Letting Go – Finding Peace and Freedom

First of all I would like to say a huge thank you to Jeff for stepping in while I was on “a mission trip” to Mexico, and, since Jeff took the time to record it, I was able to participate when I got back. One thing I wanted to comment on was the discussion about Jeff’s glasses and so I made you this eye chart to work with.

This discussion also turned my thoughts to the word “vision.” Vision can refer to the act of seeing, it can refer to a dream or supernatural event, or although rare, it can be used as a verb meaning to imagine. When you look up the etymology of vision, it is really interesting:

vision (n.)
c. 1300, “something seen in the imagination or in the supernatural,” from Anglo-French visioun, Old French vision “presence, sight; view, look, appearance; dream, supernatural sight” (12c.), from Latin visionem (nominative visio) “act of seeing, sight, thing seen,” noun of action from past participle stem of videre “to see.”

This is from the productive ProtoIndoEuropean root *weid- “to know, to see” (source also of Sanskrit veda “I know;” Avestan vaeda “I know;” Greek oida, Doric woida “I know,” idein “to see;” Old Irish fis “vision,” find “white,” i.e. “clearly seen,” fiuss “knowledge;” Welsh gwyn, Gaulish vindos, Breton gwenn “white;” Gothic, Old Swedish, Old English witan “to know;” Gothic weitan “to see;” English wise, German wissen “to know;” Lithuanian vysti “to see;” Bulgarian vidya “I see;” Polish widzieć “to see,” wiedzieć “to know;” Russian videt’ “to see,” vest’ “news,” Old Russian vedat’ “to know”).

Although I hadn’t really considered it before, think of when you say, “I see” which actually means, “I know or I understand.” One thing I heard Jeff or someone say was that there was difficulty focusing and that took me a step further. We place great importance on focusing and yet, as soon as we do focus, we limit all possibilities. Diffuse vision expands possibilities. Think of those pictures that you have to not focus on in order to be able to see the “hidden” image or even, think of auras. Every instruction I have read on how to see auras begins with softening or diffusing the focus. We place great importance on our ability to focus but this is yet another area where we really need to let go, and by the very act of letting go, we immediately expand the range of possibilities available to us.
And so, as I was thinking about all of this, I received an email from an online magazine I get and the first article was entitled:

Tue, August 16 2016 [http://spiritualityhealth.com/blog/eve-hogan/let-it-go-set-yourself-free?mcref=1]

Let It Go, Set Yourself Free
By:
Eve Hogan
I took that as a sign. We have talked a lot about letting go in the past but I thought that Eve Hogan had some interesting points and so I am going to share those with you. She says:
“I remember the first time I went to a talk on “letting go” nearly thirty years ago. I could not comprehend what the speaker was talking about. I remember thinking I didn’t have anything to “let go.” Of course, I didn’t realize that the speaker was suggesting I let go of all those old relationship emotions, the resulting beliefs, and inaccurate assumptions I had unconsciously made. He was suggesting that I let go of behaviors and attitudes of the ego—anger, hurt, fear, shame, and blame. Oh, THAT.

“the sadness does not want to be healed, it wants to be held, and that is how it is healed. ” Jeff Foster

I since began to study “letting go” and for a long while taught the concept of letting go of ego. However, I have come to some different perspectives on ego since then, too.

In my observation, ego is a protector. Your ego will try to protect you at all costs—even harming another, being defensive or silently whispering demeaning or self-deprecating messages to you through “self-talk” in an attempt to control your behavior. The ego is great at seeing problems, but terrible at solving them. If you then simply attempt to “let it go,” the ego panics thinking that you didn’t receive its warning messages and gets louder and meaner in its efforts to protect. Not only does this not work, but we don’t actually want to get rid of the part of us that is watching out for danger. Rather, we just don’t want it in charge of our actions and words on account of what it perceives.

The ego tends to try to solve problems by using blame, anger, hurt, fear, misperceptions, accusations, made up stories, bravado, defensiveness, apathy, withdrawal, hatred and the like to “solve” the problem. Unfortunately, that all causes more of the problem. Instead, once the ego has alerted us to a potential concern, we want to make decisions on how to manage the situation in alignment with the Spirit—using wisdom, intuition, clarity, creativity, discernment, love and responsibility. I realized that we need to let go or transcend the behavioral suggestions of ego…not the ego itself.

Then recently, I had another shift in my perception of the concept of “letting go.” I had the opportunity to receive a sound healing session from an up and coming practitioner who works with angelic vibrations. Up until this, I sometimes thought of letting go as something I was losing, having to part with or had to struggle to release. Often, letting go didn’t feel easy. My ego had loud and convincing reasons for hanging on to its attitude or stance. In those moments, letting go felt like having to pry myself away from the anger, blame, or grief while it held on for dear life. But in the midst of the angelic vibration session, the grief and sadness I was feeling began to take the shape of a large menacing dragon tethered to me with a cord.

“Most of us are afraid that if we let go of the behaviors that are protecting us we will be lost, unprotected and thus damaged more. ” Jeff Foster

Then the practitioner leading the session suggested I cut the cord and set it free. She suggested I “let the dragon go.” With the emphasis on “let,” suddenly the whole “letting it go” concept shifted for me. Instead of something I had to struggle to do against the will of the thing I was trying to sever, I simply had to cut the tie and allow it to be free. I willfully swung a sword and set the dragon free as I watched it fly away gleefully. This was such a new awareness for me. Letting it go wasn’t something I had to do against the will of all involved, “letting it go” was something “it” wanted as badly as I did.

What I have found is that most of us are afraid that if we let go of the behaviors that are protecting us we will be lost, unprotected and thus damaged more. However, when we let those behaviors go, we discover our wholeness, our true strength, our creative problem solving abilities—and in the humbleness of that moment, we discover that a Higher Power has our back.

So now I invite you to consider how you would feel if letting go was a matter of setting free that which haunts you. What if you set your anger free, your sadness free, your grief free; your attitudes, beliefs and defenses. What if you allowed them to leave rather than holding onto them for dear life? What you may find is that underneath the protective behaviors, attitudes and beliefs of the ego is the true protection of Spirit. You may find strength, peace and freedom.

But don’t just believe me, try it and see.”

I am reminded here of something that Jeff Foster said about letting go of these so called negative emotions. He said that they (sadness, anger, etc.) are like our children just as positive emotions (joy, happiness, and so on) are too. He said that the sadness does not want to be healed, it wants to be held, and that is how it is healed. These so-called negative emotions are part of the whole; the yin and the yang; the black and white; the balance that makes us complete.

I have a vendor who calls that is pathologically happy – it is unnatural and scary!!! In fact, you can go online to the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1619629]
where you will find a paper entitled:
J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8.

A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.

Bentall RP1.
Author information
Abstract
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.

Compassion and empathy come not from being happy all the time but from having experienced the whole gamut of emotions through our interactions and personal experiences, some of which were probably successful but many of which were probably failures. That is why we shouldn’t want to get rid of them. Rather, we should want to embrace and acknowledge them so we can learn from them, and also we can be compassionate, empathic and caring towards others since we have had a glimpse of what they are going through. We cannot ever conclusively say that our experience is exactly the same.

Let me share a wonderful quote by Henri Nouwen:

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life