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

by David R. Hawkins

A good and very illuminating exercise is to sit down and look at the feeling that is directly opposite the negative one that we are experiencing and begin to let go resisting

Once we compassionately accept our own humanness and that of others, we are no longer subject to humiliation, for true humility is a part of greatness.

When that inner emptiness, due to lack of self-worth, is replaced by true self-love, self-respect and esteem, we no longer have to seek it in the world, for that source of happiness is within ourselves.

Apathy is the belief, “I can’t.” It is the feeling that we cannot do anything about our situation and no one else can help. It is hopelessness and helplessness. It is associated with such thoughts as: “Who cares?”; “What’s the use?”; “It’s boring”; “Why bother?”; “I can’t win anyway.”

Feelings of apathy about the letting go technique itself may appear as resistances. These may take the form of attitudes and thoughts such as: “It won’t work anyway”; “What’s the difference?”; “I’m not ready for this yet”; “I can’t feel”; “I’m too busy”; “I’m tired of letting go”; “I’m too overwhelmed”; “I forgot”; “I’m too depressed”; “I’m too sleepy.” The way out of apathy is to remind ourselves of

Since in reality, we are very capable beings, most “I can’ts” are really “I won’ts.” Behind the “I can’ts” or the “I won’ts” is frequently a fear. Then, when we look at the truth of what is behind the feeling, we have already moved up the scale from apathy to fear. Fear is a higher energy state than apathy.

One of the biggest blocks to overcome in getting out of depression and apathy is that of blame. Blame is a whole subject in itself. Looking into it is rewarding. To begin with, there are a lot of payoffs to blame. We get to be innocent; we get to enjoy self-pity; we get to be the martyr and the victim; and we get to be the recipients of sympathy.

It is a totally different situation to see that we choose to blame rather than to think that we have to blame.

We are only subject to a negative thought or belief if we consciously say that it applies to us. We are free to choose not to buy into a negative belief system.

The psychological basis of all grief and mourning is attachment. Attachment and dependence occur because we feel incomplete within ourselves; therefore, we seek objects, people, relationships, places, and concepts to fulfill inner needs. Because they are unconsciously utilized to fulfill an inner need, they come to be identified as “mine.” As more energy is poured into them, there is a transition from identifying with the external objects as “mine” to being an actual extension of “me.” Loss of the object or person is experienced as a loss of our own self and an important part of our emotional economy. Loss is experienced as a diminution of the quality of ourselves, which the object or person represented.

We feel that what has become important or comforting to us is a permanent attachment. Consequently, when that illusion is threatened, there is anger, resentment, and self-pity, feelings which can result in chronic bitterness. “Impotent rage” is associated with the desire to change the nature of the world and the impossibility of doing so.

Associated with the feeling of grief is always a variable amount of guilt. This is based on the fantasy that the loss represents a punishment or that a different attitude or behavior would have prevented it from happening.

When all the negative emotions have been worked through, surrendered to and let go of, relief finally occurs, and the former suffering is replaced by acceptance. Acceptance is different from resignation. In resignation there are still residuals of the previous emotion left. There is reluctance and a delaying of the true recognition of the facts. Resignation says, “I don’t like it, but I have to put up with it.”

The more loving we are, the less vulnerable we are to grief and loss, and the less we need to seek attachments. When we have acknowledged and let go of all negative feelings, and we have graduated from smallness to the recognition of our greatness so that our internal joy comes from the pleasure of giving and loving, then we are really invulnerable to loss. When the source of happiness is found within, we are immune to the losses of the world.

Paranoia is its extreme. In milder forms of fear, we are merely uneasy. When it is more severe, we become scared, cautious, blocked, tense, shy, speechless, superstitious, defensive, distrustful, threatened, insecure, dreading, suspicious, timid, trapped, guilty, and full of stage fright.

This fear arises from the desire to strike out, to hit back, and to attack. As we let go of fear, we find that behind it, there is often anger at the object of fear itself.

When we stop being afraid of fear, we notice that it is just a feeling. In fact, fear is far more tolerable than depression.

This case illustrates a concept that we previously presented in the chapter on apathy; that is, a higher vibration, such as love, has a healing effect on a lower vibration, such as that in the patient’s case, fear.

Mother Teresa is credited with healing great numbers of people by these very mechanisms of unconditional love and illumined presence. To people who are unfamiliar with the laws of consciousness, these types of cures seem miraculous. But to those who are familiar with the laws of consciousness, such phenomena are commonplace and to be expected. High levels of consciousness are in themselves capable of healing, transforming, and enlightening others. The value of the surrendering mechanism is that, by letting go of the blocks to love, our capacity to love increases progressively, and loving energy has the capacity to heal ourselves as well as others.

The only drawback to these types of healings is that often the healing is sustained while in proximity to a person capable of radiating high levels of love, but the illness returns when people leave that presence, unless they themselves have learned to elevate their own consciousness.

The answer is to look at the kinds of thoughts that are being sent by the family to the patient. As you examine them, you will find that they are primarily thoughts of anguish and fear, accompanied by guilt and ambivalence.

This means that buried within us all, in what Jung called the “collective unconscious,” is everything that we most dislike admitting about ourselves. The average human, he said, would much rather project his shadow onto the world and condemn it and see it as evil, thinking that his problem is to battle with evil in the world.

suppress our multitude of fears. The result is energy depletion. On the emotional level, it is expressed as an inhibition of the capacity to love. In the world of consciousness, like goes to like, so that fear attracts fear just as its corollary is true that love attracts love. The more fear we hold, the more fearful situations we attract to our life.

We have the unconscious fantasy that fear is keeping us alive; this is because fear is associated with our whole set of survival mechanisms.

