Letting Go

Letting Go. I find this to be one of my most difficult lessons. I get very attached to outcomes. I work hard and I want results. Who doesn’t? But it is the attachment to those results that blocks the actual outcomes we are trying to create. I have known this intellectually for a long time. And yet I still attach and I still block.

I have listened to Deepak Chopra tell me, for I am sure he was only writing this particular secret to success to me, “Awareness isn’t something you achieve. Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you're flexible, when you're spontaneous, when you're detached, when you're easy on yourself and easy on others.” And yet I still attach.

I remember years ago watching an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. (I know don’t say it, it was corny, but I loved her strength and her vulnerabilities both.) In the episode called “The Debt,” Lao Ma, the fictional wife of Lao Tsu, (father of Taoism) was teaching Xena how to not let her “will” rule her life. I knew then Lao Ma’s words (Taoism coming from Robert Tapert, the writer and producer of Xena) were true. “The entire world is driven by a will, blind and ruthless. In order to transcend the limitations of that world you need to stop willing ... stop desiring ... stop hating… To conquer others is to have power. To conquer yourself is to know the Way.”

I am still mesmerized by these words. I can feel the truth in them. I can understand them and there are times when I know them. But in consistency is true knowing; something I am still working on. I am not one who enjoys repeating the same lessons. But I do and I am aware enough to recognize it. So today I am learning another level of letting go. Like an onion, I am peeling away another layer…

You can not try to let go, or to be enlightened or to be aware; you must just let go and allow. “Let go and let god…” Or maybe you have learned this lesson already and it is I who must surrender to the field of all possibilities and just Let Go.