Letting Go, What Is It?

Letting go is like the sudden cessation of an inner pressure or the dropping of a weight. It is accompanied by a sudden feeling of relief and lightness, with an increased happiness and freedom. It is an actual mechanism of the mind, and everyone has experienced it on occasion.

Dr. David R. Hawkings, on one of his books, Letting Go, explains beautifully how we carry around with us a huge reservoir of accumulated negative feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. This accumulated pressure makes us miserable and is the basis of many of our illnesses and problems. We spend a lifetime trying to avoid and run from this inner fear.

How can we release this pressure of negative emotions?

The answer if to surrender to this state. It means to be free of negative feelings in a given area so that creativity and spontaneity can manifest without opposition or the interference of inner conflicts.

This surrendered state allows us to experience the basic nature of the Universe, which is to manifest the greatest good possible in a situation.

How do we handle our feelings?

We have three major ways of handling feelings: suppression, expression, and escape.

• Suppression and repression are the most common ways in which we push feelings down and put them aside. We do not want to be bothered by feelings and, besides, we do not know what else to do with them. The pressure of suppressed feelings is later felt as irritability, mood swings,...

When we repress a feeling, it is because there is so much guilt and fear over the feeling that it is not even consciously felt at all. The repressed feeling is then handled in a variety of ways to ensure that it stays repressed and out of awareness.

Of these mechanisms used by the mind to keep the feeling repressed, denial and projection are perhaps the best-known methods.

• Expression is the mechanism by which the feeling is vented, verbalized, or stated in body language. The expression of negative feelings allows just enough of the inner pressure to be left out so that the reminder can then be suppressed.

This is a very important point to understand, for many people in society today believe that expressing their feelings frees them from the feelings. The facts are to the contrary. The expression of a feeling, first, tends to propagate that feeling and give it greater energy. Second, the expression of the feeling merely allows the remainder to be suppressed out of awareness.

• Escape is the avoidance of feelings through diversion. Escapism and avoidance of inner awareness is a socially condoned mechanism.

We can avoid our own inner selves and keep our feelings from emerging by an endless variety of pursuits, many of which eventually become addictions as our dependency upon them grows.

People are desperate to stay unconscious. People are terrified of facing themselves. They dread even a moment of aloneness.

In contrast to the above, what happens instead when we let go of a feeling? The energy behind the feeling is instantly surrendered and the net effect is decompression. The accumulated pressure begins to decrease as we constantly let go. Everybody knows that when we let go, we immediately feel better.

In the state of inner freedom, all bodily functions and organs move in the general direction of normalcy and health. We feel happier, more loving, and more easy-going.

I highly recommend Dr Hawkings' book Letting go, as he provides knowledge, different techniques, and a lifetime devoted to the study of consciousness.

Are you willing to surrender to the feelings of fear, anger, blame, guilt, shame, rejection, denial, grief, fear of not been loved,...?

Now you know that by simply surrendering to the feeling, by letting it be there and not resisting it, the feeling will soon vanished!

With Love,

Helena

#selfcare #coaching