Letting Go
Question: I want to let go of my familiar painful thoughts and feelings, but fear what will happen next. Who will I be without all of my usual feelings?
Answer: You will be that rare someone who experiences a real miracle. As you walk away from your own self-generated inner-life, you begin to discover that all of the stimulating sensations you thought were giving you life were actually separating you from it. To your grateful astonishment, you realize that self-stimulation pales next to being self-completed - which is what you were looking for in the first place. Now you understand that real life is real satisfaction, because as you leave the self-generated self behind, you step into the Real World where everything is already complete - including you.
Question: My problem is letting go. I'm always offering myself solutions, and I don't know how to stop. They make so much sense at the time, but then I end up in more trouble than before.
Answer: The problem is the tenacious nature of thought. It's forever reproducing itself, reincarnating as it were, its temporary life. Thought floats within reach of thought packed together in communities of association like housing projects upon cluttered hillsides - where the neighbors clamor and conflict breeds, but from which no one moves away for fear of losing the security of false familiarity. This is why we must develop the natural distaste for our own thought-life, for this creates natural discernment leading to detachment, to letting go.
Question: How can I move beyond a painful regret?
Answer: Events demand decisions. Choices must be made. And we do the best we know how in any given moment. Even so, we often err and choose against ourselves. For a split second we sense our misstep and wish we could put things right, but the momentum of the moment holds us helpless in its tow. Seemingly too late to struggle with what has now been cast, we can only hope tomorrow won't find us on some unpleasant shore. But in truth, there is no grim tide of events to which we must submit. It's only our flooding thoughts that carry us along. And we can start life all over any time we'll remember that nothing real keeps us from standing on Solid Ground.
