Let Go; Let God
There’s a popular saying: Let go; let God.
And regardless of which religion (if any) any of us practice, this concept can be applied to our lives. At a minimum, by letting go of the controlling grip we try to maintain on every aspect of our lives, we experience a vast reduction in stress, which is always beneficial.
So we should learn to let go, and allow the universe [or God, spirit, source, consciousness, cause & effect, etc.] to work its magic. We’d all likely be surprised at what wonderful things manage to manifest in our lives, if we’d just allow them to, and stop trying to control everything ourselves.
Dr. Wayne Dyer instructs us on the process of allowing—just being, and embracing what life has to offer—in an interview with Successful Living Magazine (Winter 2008). He explains:
“You have to just be. You have to let go. You have to allow. You have to be free and make this your consciousness.”
Check out Dr. Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention at Compass Bookstore:
Not Wrong, Just Different
A while back, a friend of mine was grappling with a difficult financial decision. He said he had argued both sides of the issue with himself, and there just didn’t seem to be one side that outweighed the other—so he was struggling, because he “didn’t want to make the wrong decision.”
Here’s essentially what I told him:
“First, remove the word “wrong” from the equation, and use “different” instead; rather than considering the results of the decision to be either “right” or “wrong”, instead view them as two “different” outcomes. And, if the potential for either outcome seems equal by the numbers, as you say, then either go with the one that makes you the happiest—or simply let go altogether, and see which one seems to naturally occur, without forcing the issue, and go with that one. In other words, let the universe work its plan.”
Again, letting go and allowing things to work out as they naturally would, as the universe has planned, can often be the most effective means of managing our lives.
Letting Go
And letting go can take a variety of forms: physically leaving a toxic person, relationship, job, or other bad situation; adopting a new, healthier lifestyle and/or breaking some old bad habits; or even a simple adjustment in our perception or viewpoint toward acceptance rather than friction, or simply surrendering to what is—as in “…grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change…”
And, I should clarify: letting go does not mean shunning our responsibilities or becoming apathetic; it simply means releasing any thoughts, actions, or emotions which are preventing us from being fully present in the moment, opening our hearts and minds to universe’s plan for us and our lives, and simply stop trying to control every aspect of our lives, or beat our head against a wall trying to make something happen. As in the aforementioned words of Dr. Dyer: just allow.
Evolve With Change
Further: it’s also possible that as time goes by, some of the things we felt were important in the past don’t seem so important to us today—but we’re still caught up chasing them, simply out of habit. We’ve gotten stuck on autopilot. Perhaps we’re coming to realize that those old goals, ambitions, or desires aren’t likely to make us happy today, and have begun questioning our own rationale in pursuing them. If we find this to be the case, perhaps we should stop chasing things altogether for awhile; give ourselves a break, let go, and see what wonderful things begin to naturally transpire, things that we’d otherwise miss out on completely while we were so intent on forcing the others to manifest.
Author & philosopher James Allen states, in his collection Mind is the Master (Part I: The Path of Prosperity, Section 6: The Secret of Abounding Happiness), the following:
“Abiding happiness will come to you when, ceasing to selfishly cling, you are willing to give up. When you are willing to lose, unreservedly, that impermanent thing which is so dear to you, and which, whether you cling to it or not, will one day be snatched from you, then you will find that that which seemed to you like a painful loss, turns out to be a supreme gain.”
Check Out James Allen’s Mind is the Master at Compass Bookstore:
And as you can see, this is not an uncommon sentiment:
| “What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age.” ~ Carl Jung | “When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.” ~ Lolly Daskal | “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu |
Start With Small Changes
As for letting go of something old and dull and tiresome with the hope of discovering something new and exciting, sometimes I use this method: when I feel I need to make some changes, but I don’t know what to do, then I stop doing some of the things I was doing (especially any questionable things, unproductive or even counterproductive things, things I know I shouldn’t be doing anyway). This creates a void(s) in my life, which my mind—or better yet, the universe, or cause & effect—will naturally begin to fill with something new (and most likely better). And it can be wonderfully surprising to discover new things that bring joy, happiness, and fulfillment into our lives, which we had never even considered before, because our “tunnel vision”—our focus on past goals or what we thought we wanted, or something that we greatly valued in the past but no longer do—was blinding us to all the other possibilities and opportunities.
But once we let go, release our iron-clad grip, stop beating our heads against the wall, stop chasing what may well be the wrong things, then the right things—the things that would naturally occur, if we would simply allow them to—have a chance to catch up with us.
UPDATE:
I recently discovered this video online that shares a bit of wisdom from Alan Watts, entitled Let It Find You – Stop Chasing, Start Living, wherein he speaks precisely about what I’m trying to convey in this article (though admittedly, likely with much more depth and clarity), so I decided to add it here.
Also: for some reason, the final word is cut off at the end. In fact, I found this same recording in several YouTube videos, and they all end the same way: “Speed only matters if you’re headed in the right direction; and life, in its strange wisdom, often slows you down—not to punish you, but to…” and it ends there, without the final close of the sentence. But he uses the same sentence earlier in the video: “…not to punish you, but to redirect you…” so it makes sense that that’s how the final sentence ends, too.
Anyway, I hope readers find this video helpful and inspiring:
About Cause & Effect…
NOTE: Readers may notice that I’ve recently written about cause & effect, and how I’ve come to believe in that reality rather than mystical or supernatural explanations, which could seem to contradict this article; but it doesn’t, because the point of this article is that we should stop trying to over-control every detail of everything in our lives and instead try letting some things happen naturally…so the “cause” of our dissatisfaction (or “effect”) may actually be our over-controlling tendency, our failure to let go of things that perhaps we need to let go of in order to avail ourselves of new ideas and opportunities and pursue other more meaningful values and activities, and that letting go of that over-controlling tendency—i.e., changing the “cause”—will likely bring about a new “effect” of the circumstances in our life improving and life in general becoming more satisfactory.
On the other hand, we still don’t understand consciousness, and how we’re all connected to it and to each other (and/or to all sentient creatures, or even to all forms of life), and we also don’t fully understand energy, and how it seems reciprocal—again, both extrasensory forces historically conceptualized as “God”, or “Spirit”, or “Divinity” or “Universe”, etc. (I mean, consider the statement “everything is created from energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed”…sound familiar?)—and so I don’t discount out of hand the possibility that there may be a more abstract aspect to our cause & effect reality other than the mere physical or visible elements, or that our own individual consciousness, as well as the energy that we project, may in fact influence the resulting manifestations in our life in a reciprocal manner.
But even so, it’s all still cause & effect; I’ve just come to believe that we are the primary cause of what ultimately manifests in our lives, regardless of the means of manifestation (I often state my belief that we do, in fact, create our own reality), and therefore also believe that our circumstances will improve if we stop trying to control every little detail and be open to more readily going with the flow of life, and see what happens—we might just be surprised!
So again: learn to let things go…and simply allow.
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