more to do with what we send out in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds than how smart we are. The energy we send out is the energy we get back. The energy we send out reflects what we feel.

It’s the feelings that create the energy we send out. Reality can be nothing more than how we have been flowing our energy. It only takes 16 seconds to link up vibrationally with negative or positive energy.

We can look at ourselves and others as campfires. When building a campfire or trying to get one restarted, we can pile on the firewood, stick a piece of paper or a few twigs under the larger pieces of wood, light the paper with a match, and hope to get a fire going. Usually, if we try to jump from the tiny to the large, the large never gets going, so it is with our campfire.

Usually, we need to nourish the tiny flame, or we will find ourselves complaining about the stubborn large pieces that won’t cooperate or burn. We, too, end up with a little smoke, and it cost us a match, and we have to start all over again.

To get a campfire to burn, we need to build from tiny to small to medium to large, and it all starts with nourishing the tiny hot spot. We take a deep breath and blow on this tiny hot spot while we nourish it with twigs and then kindling. When the kindling starts to burn, we add pieces that are just a little larger, and we keep repeating this, making sure the little fire gets hotter by fanning it and feeding it. Eventually, we have a big campfire, and once we do, we can throw the big logs on it, and it will thrive even more.  Meditation is like that.

Instead of mocking other campfires that can’t seem to get going, we should not be looking and seeing only the campfire and the wood that is not burning; we should be looking for and seeing the hot spot that we can help fan and feed with just a little fuel here and there. We are all-powerful, and we can help others get their fires burning. We can get our fires burning if we start with our hot spots and continuously nourish them with breath and appropriately sized fuel. If a log is thrown on too soon, it will not burn, and it could smother a campfire trying to get started.

To say another way, let’s think like race car drivers. They know the best way to get past cars and debris that have crashed in front of them. Instead of looking at the cars spinning out of control and piling up in front of them, they immediately look for an opening, put their entire attention upon this opening, and drive through it. Sometimes, the opening is small and not even obvious, but whatever opening seems to exist is where they look.

We have a choice: to focus on the crash or our safe passage. If we freeze our stare and concentrate on the collision, we add to it because that is all we see, pulling us in. If we can find that opening, that opportunity, fan and nourish that one hotspot, and put our entire attention and sight on it, we will zip past the crash. Those behind us can follow us into new opportunities or become part of the crash, and likewise, some will follow us into the crash if that is where we focus.

If a leader were to build a campfire that speaks of violence, hate, racism, anger, and fear, or one that mocks others or puts negative labels on opponents, there would be those that would be attracted to those flames and act out hidden and repressed feelings.

Observing the kind of campfire we build and nurture can teach us a lot about ourselves and others. We should ask ourselves if it brings us closer together, helps us calm our darkest selves, and brings out our brightest selves.  So, while it feels that we have a clean conscious mind, a civilized conscious mind, that mind can be corrupted.

It is so important to be a leader that brings out the best of us and not the worst.