Why “Letting it Go” Can be so Tough

We hear it everywhere, “just let it go.” Yet no one really tells us how to do that. We hold onto our pain and our suffering as if it were a life raft keeping us afloat. We do this mainly because we were never taught how to “let it go.” I mean, if something is causing us pain and we could drop it as easily as “let it go” sounds, don’t you think we’d have done that already?

The irony is that to let something go, we don’t get there by pushing it away or cutting it off. If letting it go is hard it’s because this emotion, this thought, this feeling that we cannot escape is part of us. Lobbing it off is like removing one of our appendages. To understand the pain, we must learn to listen instead of running away or trying to amputate it. Instead, letting it go is about leaning into it. Feeling it. Allowing it. Accepting it.

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them. ~Rumi

July 31, 2017 20

The Gift

Special delivery
Wrapped in gold and silver
Tarnished in time
From Exposure
Layered protection
From the Sun

Unwrapped
Peeling back the layers
Skins shed
Old flesh cast aside
A return of sparkle
Digging deeper

Pay dirt exposed
Naked vulnerability
Polishing cloths reveal
Value never diminished
Worth of self replenished
Shining and gleaming

The Gift
For many years unseen
Camouflaged within the seams
Hidden within a closed heart
Ready to be set free
The Gift, This Gift of God 
is me 

Each life, a gift from the Earth
Meeting the Ethers 
Created in flesh to serve
A purpose, an expression 
Of Greatness
At times lost in layers
Of confusion, delusion 

The value of which
Remains the same
Despite the tarnish
Nor shine of varnish
Each gift is infinite

Namaste

July 18, 2017 9

This Life is About You

It is so easy to focus on the actions of others. “So-and-so did this or that,” I say to myself, my journal or to my friends. This is often where I find myself focusing my attention: on what someone did or did not do and how that affected me. It’s an exhausting way to live with such an outward, “I can’t control what’s happening in my life” kind of focus.

The reality is that each of our lives is truly about ourselves. Yet we are taught at a young age to focus on others, because to look at ourselves is considered self-centered. Yet the truth is that the only person in this world that we can control is the one we see in the mirror.

Sadly, by focusing on what every other soul in our lives is doing, we fail to miss the power that we hold in our very hands: our power to control ourselves. When we focus outwardly, we give up our own power to do what we can do. I’m swallowing this sideways pill as I type. My power is within, yet I repeatedly give my power away when I focus on how someone else treats me. “How am I treating myself?,” is the true question.

This life is up to each of us to live. This life is up to each of us to own, for ourselves. It is up to each of us to STOP giving our power away to everyone else, because we give our power to the things we focus on and few of us focus on the things that are within ourselves.

Starting in a new way today, I’ll be eating many a servings of humble pie.

Namaste.

July 6, 2017 6