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

by David R. Hawkins

Letting go is like the sudden cessation of an inner pressure or the dropping of a weight. It is accompanied by a sudden feeling of relief and lightness, with an increased happiness and freedom.

We have three major ways of handling feelings: suppression, expression, and escape.

Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it.

The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going.

Let the resistance be there but don’t resist the resistance.

Letting go is a natural ability. It is not something new or foreign.

It is common for humans to look outside of themselves for the satisfaction of their needs. This leads them to experience themselves as vulnerable because they are insufficient unto themselves.

The level of Courage (200) is the critical point that marks the shift from negative to positive energy. It is the energy of integrity, being truthful, empowerment, and having the capacity to cope.

One of the most effective tools for handling the past is the creation of a different context. What this means is that we give it a different meaning. We take on a different attitude about the past difficulty or trauma, and we acknowledge the hidden gift in it.

Fear of life is really the fear of emotions. It is not the facts that we fear but our feelings about them.

Once we have mastery over our feelings, our fear of life diminishes.

Apathy and depression are the prices we pay for having settled for and bought into our smallness.