You Don't Need to Let Go

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about why you may not need to let go. As a meditation teacher, I do get a lot of questions from people about how to let go. And I often see a lot of suffering created for people around feeling like they can't let go. There's something they want to release, but a part of them is still holding on.

And so there's the tension of holding on, but then there's also the tension of the story around what's wrong with me? Why can't I just release us and move on with my life? So I just want to offer a different perspective around this, which is that it may be the case that this part needs to let go in its own time, that maybe you don't need to let go, but instead to just be honest that right now, there's a holding on. You don't need to avoid that. You can just bring awareness, space and love until the letting go happens itself. You could even say, let it let go, rather than you feeling like this is something you have to go in and solve and fix. You know, the alternative is that we just add more tension to a part that is already tense, a part that's holding on, which is taking us further away from wisdom, inner freedom and whatever letting go that we're hoping for.

And so if you find yourself on this path, there's a, there's a chance it feels, it can feel personal. And even the way I described it in the beginning, it was like, I need to let go. I need to let go. I need to release this so I can move on to my life. Do you feel how much responsibility there is in that? And even just this feeling like you can control it? What if we just took the perspective that this part within you has its own journey, you know, has its own timeline and you can just be honest that, oh, Ooh, right now there is a lot of holding on and I actually can't do much about it.

All I can do is just be honest with that and show compassion. And when it's ready, then it will let go. If you could force the letting go to happen, I say more power to you. But sometimes these things just have their own timeline. And if we can observe, step back and observe and give that, that process space, well, we can develop a certain empathy and compassion for ourselves, and we can also develop a certain wisdom about how things actually unfold in their own time.

So maybe this will give you a new perspective on letting go as it shows up in your own life, which is something we're all navigating in different ways. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.