One particular form of fear is what we call guilt. Guilt is always associated with a feeling of wrongness and potential punishment, either real or in fantasy. If punishment is not forthcoming in the external world, it expresses itself as self-punishment on an emotional level.

Guilt is as prevalent as fear, and we feel guilty no matter what we are doing. A part of our mind says that we really ought to be doing something else. Or, whatever we are actually doing at the moment, we ought to be doing “better.” We “should” be getting a better golf score. We “should” be reading a book instead of watching television. We “should” make love better.

Remaining unconscious of guilt (repression), however, does not solve it. The guilt re-emerges in the form of self-punishment and through accidents, misfortune, loss of jobs and relationships, physical disease and sickness, tiredness, exhaustion, and the multiple ways the ingenious mind figures out how to bring about the loss of pleasure, joy, and aliveness.

To make wrong and to make guilty is really a form of cruelty, is it not? We have allowed others to program us with methods of self-torture, and we can see that we have retaliated by inviting others to torture themselves in return.

This emotion may range from a mild wanting to an obsessive, driven craving for something or someone. It is also expressed as greed, obsession, hunger, envy, jealousy, clinging, hoarding, ruthlessness, fixation, frenzy, exaggeration, over-ambition, selfishness, lust, possessiveness, control, glamorization, insatiability, and acquisitiveness.

Actually, the way something comes into our life is because we have chosen it. It was the result of our intention, or we made a decision for it. It has come into our life in spite of desire. The desiring was actually the obstacle to its achievement or acquisition. This is because desire literally means, “I do not have.”

This is because wanting blocks receiving it and results in a fear of not getting it. The energy of desire is, in essence, a denial that what we want is ours for the asking.

Personal goals were written down, followed by a letting go of the desire for them. It sounds paradoxical but that is the process: identify the goals and then let go of wanting them.

This level of beingness is typical of self-help groups. In self-help groups, no one is interested in what others do in the world or what they have. They are only interested in whether or not we have achieved certain inner goals, such as those of honesty, openness, sharingness, lovingness, willingness to help, humility, genuineness, and awareness. They are interested in our quality of beingness.

If we look at something that we want, we can begin to distinguish between the thing itself versus the aura, patina, flash, and attractive magnetic effect of a quality that can best be described as “glamour.”

The way to become that exciting person whom people want to know is very easy. We simply picture the kind of person we want to be and surrender all the negative feelings and blocks that prevent us from being that. What happens, then, is that all we need to have and to do will automatically fall into place.

Because he was of a religious nature, he was advised to forget about getting a job, to turn it over to God, and to surrender his desire in the matter while staying open to what might happen. A week later, he recounted: “Well, the day after I surrendered wanting a job, nothing happened. Then I got a long-distance phone call from my brother-in-law, and I am going to be joining his firm. If it weren’t for my brother-in-law, I never would have gotten a job. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait for God!”

Anger may vary all the way from rage to mild resentment. It includes revenge, outrage, indignation, fury, jealousy, vindictiveness, spite, hatred, contempt, wrath, argumentativeness, hostility, sarcasm, impatience, frustration, negativity, aggression, violence, revulsion, meanness, rebellion, explosive behavior, agitation, abusiveness, abrasiveness, smoldering, sullenness, pouting, and stubbornness.

There is a lot of energy in anger; therefore, we may actually feel energized when we are irritated or angry. One of the tricks people learn is to move up quickly from apathy and grief into anger, and then to jump from anger to pride, and then on into courage. In anger, there is the energy for action. This results in doingness in the world.

We typically feel so much guilt about anger that we find it necessary to make the object of our anger “wrong” so that we can say our anger is “justified.” Few are the persons who can take responsibility for their own anger and just say, “I am angry because I am full of angriness.”

We have already mentioned that very often a complex of angry feelings is connected with fear, and the anger disappears when we let go of the fear. Another source of anger is that of pride, and especially that aspect of pride called vanity. Frequently, it is our personal pride that feeds and propagates the anger.

If our relationships with others are associated with our small self in the form of sacrifice, then we are setting ourselves up for later anger, because the other person is usually unaware of our “sacrifice” and is, therefore, unlikely to fulfill our expectations.

That which we want, desire, and insist upon from another person is felt by them as pressure. They will, therefore, unconsciously resist.

The resistance is because pressure is always felt by us as a denial of our choice. It is felt as emotional blackmail.

The way to offset this anger is to acknowledge and relinquish the pride, surrender our desire for the pleasure of self-pity and, instead, view our efforts on behalf of others as gifts. We can experience the joy of being generous with others as its own reward.

Let’s say, for example, that somebody calls us “stupid.” Our natural response is one of anger. We can use the energy of that anger consciously: “What is that person asking me to become more aware of?” If we ask ourselves the question, we may come to the realization that we were being self-centered;

They are really reflecting back to us what we have failed to acknowledge within ourselves. They are forcing us to look at what needs to be addressed.

To do this, we have to resist the temptation to indulge in making ourselves and others “wrong.” If we look at the “small self” aspect of ourselves, we will see that making ourselves and others “wrong” is one of its favorite activities

Very often an internal dialogue can go on for years about our resentment over the other person’s lack of appreciation for our feelings about them. If this is so for us, it must be the case for others as well. There are people, therefore, in our life who are walking around with an endless mental stream of thoughts about us, having to do with our lack of appreciation of their feelings for us.

This means to acknowledge all of their communications to us. For instance, if friends call us on the phone, we thank them for calling us.

“What have I failed to acknowledge in those with whom I have daily contact?” It is a very valuable experience to pick someone in our life who, in our view, is critical toward us and now, within ourselves, begin to look at how we have failed to acknowledge them.