transitions and letting go

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different transitions challenge our attachments in different ways.

 Just going from one day to another—Friday into Saturday—is not so hard for most of us.

 But what about going from one season to another, one year to another, one job to another,

 one relationship to another? Each of these transitions becomes harder as our attachments

 and expectations around them increase. Perhaps you are used to being able to get up and run 

or jog each day. There may come a time when this is no longer possible, and you must

 forget about jogging. That kind of change can be very difficult to adapt to. 

Maybe you’ve always had one kind of relationship with your parents, but now

 it’s become another kind of relationship. Now, instead of gathering for barbecues or parties,

 maybe you visit them in a hospital or nursing home and hold their hands. It’s a change.

 You are not used to it. It’s hard to transition to the new phase of life 

if you’re still attached to the previous one.

Because bigger transitions are more difficult, we must focus on our ability to let go now.

 If you look at this moment of your life, right now, how many things could you let go of? 

Think of one thing at this moment that you are attached to, that you’re identifying with,

 that you are holding onto, that causes pain. Perhaps you have a difficult relationship 

with someone in your life because of a grudge you are holding onto, or perhaps your

 attachment to the relationship itself is holding you back.

 

With awareness, we can see that when we struggle with a transition, 

it has something to do with an attachment, whether to an identity or to something external.

 If you let that one thing go, and then another thing and another and another,

then all the smaller things you can let go of will help you to be free. Each act of letting go

 benefits you, making it easier to let go of the harder things that will come along the way.

 If we do not apply ourselves to these opportunities to let go, if we can’t handle the little things

 that come along, then we are certain to have a harder time with the big things.

Letting go is like cleaning your garage or your closet.

 How many of us have cleaned our closets and found stuff in there that we were not using?

 This is a simple opportunity to practice letting go. When you open your closet and see something

 you put in there five years ago that you haven’t used, haven’t even touched, go ahead

 and take hold of it and let that one thing go! Energetically, these small acts of letting go

 can make a big impact. Even just deleting photos from your phone—a simple act of selecting

 and then deleting—can lighten our attachments. Do you know someone who has too much stuff, 

whose house has almost no space for people to move, let alone any sense of spaciousness? 

 
Often, at times of transition, we behave without awareness. 

We behave with condition, with pain, with fear. We feel we don’t have a choice.

 Just knowing we do have a choice can make all the difference. The choice comes

 when we can take time to be still, silent, spacious. We practice not doing, not saying,

 not thinking (not thinking is harder, but at least not doing and not saying).

 Then, once we have calmed down, we find a new space from which we can do 

and say and think, and what we do and what we say might be different from what we originally

 would have said or done. One thing that we want to be able to see clearly and to say

 to ourselves is, “If it’s not good, I will not make it worse.” 

Leave it as it is.

We have so many opportunities to be aware. Think about approaching it this way:

 I’m going to handle this little transition well so I can handle the next, harder one even better. 

Each time we make these little transitions and feel free, feel good, the world opens up for us.

 Moments, places, locations, changes, transitions happen all the time in life. 

These are all opportunities to cultivate and practice to better support the transition. 

~ Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

with thanks to Lions Roar

art: Visualizing a Lost Painting by Vincent van Gogh

 using X-ray Fluorescence Mapping

 

 

 

 

the true love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

 

 

 

 

~ David Whyte

from  The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

listen here:  https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/david-whyte-the-truelove?utm

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