The Art of Letting Go
Belinda Gore, Ph.D., copyright 2003

In last month's LifeStories we reviewed three steps in the Practice of Presence: Awareness, Allowing, and Active Presence. In the stage of allowing, many people discover that they have a strong resistance to letting go of their ideas about how things should be. They believe that it is somehow wrong to accept certain feelings, like anger or sadness, and want to fix the world and themselves to remove the sources of pain and make everything fit into their ideals.

There is nothing wrong with being motivated to make positive changes, but sometimes we are determined to hold on to exactly those behaviors and attitudes that block our true growth and maturing. We have beliefs about who we are and how the world works that are based on very early life experiences, when we were interpreting events based on the many misconceptions of childhood. To make the significant life changes we say we desire, we have to learn to give up some of those beliefs that are keeping us stuck in outworn personality patterns.

Those of us who guide others-as therapists, coaches, and spiritual directors-are especially challenged to identify the attitudes and beliefs that we may cling to. In order to serve others, we must know the journey ourselves. It is important that we recognize the patterns by which we identify ourselves and be willing and able to release the old familiar baggage that impedes our development as human beings. By learning the art of letting go we can actively participate in liberation in the lives of others.

In considering examples of LifeStories for the Art of Letting Go, my own story reveals what it is like to be stuck.

BELINDA GETS HER PRIORITIES STRAIGHT
Four years ago my mother died unexpectedly. In recovering from the shock of her loss, I found myself increasingly angry with my husband who had made a decision to leave an unproductive job just one week before my mother's funeral. Typical Three that I am, I was pushing myself to continue my full-time psychotherapy practice while trying to support my dad, who was devastated, and processing my own grief. One evening I came home from work to find my husband and my father sitting on the deck waiting for dinner. Inwardly I exploded: How could they relax when I had to work so hard?

Why did John get to do what he wanted to with his job and I didn't?

The still small voice of my inner guidance replied: what's stopping you?

Of course, the answer was ME: I was stopping myself from letting go of my familiar routines because if I slowed down, I would have to feel my sadness and the fear that my life was falling apart. Even though I had taken off two weeks when my mother died, that was not enough time to explore the impact of my loss. As those of you who have studied the Enneagram know, my type Three personality developed around an attachment to the nurturing figure in my early life, my mother. Each personality type develops around either an attachment relationship, a frustration, or a rejection with their nurturing figure (usually the mother), their protective figure (usually the father), or both. We know that Three's develop themselves to please and get recognition from their mothers. Even though I was 50 years old, losing my mother meant losing an aspect of my identity and to compensate I turned to work, an environment where I could continue to be recognized and valued.

So for me it was difficult to just clear the space to examine my life. The motivation came from some inner logic that told me that if my mother could die, so could I, and for the first time in my life I really understood that I could not afford to keep postponing things that were important to me. I decided to take an extended time away from work in order to take stock of my life and to ask myself: what did I really want to be doing with my life, what did I want to be sure to include in my life experience before it was time for ME to die.

EXERCISE
An exercise that helped me was to ask: if I had only six months to live, what changes would I make in my life? Then I asked what would I do if I learned that I had five years, not six months, to live? And how did the six-month picture differ from what I would do with five years? The six-month plan helped me clarify what I valued that was missing from my life, and the five-year plan guided me in developing lifestyle changes that I could live with for a longer time.

For me, the short-term plan included closing my psychology practice, visiting friends and family (my primary instinctual variant is Social), and traveling with my husband. But if I were going to live another five years, I would maintain my practice because I enjoy my work, but I would work fewer hours, so I began to reduce my hours at the office. I also discovered that I wanted a deeper involvement with the Enneagram and as an outcome, The Enneagram Institute of Central Ohio was born. I have found that it is very effective for my type Three clients to similarly question what they would do with their lives if they knew they would soon die as a means of getting to the true Heart's Desire.

EXERCISE #2
Another exercise for clarifying your priorities is to make a list of your top ten values in life and order them in terms of priority, with the most important value listed as #1 and so forth. Now list the activities you already do that let you embody or manifest each of those values. Finally, write down how many hours a week you spend actually engaged in each of those activities. For many people the time spent in highly valued activities does not match the importance of those values. We often spend a lot of time doing things that we say we don't like but we do them anyway. That leads us to the next step, facing our fears of letting go of what is familiar.

TOM AND IRENE: RESISTING AND LETTING GO
Irene and her husband Tom attended a workshop focused on the experiential process of letting go. As the group went through a series of exercises for establishing their priorities in life, followed by letting go of various roles and relationships, Irene discovered how attached she was to her identity as a spiritual seeker. In workshops we practice releasing roles and relationships not because they are wrong but because our attachment to them holds us prisoners in pre-existing patterns of self-awareness and response. For Irene, to be a spiritual seeker meant that she was a good person and would be rewarded for maintaining her spiritual practices and her particular worldview. She objected to letting go of them, even in a simple exercise in a workshop setting, because without them, who would she BE?

