It seems I am being called to let go. To shed, to release, to surrender, to relinquish.
The calling first came as I celebrated the ‘Festival of Light’ in Thailand a couple of weeks ago, all about releasing negative energies, letting go of any darkness from the past year to move into the light with good fortune for the next year. Now, having joined a week’s Qi Gong course, as the instructor began introducing the days in front of us, the theme landed upon my chest, quite literally. Our focus is the Lungs & Colon: the energy meridians associated with letting go.
This time of year, as Autumn shines its golden light upon the notion of change, the trees begin to drop their leaves and we’re reminded to consider what we might be ready to shed. Even as I’m surrounded by palm trees and jungle, which resembles nothing like the orange and yellow hues of home, it seems I cannot escape it.
So what do I want to let go of? And does letting go mean getting rid of?
For me, there’s a difference between the two.
When we’re wanting to get rid of something, it usually comes as a form of resistance to that thing. We judge whatever it is - an emotion, a symptom, a feeling, a memory, a situation, a physical thing. We see it as bad or wrong, it’s a problem in our lives that we simply want to turn our heads away from and look firmly in the other direction to turn back and never see it lingering there. We want it gone.
Whereas letting go infers a readiness, a willingness, a conscious act. We must be ready to let go of something, to have looked it in the face, rather than turning the other way. To have accepted its presence and processed its being in our life. We can’t release what we’re not ready to let go of.
Letting go doesn’t have the tension of getting rid of. The deep yearning, craving and pulling of resistance. Instead, there is a softness, an opening that creates space. An exhale of acceptance.
Recently, I have been asking myself to move forward in the way I show up in the world, which asks of me to let go of old beliefs that have kept me small. To speak to the part of me that wants to hold these beliefs so impenetrably around her heart, a protective blanket, a shield tightly closed around what sits softly beneath.
In asking that of myself, there is a want, a desire, a pull to get rid of, of needing it to be gone. The readiness I thought I felt is perhaps shrouded by the protective blanket swaddled around me. Perhaps there is more processing needing to be done. Instead of asking myself to let go, maybe it is more willingness to accept and sit with it that I need.
I think that’s the difference between letting go and getting rid of. Maybe you need to sit with what you’re trying to let go of first. Otherwise, you’re simply trying to get rid of it.
I also ponder whether letting go of something means being completely free of it. Is it realistic to think that something we have carried for so long will simply leave us in an instant, never to be seen again? Or is it a consistent, constant process of sitting with and letting go, piece by piece, as we learn of what its presence in our lives has taught us. In that sense, we’re never completely free because its teaching has embedded something within us. Something softer than the protective blanket, the impenetrable shield. It becomes a stitched wound that has been dressed with the most loving touch, with a smooth silk that rests lightly upon what was once there. And I invite that softness, I’m happy to let that be there.
It seems to me that letting go is the softness that opens out into space. A space that, when embodied with learning, becomes growth. And therein lies the continual letting go and emerging that we see in the shedding of autumn trees and the blossoming of spring. What we let go of becomes the earth and it is with these seeds that we can blossom into what is emerging.
Sometimes we need to see the end of something before we can see the new beginning. We need to let go before we can move forward. Yet, to ensure that the release we’re hoping for doesn’t become a resistance, a desire to get rid of, we must accept and sit with whatever its presence has to teach us. That is where a new beginning becomes a real new beginning, merged with growth, space and openness. Rather than a pulling resistance that will show its face again once we turn our heads.
What might you be ready to let go of? What is asking to be accepted and sat with first? What might you be trying to get rid of before it’s actually ready?
Much love,
Suzi