Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender (Power vs. Force, #9)

by David R. Hawkins

Our feelings and thoughts always have an effect on other persons and affect our relationships, whether these thoughts or feelings are verbalized, expressed, or not.

With observation, it is quite clear that these intensely negative feelings reverberate and boomerang back to us, and profoundly affect our relationships. The other person merely mirrors back what we are projecting onto them. People who carry a lot of hatred find that they are living in a hateful world and that lots of people hate them. They see external situations and the world as hateful. What they fail to see is that this entire situation is self-created.

It will be discovered that all of our anger and resentment are due to our perception, that is, to the way in which we are viewing a given situation. When the inner feelings are relinquished, the way in which we see the situation changes, and we are often surprised by the abruptness with which feelings of forgiveness suddenly arise and the relationship becomes transformed, even though on the external level we did or said nothing to express this inner change.

When we are in lower energy state such as anger, hate, violence, guilt, jealousy or any other negative feelings, we are psychically vulnerable to the other person. In contrast, forgiveness, gratitude, and loving-kindness have a much higher energy vibration and much greater power.

When we shift out of a lower to a higher energy pattern, we create a protective shield on the energetic level, as it were, and we can no longer be psychically vulnerable to that other person.

The next “heavy” area of negativity is guilt. Here the underlying purpose is to placate, to assuage, to escape punishment by self-punishment, and to elicit forgiveness. The most important of these is the wish to elicit punishment from another person, combined with self-punishment. This is not a conscious wish; nevertheless, it is the unconscious purpose of guilt. With a little investigation, this can easily be verified. The next time we are feeling guilty about something particular regarding another person, watch what happens in the next encounter. Almost inevitably, they will bring up the very thing we are holding in mind. For instance, if we are feeling guilty because of lateness to an appointment, that guilt will frequently elicit a critical response from the other person. By the holding of guilt, we bring on to ourselves all the criticalness of others and their belittlement of us; our low self-esteem is channeled back to us through others in the form of their invalidation of our life. If

To help clarify the role of emotions in interpersonal relationships, a very quick way of learning is to presume that the other person is conscious and aware of our inner thoughts and feelings. By doing this, we will not be far from wrong, for they are indeed intuitively aware of our thoughts and feelings, even if they are not consciously aware at a given moment. They will respond to us as if they knew our inner feelings. The overall relationship will behave as though the other person were aware of our inner feelings. If we are still holding the fantasy that other people do not know our thoughts and feelings, just notice that dogs quickly do! Do we really think that the human psyche is inferior to that of a dog? If a dog can quickly read our total inner attitude, we can be sure that the intuition of people around us is picking up the same vibration.

Constant grief will drive others away. They begin to resent it unless they are in a very high place themselves and capable of effortless compassion. Chronic grief brings premature aging, a tiredness and weariness about the person, and it can only be overcome when we have the courage to allow it to come up under appropriate conditions and have the willingness to surrender to it and let it go.

The feelings of fear—whether tension and anxiety, shyness, self-consciousness, caution, holding back, or distrust—have the purpose of escape from the imagined threat, and to put psychological distance from the feared situation or person. Paradoxically, as we have pointed out before, because the fear is powerful, the very process of holding it in mind can make that which is feared come into our life. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The energy of fear generates an inner focus on all the negative things that could happen, and that focus can coalesce the appearance of the very events that we fear the most.

Fear in relationships, therefore, is giving away our power to another person and enabling them to do the very thing that is feared. The way out is to look at the worst possible scenario and look at the feelings they arouse and begin to relinquish them. Like other emotions, fear can be unraveled to its component parts, and the parts are then easily relinquished. For instance, let’s say that there is fear of critical attack. We ask ourselves, “What is the worst possible scenario?” With this question, we see that the basis of the fear is pride. When the pride is recognized and relinquished, the fear automatically dissolves. Again,

The insecure person is fearful and prone to jealousy, clinging, possessiveness, and attachment in relationships, an approach that always brings frustration. The purpose of these feelings is to bind and tightly possess the other, to achieve security by preventing loss and, at times, to punish the other for our own fear of loss. Again, these attitudes tend to bring into manifestation the very thing that we are holding in mind. The other person, now feeling pressured by our energy of dependency and possessiveness, has an inner impulse to run for freedom, to withdraw, to detach and do the very thing that we fear the most. These attitudes lead to constantly wanting to influence others. Because people intuitively pick up our wish to control them, their response is to resist. So the only way to bring about relinquishment of their resisting us is to let go of wanting to influence them in the first place. This means letting go of the inner fears as they come up.

Pride Feelings of pride are often condoned in our society and take the form of perfectionism, neatness, punctuality, dependability, “good personhood,” excessive cleanliness, workaholism, excessive ambition, success, moral superiority, and politeness. In its exacerbated forms, we see arrogance, boastfulness, vanity, smugness, and prejudice; on the spiritual level, there is the righteous killing of “nonbelievers.” The underlying emotional purpose of these feelings toward others is to win their admiration, avoid criticism or rejection, gain acceptance, be important, and thereby overcome our own inner feelings of worthlessness. Unfortunately, the feelings that are aroused in the other person are often those of envy, competitiveness, or even hatred and easy exploitation. If we look at pride, we see that it’s often a substitute for genuine self-esteem.

When we have adequate self-esteem, we are motivated by inner humility and gratitude and, therefore, we have no need for the constant eliciting of strokes and pats from others (or God). When we stop wanting to be liked, we find that we are. When we stop catering to others and trying to manipulate their approval, we find that they do respect us.

Self-denigration in the forms of placating, flattering, deference, self-effacement, and passivity are all attempts to influence others by catering to their ego, so as to get favorable treatment and get our own way. False humility merely says to the other person, “I am a small person; please treat me that way” and, of course, they promptly do.

