Substack Guides
“At some point, you have to let go and move on. It might be the hardest thing in the world to do, but you have to summon all of the strength you possibly can to finally let go. Some people and things just aren’t going to be meant for you, no matter how much you wish they were. Some jobs and situations just won’t work out,no matter how much you hoped they would…But, know that it’s okay for things to not work out. Nobody’s life is a straight line that makes sense. Everybody has twists and turns, and everyone has to turn around every now and then. So when you find yourself wishing and hoping things out of your control would change, summon all of your strength to LET GO and start heading in a new direction because it’ll lead you closer to your true path.”
-Nikki Banas
To “Let go” means to let go of something. That something may be an object of our mind, something we’ve created, like an idea, feeling, desire, or belief. Getting stuck on that idea could bring a lot of unhappiness and anxiety. We’d like to let it go, but how? It’s not enough just to want to let it go; we have to recognize it as being something real.
We have to look deeply into its nature and where it has come from, because ideas are born from feelings, emotions, and past experiences, from things we’ve seen and heard. With the energy of mindfulness and concentration we can look deeply and discover the roots of the idea, the feeling, the emotion, the desire. Mindfulness and concentration bring about insight, and insight can help us release the object in your mind.
Say you have a notion of happiness, and idea about what will make you happy. That idea has its roots in you and your environment. The idea tells you what conditions you need in order to be happy. You’ve entertained the idea for 10 or 20 years, and now you realize that your idea of happiness is making you suffer.
There may be an element of delusion, anger, or craving in it. These elements are the substance of suffering. On the other hand, you know that you have other kinds of experiences: moments of joy, release, or true love. You recognize these moments as real happiness, it becomes easier to release the objects of your craving, because you are developing the insight that these objects will not make you happy.
Many people have the desire to let go, but they’re not able to do so because they don’t yet have enough insight; they haven’t seen other alternatives, other doorways to peace and happiness.
Fear is an element that prevents us from letting go. We’re fearful that if we let go we’ll have nothing else to cling to. One day, when you are strong enough and determined enough, you’ll let go of the afflictions that make you suffer.
There are different levels of consciousness. A level of consciousness is determined by what you are thinking and feeling. Each level has a different vibration. For example, love calibrates at 500 while shame calibrates at 20.
Your emotions can be measured. Whatever level of consciousness or emotion you are currently in and vibrating effects everyone and everything around you wherever you go.
People’s subconscious know what you are feeling and thinking – meaning, what you are thinking/feeling when you go somewhere effects how people perceive you.
Like attracts like –whatever vibration you are radiating = the people, places, things, and situations coming to you that are in that same frequency.
Thoughts and emotions are either bringing abundance or lack, health or imbalance, joy or anxiety. What you appreciate, appreciates.
To not judge or resist when you are feeling hard emotions or thinking negatively. Simply observe and let yourself experience it fully, the good- bad – beautiful – and ugly. When you let go of labeling things as ‘bad’, that emotion can physically move through and release from the body.
The goal of our lives each day is to move UP the scale of consciousness. From fear, worry, shame to love joy and peace. From that place, healing and abundance begin to happen effortlessly.
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts but our attachment to our thoughts that causes suffering. A belief is a thought that we have been attaching to, often for years.
The goal of life is to live from your SPIRIT. When you are having intense thoughts or feeling hard emotions, the AWARENESS that is witnessing these things is your spirit. You can witness your thoughts and feelings, knowing it is just an energy you are experiencing in the current moment.
Hawkins highlights the importance of BEING vs DOING. Focusing on your state of being (state of consciousness and what you are feeling/thinking) leads to better results than striving and being busy all of the time. If you want to be abundant your need to FEEL abundant first.
If you want to have great relationships, you need to FEEL and be grateful for the relationships you have now. If you want to be healthy, you need to FEEL like the person you want to be first.
He emphasizes the importance of living in the present rather than a preoccupation with the pastor the future. In the PRESENT is the only place where creation, miracles,healing, and change occur.
Another theme is the fact that many people only focus on their body and trying to make it the best. Then, when you move up levels of consciousness, you realize the power of the mind over the body. Then, you advance to connecting with your spirit and the power that has over your mind and body and that connection becomes your main focus, knowing your spirit is operating your body like the electricity runs the all of the kitchen appliances.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
To be surrendered means to have no strong emotion about a thing: “It’s okay if it happens, and it’s okay if it doesn’t.” When we are free, there is a letting go of attachments. We can enjoy a thing, but we don’t need it for our happiness. In the state of acceptance, there is the feeling that nothing needs to be changed. Everything is perfect and beautiful the way it is. The world is to be enjoyed. In acceptance, there is a decreased preoccupation with “doingness,” a growing focus on the quality of beingness itself, and the perfection of our own inner capacity for caring and lovingness.
