Let It Go

You certainly need to see the funny side of this "search for inner calm". Last night I was composing an email to my daughter and I was trying to express in words what I felt was the essence of the spiritual advice that accepted masters were trying to pass on to a benighted humanity. I suddenly came up with the phrase let it go.

This can be interpreted in two main ways; firstly in the sense of not following through on a reaction to something that is upsetting or hurtful. For example, if somebody insults me, I can react and insult them back or choose instead to let it go. In another sense it can mean not holding on to things. This is a practically impossible task because I can hold on to quite subtle things like my beliefs, my value systems, my memories, my plans for the future etc. This doesn't mean that I shouldn't have such things, only that I shouldn't hold on to them.

Once I hold on to something such as a belief, I am wanting it to remain the same. When I do this my belief becomes less flexible and I'm less open to facts that might challenge that belief. I become less tolerant of alternative beliefs. Worse still I come to identify with this and other beliefs and build up a belief system. This system become part of how I define myself and of who I think I am. But of course I'm not this or that or anything else. By holding on and not letting go, the likelihood of identification with what is held on to increases. For example, the more I hold on to the past, the more I am shaped by it.

The hapless chicken in the above cartoon has held on to a need to devote its life to the search for inner calm. Of course the more intense the devotion, the more elusive that inner calm becomes. The chicken's goal-oriented mindset ensures failure and consequent anger at the failure to achieve a life-long goal. By letting go of the goal, and everything else, inner calm arises. It was always there but by grasping at this and that I created turbulence and disturbed that calm. Let it go.