Letting Go

To have an immediate experience of letting go you can always stand up and stretch as much as you can and then relax. You’ve done that thousands of times in your life, and it almost always provides an instant burst of good feeling, clarity, and energy. The following two exercises are expansions of the same idea. One of them emphasizes letting go physically, the other, mentally.

Physically. Sit in a chair with your hands on your legs. Tense your legs and keep them tense as you successively and steadily tense your pelvis, rib cage, shoulder, neck, and jaw. Hold all of that tense for a moment. Now relax. You have just let go. How did it feel? Observe.

Mentally. Imagine that something you mentally carry around with you - a strong opinion, belief, or thought that blocks your way - is actually represented by something you are wearing. It can be a shoe, watch, ring, bracelet, scarf or tie. Strongly imagine that this blocking mental set exists totally in the article you are wearing. Then: take it off!

How does it feel to let go in this way?

Instead of prematurely asking what you should do, try something new. Ask no questions rather than an action question. Try meditating, exercising, sensing your arms and legs, or any of the approaches we have suggested for putting you in touch with your inner creative ability. Then try answering any or all of the following questions:

• What is it I don’t yet understand? This question or ones like it can penetrate the mind for clarity and understanding.

• What is it that I’m really feeling? When there is a problem there are usually emotions - fear, anger, hurt, or sorrow - and this question can help you become aware of seeing them specifically.

• What is it that I’m not seeing? Problems usually come from not seeing clearly. By asking about what you are not seeing specifically, almost as if it consists of material objects, you heighten your perceptual ability.

• What voice is speaking? Is it your Voice of Judgment, your objective intelligence, your voice of childhood emotions or fears, or the voice of your Essence speaking inside of you? You can bet that if you have a problem, the objective intelligence and the Essence are relatively silent. But personifying and identifying the inner voices contributing to a problem sometimes is enough in itself to achieve the clarity needed for action.

This kind of exploratory questioning for clarity doesn’t take long, especially when preceded or followed by meditation.

Replace frustration with simulation. As you pay attention to what happens with yes/no, you’ll increasingly see ways to get to your intuition quickly, without the long frustrating periods of beating your head against a wall. Meanwhile, you might want to try the following four-step simulation based on some remarks by Dean Arthur Hastings. We recommend that you approach it as a meditation; sit comfortably, with your eyes closed.

First, diffuse emotional desires. Allow yourself to accept whatever outcome your intuition gives you. Our students find that reminding themselves that there really is no right or wrong way to go - that “This isn’t for keeps,” that the decision isn’t really important in a cosmic sense or even in terms of their whole life - helps them to divest themselves of any emotional wishes or desires.

Second, clear and calm your mind. This usually means relaxing physically or using a meditation technique.

Third, put the question in your mind. Don’t try to work on it or strive for an answer. Have no expectations. See the question in your mind’s eye. Hear it inside. Wait for your answer.

Fourth, observe. What is the answer? What are your reactions to the answer? Imagine the outcome of the decision that comes.

The point of the five minutes is to keep the thinker going for themselves. Not to turn their self into yourself. Nothing prepares us for this challenge. If the thinker does not need your brilliant insights to keep them going, what do they need?

They need a catalyst. That need can be met with a question. But not the one you might think.

Later—much later—I read Shunryū Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and realized that coming back to the beginner’s mind is a do-over. “If I allow myself,” I tell Andrew, “then I can have an infinite number of doovers.” I explained that we can always return to what is, what is really happening, what is truly present.