As is quite apparent, all of the above emotions are manipulative of the other person and destructive of real relationship. They all diminish our self-esteem for they are all positions of vulnerability. Thus, although we may think that we feel well and secure at the level of pride, that pride is always accompanied by defensiveness due to its basic vulnerability. We puff up with pride whenever we feel insecu...

To be able to observe our feelings honestly requires a nonjudgmental attitude. We first have to be aware of what is really going on inside of us before we can do anything about it.

To be surrendered means that we are willing to relinquish a feeling by allowing ourselves just to experience it and not to change it. Resistance is what keeps it there in the first place.

If we have difficulty in relinquishing a feeling, it helps merely to look at the intent of that feeling. What is the purpose of it? What is the supposed purposeful effect on the other person? What is their likely response? Do we really want that?

If this were the last day of our life, would that really be what we wanted? Well,

Positive Feelings The higher feelings of courage, willingness, confidence, capability, “can do,” zest, humor, competence, self-sufficiency, and creativity have an emotional purpose: effective actions, operation, and accomplishment. The reaction of other persons will reflect back to us cooperation, courage, respect, and a willingness to be with us. Additionally, because we increase their self-esteem, they seek our company. As we look at all of this, we see that there is a wonderful payoff in return for our willingness to let go of the negative feelings that stand in the way of these higher feelings, which effortlessly accomplish our real goals and purpose.

The replacement of a negative feeling by a higher one accounts for the many miracles one can experience in the course of life. These become more frequent as one continues to surrender. As we surrender, life becomes more and more effortless. There is a constant increase in happiness and pleasure, which requires less and less from the outer world to be experienced.

We let go of the illusion that others are the source of our happiness. Instead of looking to get from others, we now look to give.

We block receiving what we want from others by our expectations or resentments of them. It is very effective to surrender our expectations of others before we enter into a particular situation with them. Emotions are really subtle attempts to force others and impose our will on them, which they unconsciously resist. The way to facilitate satisfaction in relationships is lovingly to picture the best possible outcome. Make sure it is mutually beneficial: a win-win situation. Let go of all the negative feelings and merely hold the picture in mind. We can tell if we are really surrendered when we feel okay either way; it’s okay with us if it happens, and it’s okay with us if it doesn’t. Therefore, to be surrendered does not mean to be passive. It is being active in a positive way. When we are surrendered, there is no longer the pressure of time. Frustration comes from wanting a thing now instead of letting it happen naturally in its own time. Patience is an automatic side effect of letting go, and we know how easy it is to get along with patient people. Notice that patient people usually get what they want in the end.

One resistance to letting go is the illusion that, if we let go of our wantingness and our expectations, we won’t get what we want. We fear that we will lose it if we don’t keep pressuring for it. The mind has the idea that the way to get a thing is to want it. Actually, if we examine the issue, we will see that events are due to decisions, and choices are based on our intentions. What we get is the result of these choices, even though they are unconscious, rather than what we think we want. When we surrender the pressure of wantingness, we are clear to make wiser choices and decisions.

We think that our happiness depends on controlling events, and that facts are what upset us. Actually, it is our feelings and thoughts about these facts that are the real cause of our upset. Facts in and of themselves are neutral things. The power we give them is due to our attitude of acceptance or non-acceptance and our overall feeling state. If we get stuck ...

The secret, as the woman above stated, is in the awareness that when we seek to give instead of to get, all of our own needs are automatically fulfilled. As one person remarked, “I have heard about many personal problems from my friends who practice this technique, but lack of lovers isn’t one of them!”

when we dislike what we see, hear, think, or remember. Our reaction to disliking comes in the form of such feelings as anger, grief, and anxiety. Our usual way of dealing with unpleasant feelings is to suppress them, and because of this, we assume that these feelings are part and parcel of our thinking process. This error results because the feelings of dislike are being processed through our thoughts. Suppressing these feelings does not make them disappear. On the contrary, they will re-emerge as negative thoughts. Negativity does not exist within a situation or event; rather, it resides in our reaction to the situation as we see it. When negative feelings are acknowledged and relinquished, the situation can rapidly change in appearance from impossible to easily manageable, workable, and even quite useful. One of the most prominent negative feelings that blocks success in professional life is that of envy. The underlying dynamic of envy is that when we see someone else getting ahead, this triggers our own sense of insecurity. It’s not simply that we see the other person’s achievement and feel envy. Rather, the other person’s achievement triggers in us a feeling of lack or inadequacy about ourselves. It triggers the feeling, “Maybe I’m not accomplishing what I should be accomplishing,” or “Maybe I won’t be able to accomplish what I want to accomplish,” or “Maybe my accomplishments aren’t appreciated by others and go unnoticed.”

Unconsciously, this resentment fuels our endless desire for strokes, which, of course, do not come our way because our wantingness repels the very thing we want.

As the cycle progresses, we feel increasingly dissatisfied and unhappy in our job and alienated from our colleagues. There may be the belief, “Everyone is against me.” Our family members may grow weary of our constant complaints about the situation at work. We may seek escape at the end of the day through endless television or over-indulgence in food, sleep, drugs, and alcohol. What’s

When we look within ourselves, we see what the underlying feelings are that prevent our success: competitiveness, self-doubt, insecurity, inadequacy, and desire for approval. Are we willing to look at these feelings? Once our feelings are recognized, it becomes obvious to us that they work against us. They drain our efforts and impede our success in the world. Our self-doubts block the very recognition we seek. Once we see the cost of negative feelings to our happiness and success, we will become willing to let go of them and the payoffs we get from them. For example, we become willing to let go of the cheap little satisfaction we get from blaming others for our lack of success.