I will never forget a moment in my life when the universe threw it in my face – just how hard it is for me to let go. In the beginning of the pandemic, my partner, his best friend, and I, all fell incredibly ill with covid. It was the time when no one knew what was going on in the world, people were panic buying toilet paper, stocking up on food, and the unknowns of what covid would do to you were unraveling on the news by the minute.
We were mostly bed bound for six weeks, had a hard time breathing, and were facing the fragility of life and our mortality. It was one of the hardest times in my life to let go. I couldn’t handle the extreme physical symptoms of being sick anymore and I was terrified that my lungs were going to stop. Near the end of the six weeks I decided to go into silence. For three days, I meditated, I sweat, and I journaled. Everything that poured into my journal, was everything that I need to let go of in my life. The hurts, the grief, the pain, the unknowns,the fear, and ultimately forgiving myself, others, and even life. I came out of my bedroom a little bit stronger and a little bit more present with the unpredictability of life. Then the three of us decided to have a full moon ceremony in the backyard where we would write down and burn what we need to release. As I wrote down everything that I wanted to let go from my journal and threw the papers in the fire pit…mine were the ONLY ones that had the hardest time burning. We all burst out cry/laughing that my papers were stubbornly holding on and wouldn’t let go. My friend Kipp had to get into the fire pit to re-light and re-light my papers. We laughed and laughed some more.
What I realized is this…letting go is something that you have to practice on the daily and it is never set in stone that something you thought you completely released…might not show it’s face in the next day or two. The ex-husband, the painful thing someone said, the job you lost, etc. We have to practice breathing it in and breathing it out.
We ALL have trouble letting go in life. It is part of our hard wiring as humans to want to control our external environment. It can feel very scary to let go in life and often feels “unsafe”. Fear may be as old as life on earth. It is fundamental, deeply hard wired, evolved over the history of biology, to protect organisms against perceived threat to their integrity or existence. The fear of the UNKNOWN. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real. Of course there is a very real and primal part of our brain (amygdala) that needs to warn us if there is a car speeding at us out of control on the road….we need to move our bodies to survive and this is necessary. But most of the day our conditioned subconscious mind and wounded ego are telling stories all day and trying to CONTROL our external world to feel safe inside.
99% of it we shouldn’t listen to.
Don’t do that you might get hurt.
Don’t take that risk – you might fall on your face and humiliate yourself.
Don’t say that – it is too honest.
Don’t quit your job or leave your toxic relationship because you won’t survive the pain.
Don’t move – the comfort of your current existence is safer than change.
Don’t forgive that person – they wronged you and don’t deserve your empathy. (Apology first!)
Don’t travel there – it might be unsafe.
Don’t eat that it might cause X.
Don’t live authentically and live your truth.
Don’t speak up.
Stay in your lane – because it is “safe” there.
When we attempt to control the external world and universe, weare doing that because we think we always know what is best for us, and if wecontrol life then we will feel safe internally. When really, the art of surrendering is the magic and beauty of life. But it is an art form and daily practice to learn enter the energy of letting go.
-Resentments from the past
-Old relationships/exes
-Grudges
-Should’ve and Could’ve
-What if’s?
-Regrets
-Dead Friendships
-The feeling that you’ll be happy if you are rich and powerful
-Or you could only be skinnier or prettier
-Or someone should have apologized to you
-Or you child should behave a certain way
-Or your life should have been different up until this point
-Comparing Mind (Comparing your life to others)
-Criticism of Self
-Productivity over Living
-Past and Future Thinking instead of Present
-Unrealistic external control of our external world versus control of inner world/emotions
-We try to control things because of what we think will happen if we don’t
-Control is a result of being attached to a specific outcome, and outcome we’re sure is BEST FOR US, AS IF we always know what is best for us
-The energy of surrender accomplishes much more than the energy of control
-Our body living in familiar states (most comfortable) in anxiety, depression, dread
-Meditation and Mindfulness practices
-Write a letter from the person who hurt you. It is helpful to empathize or understand where they were coming from (even if you don’t agree with it!) PLEASE don’t do this exercise with severe trauma that could cause flooding to your nervous system.
-Practice taking a risk once a week. Do something scary or unconventional for your senses!
-Draw or paint letting your senses FULLY LET GO. Drape a large piece of butcher paper on the floor and let it become more of an experiential flow of letting go with the art materials (get your hands, feet, maybe even your face and body parts intoit). Write about what it feels like to“not care what it looks like” but to embrace the process of creating something that you don’t have to control or edit.
-Do things that help you get into flow states (Meditation,Running, Yoga, Surfing, Writing, Art Making, Breathwork, Tai Chi, Chi Gong,Walking in nature).
-Write a letter to yourself about what you need to Let Go to serve your highest self.
