Letting Go

This blog is taken from Oms from the Heart. You can find it, and my other books, here. 

I’ve written about this theme many times … it’s powerful that’s why.  Some say our human grasping is the root of all suffering and that if we just let go we would be fine!

Well I’m here to say that … I’ve let go of a lot of things, a home, a career, money, businesses, people, my marriage, and even ideas and beliefs.  And there are days I am still confronted with something I am still grasping onto a bit too tight.  And there are times when my mind still struggles with my heart and I suffer. 

I remember when my daughters were little … and they began walking; stumbling actually, around the house.  But before that initial launch, they would cling to the couches, or my leg, or my hand.  And I would encourage them to go forward without me.  And then when they did, their innocent little eyes looking at me, I would make sure that everything that could hurt them was bumper padded and that I had protection around anything detrimental. 

Then I remember when they could play out in the front yard without me being there with them.  And when I could close my eyes at the side of the pool, if only for a moment, while they were in the shallow end.  And when they rode their bikes to the store, walked to school, went to the theater without me, and the list goes on.

It’s a consistent theme for me, this letting go.

Letting go, is the biggest lesson I’ve learned in parenting thus far.  I have never had my heart so full and so trampled on all at the same time.  Where I’ve truly learned the meaning of the phrase … “if you love something let it go.”

And Unconditional Love ….

Because unconditional love does require an aspect of letting go.  It’s actually the epitome of letting go.  Of everything.  It’s a deep surrender to the heart which is infinite and knows so much more than we do … but yet … our mind, it grasps.

What’s funny to me is that we are the only species that actually holds onto things, people, ideas, beliefs.  We hold them so tight, as if we unleashed our grasp, if only for a moment, we might die. 

And maybe we would, but maybe we wouldn’t.

Maybe in letting go we actually make that proverbial “space for something else to come in.”  Maybe in letting go we allow others to shine and come forward in their light and glory.  Maybe in letting go we bring ourselves closer to Source. 

Which in and of itself can be daunting.

Letting go is scary because we don’t know.  We don’t know what will happen.  We don’t know the outcome.  We don’t know … period. 

But the truth is we don’t know anyway so …. Why not let go?

And I wonder too, even now, as I watch my girls blossom into teenagers only a few years away from driving a car, I wonder …what am I not willing to let go of?  How is that hurting me and them?  Can I let go here or there?  Where should I still have bumper pads up?  Is it okay to close my eyes to this or that? 

It’s a constant struggle that I will continue to lead with my heart first, mind second.

We have no control over anything, nothing, so let’s stop faking it.  Let’s just allow life to lead us from our heart. When we truly let go we allow … we allow this breath and magic to come through that is nothing we could have ever thought of or planned for or conceived.

Not easy but no one ever said it would be ….