The Power of Letting Go
The concept of our true self has been a theme lately that keeps popping up in different areas of my life. Who are you underneath that mask? Who are you when you are aligned in body, mind, spirit, values, senses, action and in ways that you didn’t even think to consider?
A couple days ago it culminated in hearing someone speak of having a higher power. Immediately I thought of God or the Universe, which he mentioned. But he said that could be limiting. As he explored it from different angles he said, “your higher power might be your true self”. This stopped me in my tracks. I immediately understood. The whole point of a higher power is humility. It is the unknown. There is seeking and learning and acting and then there is surrender back to the unknown. That surrender is freeing. It is unlimited possibilities. It is letting go of ego and image. When you stop trying to have all the answers. When you don’t care to look smart or beautiful or important or be accepted. You just are.
But I can’t express this in my words. Not in the way of knowing that fills my heart and every cell of my body and is released from my muscles. Surrender is one of those things that you feel in your body. It is a knowing that doesn’t exist in the mind. I felt it earlier as the sweat poured out of me and I stopped planning my words and thinking of others experiencing my words. I just let it all go. I let the sweat drip and I listened with all of my being. And I was thankful and humbled. And in a brief moment my true self took over. And I surrendered to her. With gratitude and reverence and love and trust. But still my words fall short.
So I turn it over to the poet Mary Oliver. Poetry is the closest we can get to expressing in words what we experience in the body.
Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and — it was the most casual of moments — as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given.
Praying. It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.
Times beyond remembering I have seen such moments: summer falling to fall, to be followed by what will follow: winter again: count on it. Opulent and ornate world, because at its root, and its axis, and its ocean bed, it swings through the universe quietly and certainly. It is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared.
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver
What are you grateful to feel in your body when you surrender?
LEARNING: The other day I was also grateful for the moon, it poured into my bedroom at night shining full and bright and at first I was inconvenienced by the disruption of it all. Then I realized the moon couldn’t help but show off to put it’s brilliance on display. It was in its glory of its true self. Not always but this was the day to be bright. Acceptance and surrender and gratitude.
FORGOTTEN GRATITUDE: Last week I was also grateful for a creative project coming together with one idea becoming the next and my mom giving her ideas and all of that becoming something new … Being able to say thank you in person after a text just didn’t feel like enough … Being able to find just the thing to help my love.
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[su_note note_color=”#e7e7e7″ text_color=”#686767″ radius=”0″] My gratitude journey started in May 2011 and continues to this day. Thank you for being a part of it! A daily gratitude practice is simple. Write down three things you are grateful for each day. Download your free GratitudeGuide. My clients focus on gratitude and learn from their successes to make the positive changes they want in their lives. You can too. Call me to set up our first meeting 505.333.9336. [/su_note]