Her resistance was so strong that she argued with me and denounced the exercise, revealing to herself and the rest of the group that the fear of losing our attachments is a deep and sometimes difficult issue.

Irene's husband Tom decided to try letting go of even his most important roles, spouse and spiritual seeker. To his surprise, he discovered that without the role of spouse he did not stop loving Irene; without the role to define the relationship, he found a deeper level of Love. He said that he felt free to love her completely, without expectations and without reservations. The role of spouse held certain obligations for him that actually held him back. It was a great relief to Tom to realize that he did not have to work at being a good husband if he could let go of being a Husband and just BE. The strength of his Being was more powerful than the role.

Similarly, as he released the role of spiritual seeker, he found that he no longer felt the need to pursue a spiritual path: he was already There. He no longer felt an urge to pursue a goal. In that moment he tasted liberation. Afterward, he reported that his spiritual practices took on a new meaning as activities that helped to stay in touch with this experience and to continue letting go of the resistance to just Being.

A.H. Almaas writes that the ego is not really transcended but metabolized. By letting go we are better able to fully digest our life experiences rather than simply using them to support our ideas about who we are and how the world works.

CAROLINE CREATES HER NEW LIFE
After a powerful workshop experience, the question always arises: NOW what do I do? We cannot just sit in the safety of a workshop setting or the privacy of our meditation rooms for the rest of our lives. We are here to continue to live more abundantly, to continue to digest and expand and discover. After Caroline had completed a compelling process of reviewing her life, digesting important feelings, and releasing her attachment to certain outworn identifications, she was ready to turn around and face her life, moving into an unknown future. Since she, like most of us, had not experienced complete enlightenment, she needed a sense of direction. To find that we did an exercise to discover a future self who could help her see what steps to take and what to continue to release.

EXERCISE
I asked Caroline to close her eyes and begin to quietly breathe, drawing each breath into her Essence and with each exhalation releasing anything she no longer needed. Slowly we drew her awareness into each part of her body, beginning with her feet and legs, moving up her abdomen and back, into her shoulders and arms and finally her neck, throat, jaw, face and scalp. We brought her attention into her heart, consciously opening herself to her feelings and making herself available to be affected by her experience. With her mind quiet and empty, I asked her to invite her future self of five years from now to be with her. She observed the appearance of her Future Self (although not everyone is visually oriented and does not "see" with the inner eye) and sensed the quality of her presence.

Through many years of teaching dreamwork I learned that we can very easily dialogue with different aspects of the whole person we call our selves, so I asked Caroline to ask her Future Self some questions that would provide her with guidance about how to move forward in her present life. First I suggested that she ask the Future Self what was most important in her future life; the answer was "friends and family", a common answer-especially for those with a dominant Social instinct. Caroline was surprised since she was looking for direction with her career and felt a flood of emotion as she realized how her ambitions often pulled her away from the relational connections that were the most meaningful aspect of her life. We asked various other questions about what the Future Self valued most in her work life, her financial position ("I have enough"), and how she spent her days. All of this provided a sense of relief from the tension of wondering what would become of her and gave her a sense of direction that could guide her daily choices and decisions.

Then Caroline asked the Future Self for advice about how to move forward, specifically what would most help her in realizing this relaxed and satisfying future. Her Future Self answered: "Don't be afraid. Just begin." I was reminded how important it is to find the reliable voice of Inner Guidance that offers not just words but the felt sense of a personal truth. I could have said those words to Caroline day after day and while she knew they were true, they were meaningless to her inner life. She would not have taken them in and digested them to make them her own. Hearing these simple words from her Future Self touched her Essence. With a smile on her face, she left our session knowing what her priorities were and understanding what to do TODAY, with no elaborate plans needed. As the saying goes in Twelve Step programs, her goal was to do "the next right thing."

In years of working with clients and workshop participants, as well as in my own life, I discover again and again that plans are only mental constructions; if we are only in our minds, without being fully embodied in the present moment and emotionally connected to wisdom, we will not find satisfaction. When we continue to review our priorities in terms of what we do rather than what we say, when we are willing to let go of outworn beliefs and behaviors, when we reorder our lives according to inner guidance, then we find that the challenges we face in our lives are rich with meaning and satisfaction. Each step brings us back to the truth of Being our Essential selves.
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For information about The Enneagram Institute of Central Ohio, upcoming workshops and her e-newsletter www.enneagram-ohio.com or write to Dr. Belinda Gore at mailto:bgore@enneagram-ohio.com