Advance Lessons In Letting Go

By Guy Finley
excerpted from
Let Go and Live in the Now

As Barbara window shops her eye catches sight of a lace-sleeved lavender blouse on sale in one of her favorite stores. In an instant, Barbara recalls wearing a similar blouse many years ago the night her father passed away. Now, virtually unnoticed, a small wave of regret washes over her. For reasons unknown to her, as she stands there still looking at a blouse she feels sure should be in her closet, she is beginning to think about the last words she had with her father, and how she wishes she would have said something else.

The more Barbara is drawn into these flooding considerations, the more she suffers. And the more unwanted this painful experience becomes, the more she unconsciously resists her mounting turmoil until she is caught in a full-blown storm. Haven’t we all been there before? Where a seemingly harmless thought, which we turn over in our mind, becomes a tornado? Well, it need not be like that…for any of us!

The only reason we ever find ourselves caught in a psychological storm is because we have been drawn, without knowing it, into identifying with—actually merging with—mental images from our past. These images are pre-loaded—rather like psychological time capsules—with punishing thoughts and feelings that flood into us the instant we identify with them. As the invisible, but psychically palpable blows from these painful memories pour through us, we are unconsciously moved to try and resist them—all of which makes us feel as though we are trapped in a storm about which we can do nothing other than try to escape its lashing!

Once we invite the following insight to become our own, we need never again endure the pounding of such negative states: No storm of mental torment or dark, emotional suffering belongs to you. Any wave of resentment, anxiety, or fear that comes to wash you away is nothing more than a kind of psychic residue left over from who you once were. Not only do these negative states have nothing in common with your True Nature, but they cannot enter into the living Now where this higher consciousness lives.

This same truth can be said in a slightly different way: we cannot be punished by any painful storm when we are grounded in the present moment. The reason for this perfect protection is as pure as it is simple: psychological storms are powerless to push their divisive and destructive forces into the spiritual harbor of Now because, within Its native wholeness, they have no way to remain there. Now let’s pull these important lessons together in a short summary.

We have seen that the storms we suffer are not born simply from any particular event that takes place, but rather they rise from an unknown ground in us due to our undetected resistance to them. Further, these unwanted events that we so strongly resist are not the actual events themselves. What we secretly struggle against in these moments are unwanted images of that event fashioned by ourselves. This occurs, for example, when we imagine a fearful future, or see ourselves thrown for a social loss of some sort. In these moments we suffer, as we do, because we are looking at what we don’t want to see. And then, because we don’t know that we have been tricked into giving these negative fantasies our attention, we try to imagine ways to escape their punishing presence. The more we struggle to get away, the more attention we inadvertently lend to what we wish would disappear! It’s a great paradox: not wanting to look upon what is bothering us keeps what is bothering us in plain view! But now we are beginning to see our way out of this trap.