Kurt Barstow - Letting Go

Another nice post from Kurt Barstow at Examiner.com. Here he looks at "letting go," or perhaps more precisely, surrender.

Letting Go

I was recently watching a DVD of an introduction to The Sedona Method with Hale Dwoskin, who was appearing at a seminar in Las Vegas as a guest of Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Both authors and self-help gurus had appeared in the popular movie The Secret. The Sedona Method is about release, potentially of anything that is negative or does not serve, but especially of emotions. It was inspired by a man who was given three weeks to live and, basically, by letting go of layers and layers of negativity lived another forty-two years. Behind its principles are the belief that every human being has a natural mechanism of release that is in evidence, for example, when a child falls down and looks around to see if he or she needs to cry. In the DVD Dwoskin has his audience think of an unwanted emotion that they have been holding on to and to just feel what that's like in the body. He then asks, "Just for now, could you welcome that emotion?" Then, "Just for now, would you be willing to release that emotion?...Would you?...Could you?...When?" Although The Sedona Method Course discusses the many possibilities for using this as well as various strategies, the core of it is that simple. You welcome and release. You can do it for emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, relationships, just about anything that can be imagined or felt by you. As a result you get in touch with your unlimited self, with the vast spaciousness of your being. If that begins to sound spiritual to you, you would be right, for The Sedona Method would seem to be based on tried and true psychological/spiritual principles.

The great thirteenth-century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi says in his poem "The Guest House":

This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweeps your house
empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Notice that the central idea of this poem is that we should not ignore, repress, avoid, reject, or project these feelings--good or bad--nor should we carry them around like a burden. Instead we should welcome them, the first step after identifying and feeling them in The Sedona Method. And while he doesn't talk about releasing them, their transience is implied in the metaphor of the guest house. So the first step in working with the transformative powers of emotions is to allow them in, not to resist them.

In his book Open Mind, Open Heart (Continuum, 2006), Father Thomas Keating discusses practices that help to translate the effects of centering prayer (the Christian version of meditation) into daily life, One such practice is called The Welcoming Prayer. To perform this practice one must first observe the emotions that are most unsettling to oneself. As he describes it, this "is a way of 'letting go' into the present moment and ordinary routines of daily life... It is a way of turning over everything to God by using... three simple movements." The first is to focus and sink into the body sensation, to simply experience it. The second part is to remain in this bodily sensation and to say interiorly the word "Welcome," as you "embrace the Holy Spirit in and through the body sensation." The third component is letting go.

Read the whole article.

Tags: Kurt Barstow, Letting Go, Examiner, Psychology, personal growth, self exploration, Rumi, Father Thomas Keating, Hale Dwoskin, Sedona Method, Jon Kabat-Zinn