A friend of mine has always said that there is nothing in life more constant than change. The more i learn the more i have to agree with my friend that, indeed, life is always in a constant state of flux.
   If there is this movement all around us, we have the opportunity to change in response to it. But the truth is that sometimes we are resistant to doing things in a new way and it is hard to let go of ideas, relationships, and the way things have always been done. It is even harder to let go of fear, anger, hurts and the resentments we carry.
   When i think of letting go, i can’t help but think that if i have something to let go of, then i must be hanging on to something. The question itself seems to ask us to name it, the very thing we are holding on to.
   Sometimes we know exactly what it is as we have a long standing relationship with it. We might have even carried it from our childhood to adulthood. Whatever it is that we carry with us, we have the tendency to keep building on it, giving it more and more
power until it becomes almost too big to look at. Certainly this is not a conscious act on our part, but one that happens outside of our awareness until we are faced with something that makes us look at it. People often talk about dealing with the issues of their life when faced with an illness.
   Eastern medicine looks at the emotional life of the person when assessing their medical condition, knowing that when we hold on to emotions, it shows itself in the physical body. Many believe that disease is really disease with the emotional aspect of ourselves and literally being out of harmony with our emotions. Whether this is your belief or not, holding on has a way of dampening the spirit and moving you away from being in harmony with yourself.
   I know for myself, i came to adulthood with a lot of ideas about who and what i was based on what i had been told. I had been taught how things had to be and the rules i needed to abide by to succeed in the world; only to find out later that these ideas, beliefs and all the emotions around them did not fit me. I was surprised to find that what i came to believe about myself and life had driven my life in a way that kept me from getting what i wanted. It was with this awareness that i had the capacity to change it, if i let it go. In the process of letting go i could make room for something new to come in. You don’t have to have something from your childhood to get familiar with letting go.
   The process of life itself gives us a steady stream of opportunity. In particular, i remember what it was like when my children got on the school bus for the very first time. All the parents were at the bus stop, many with fear and apprehension, unsure about this first big step in letting go. Now my youngest son has graduated from high school and will attend college in a far away state. Again i stand in this place of letting go. At first it does not feel all that different from that day thirteen years ago when he boarded the school bus, but i know that i have learned a lot about letting go. I also know that life will continually remind me in case i forget that it is a necessary part of life. It is vital to us to learn how to let go so that our burden does not become too heavy to bear.
   The more i have looked at my life, the more i realised that change is ever present and life is a constant process of change, making peace and letting go. I understand that this is not always an easy process but i have learned that it is even harder to hang on to it. When we let go, we energetically make room for something new to come into our awareness. Letting go of what no longer works is a wonderful freedom that allows us to imagine something else. And every time we can imagine something else we have a universe of possibility that opens to us.
   It makes me wonder who we could be if we were willing to let go of the things we are carrying. How would we participate in the bigger picture for our life? What if we could start each day with a clean slate? The native Hawaiian people practise something called Ho’oponopono, which means to ‘make right.’ Each evening they close their eyes and practice the gentle art of letting go of everything from the day. How might you find your own centre of peace if each evening you could let go of the day? Understanding that as you do this, you are making room for new possibilities to emerge. Blessings to you as you learn that letting go is a process for life.                                            says SANDY THIBAULT

Tags :[tag] harmony, anger, relationships, emotional, life, succeed [/tag]