Empowerment from Letting Go

Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind. ~Buddha

If you let go of the power that negativity has over you, your highest unencumbered self will become the source of all your power. Your backbone will be strong, and negative energy will not weigh you down.

During times of crisis you must deal with, and let go of, many pent-up feelings. These are times when you find yourself questioning much in your life. You look inside and outside yourself to find the answers. You witness yourself going through incredible change, and you try to decide how best to deal with it. Like many people, I went through a time like this.

I have greatly suffered from the vicious cycle of guilt and shame and understand this process very well. I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life when I decided I could no longer be with my previous partner, my first true love you could call him. We met in my first year of college, and I truly believed he was the person I would spend the rest of my life with. As time passed, we slowly began to grow apart and our differences no longer cultivated excitement, attraction and chemistry in our relationship, these differences inevitably caused feelings of incompatibility, animosity and resentment towards each other. Sometimes I wonder if things could have changed if we would have stayed with one another and tried to work things out. I also sometimes wonder if we did not say or do the offensive things we did to one another if we could still be friends. Now I have come to realize that some things are simply not meant to be, and I have worked hard on being in the moment and am now slowly learning how to let go of guilt through meditation and concentrating upon mindfulness.

The healing process of my breakup took longer than I thought it would, but it would have taken even more time if I had not let go. Holding on to anger, resentment, and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache, and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. It tires you out and wears you down. These emotional thieves rob you of time that you could spend being happy and having fun.

Through reflection, I have come to realize that carrying guilt around in our minds is like hiking up a mountain and picking up every rock we stub our toe upon and throwing it in our backpack. Thinking about all the "shoulda, coulda and woulda’s is unskillful. It is unnecessary suffering and it stems from a belief in a separate self. That somehow we are so important that we should suffer more than anyone else should. It is also the belief that we are so powerful that we can actually revisit these past unskillful actions and somehow in reliving them change the result, we simply need to learn to accept things as they are.

Through meditation we can practice letting go of the burdens within our mind via deep breathing. Further, meditation is like a reset button that we can push to return us to the sharp wisdom of the present moment. Bringing us back to our natural state of peace, relaxation and freedom from the specter of invented ghosts, which the ego-self creates, for its need of chaos and drama to feed "itself" and survive.

Mindfulness brings us back to the present moment as well. It keeps our attention upon what is going on in our present reality. Keeping us focused and aware. This keeps us from falling one step behind ourselves which leads us to trip over obstacles along our path because we are so focused on reliving the past that we do not see them coming. Obstacles, which throw us off of the trail of, balanced Reality of the present moment and into the waiting arms of the ego-self. Staying mindful of the present moment allows us to be aware of obstacles rising up and have the mental clarity to move safely around them.

May we all be more aware of the present moment and not pick up rocks. And if we do, may we only hold them for only a moment and throw them innocently back down onto the path and not into our backpacks to carry around like a martyr.

I believe that when you finally get out from under that cloud and let go of all those negative feelings, it is the most empowering feeling you can ever know. Having the ability to let go and find forgiveness gives you back your laughter and the lightness in your life. A heart filled with anger has no room for love…

I love life today.