the beautiful ego

Here’s a question to ask yourself:

What can I let go of today?

At first, that might seem like a funny question.

Because belonging to a dominate culture, we are taught that letting go is not something that is ideal.

We are taught that it is important to hold on.

We are taught there is value in holding on.

We are also taught that there is gain from holding on.

Let’s examine what we hold on to in a bit more depth.

Let’s say you have a bad experience in your childhood, and this memory causes you so much pain that you have to repress it in order for you deal with it.

So this memory goes into your subconscious, and there it stays, seemingly undisturbing, for a while.

Until one day, this memory pops up because it was triggered by some outside stimulus, so you have no choice but to somehow confront this memory.

At your personal crossroad, you have a choice.

You can either repress the memory; which seems like a good choice because that is what most people do. Dealing with emotional trauma is certainly more taboo than something like sex in our culture.

Or you can ‘deal’ with the emotion. Which usually means dragging it out in some way, examining it, re-examining it; re-examining it with a different psychological perspective, as to in some way gain distance and control of this particular memory.

The truth of the matter is, we have so many memories like this.

And primarily we deal with our trauma in the above two ways. If we’re lucky, we may deal with it in the second way, but we find that we merely warp the memory and prolong the exposure to the negative energy that it creates.

I would like to propose an alternative.

You could chose to let go of the memories that no longer serve you.

Now at first, this alternative does not rest well with any of us.

How can I possibly forgive/let go/disassociate from this memory! He or she did such wrong to me that I must always remember this atrocity! I will never forget it.

And so on and so on as our rational mind validates and continues to instruct itself the ills of letting things go. But of course, if we let everything go, how would it have anything to do?

But as the alternative to holding on to trauma, and to dragging it out and examining it, neither of which feel very good at all, we could let it go. And let me explain why I feel this is a better alternative.

When we let go, we feel better.

There.

I know that may seem like a gross oversimplification, and you might have been expecting a great long discourse on the psychology of letting go. But simply, if you let go, you will feel better.

Not only will you feel better, you will feel relief. You will feel release.

And it is in this release that you feel good. In fact, you want to feel good. We are constantly moving towards what makes us feels good, at least most of the time.

But you don’t have to take my word for it, as the process of release might seem a tad too simplistic. You could experiment for a bit.

Try thinking of something today that you can let go of.

Ask, what can I let go of today?

Or better yet, your mind already does this for you!

Anytime you think a negative thought or a thought that doesn’t make you feel good, your mind and your guidance system is letting you know, this is not where I want to go.

But we are so used to trying so hard to make ourselves go where we don’t want to go, that we forget that, invariably, this is NOT where we want to go.

However, we can use this information, this not wanting to go in this direction, and put it to our use. We can use it as a guide of what we don’t want.

So when we have a thought of what we don’t want, just let it go.

If our brother had hurt us in the past, let it go.

If our mother didn’t show enough love, let it go.

And as you let go, something marvelous happens as it always will once you feel on track with your desires.

You feel good.

You feel release.

You feel the freedom of release and you feel good.

And this feeling good is a reminder that you are indeed going in the direction of your desires, and that you indeed feel good when you do so.

And once you begin to release yourself from the things that you hold on to, you start to feel ever better.

And the you begin to wonder why you hadn’t done this sooner!

Save yourself the trouble, and release what you are holding on to.

For the relief you seek, the push in the right direction, is right behind you when you just let go.