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

by David R. Hawkins

As Dr. Hawkins explains, the “small” part of ourselves is attached to the familiar, no matter how painful or inefficient it is.

feeling unworthy, being invalidated, judging others and ourselves, being inflated, always “winning” and being “right,” grieving the past, fearing the future, nursing our wounds, craving assurance, and seeking love instead of giving it.

“All the years I’ve wasted.” It is a feeling of sadness and loss. Loneliness. The feeling of “if only.” Regret. Feelings of abandonment, pain, helplessness, and hopelessness. Nostalgia.

Instead of suppressing the feeling, if it is allowed to come up and be relinquished, we can quickly jump from grief to acceptance.

The adult in us regretfully accepts that impermanency is a reality of life.

To handle the fear of loss, we have to look at what purpose the external person or object serves in our life.

The problem is not that we have possessions, but that we have a prideful, possessive, and self-congratulatory attitude about them.

It is not what we have that matters, but how we hold it, how we frame it in our consciousness,

Possessiveness and attachment occur as a consequence of pride. Attachment is, therefore, a potential cause for suffering, because attachment brings about fear of loss and, with loss, we go back into apathy, depression, and grief. If we are prideful of a car and somebody steals it, we will experience anguish, pain, and suffering. If, instead, we loosely hold the car (emotionally speaking), and we enjoy its beauty and perfection and we feel grateful for having it, its loss will bring about only minor disappointment.

We become much less vulnerable if we put our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs, which are all opinions, into a different context. We can view them as ideas that we like or dislike. Some thoughts give us pleasure, and so we like them. Just because we like them today doesn’t mean we have to go to war over them. We like a concept so long as it serves us and we are getting enjoyment out of it. Of course, we discard it quite readily when it is no longer a source of pleasure. When we look at our opinions, we will see that it is primarily our emotions that are giving them any value in the first place.

All that we experience are our own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs projected onto the world, actually causing what we see to happen.