How often so many of us hold on to ideas, situations, people, and things we love. Over time we may have attached to different aspects that initially we claimed to love and adore. Our attachment often is sandwiched in emotional clinging and refusal to surrender and let go. I remember a poster I had in college that hung on the wall of my dorm room. It was a picture of a cat with big claw marks and the wording was “Everything I have ever let go of has claw marks on it”. As I reflect upon my past I can see how often life brought me jobs, people, ideas, things, etc. in order to offer inspirational opportunities that came to me for me to learn from and then move on. However, way too many times, I wanted to not let go, and as a result did not move forward with grace until I was able to wake up a bit in order to embrace many personal truths .
So many times I did not see the BIG PICTURE nor the forest for the trees. I wanted to cling madly to these things as if my life depended upon it. It took me a very long time, one filled often with pain due to my resistance in surrendering , for me to learn letting go is a major catalyst in my owning the gift of the opportunity of what showed up . Once I really wrapped my head around the personal truth that Divine Source or the Universe had presented me with this thing to learn and grow from I became very adept in releasing and surrendering. In my present life it has become much easier to let go without attaching emotions or my “claw marks” to most people, situations, and things. Maybe it became easier because I finally saw how much energy it took to hang on to things and people that no longer resonated with my core values or maybe it was because I finally began walking my talk of wanting to go with the flow in knowing letting go is a huge act of self love.
Accepting what is and is not in my highest good has taken lots of inner work . Several facets were revealed to me over time. Key were the following: forgiving myself for continuing to participate in situations that had long passed serving me that I kept being part of as well as a need to forgive others for their part (in my lessons!) when I perceived them to be the problem; willingness to accept the powerful experience from people-places-things by not holding onto any of it and allowing it to fuel my stepping forward into a better version of myself; allowing myself to feel and acknowledge the feelings attached to the experiences first, and then surrendering the players and props on the stage of the lesson presented ; grieving the loss of people and situations as part of the human experience when I finally let go; and practicing self care by having the things I have surrendered to be replaced with a deeper kind of self love. Practicing mindfulness meditation and becoming one with the natural world (nature, the great teacher) has brought forward so many of these gifts when and only when I set the intention to live my life differently than I had in the past.
When we refuse to let go of those things we know deep in our hearts that need to go, we will only keep recycling our pain and fear , staying stuck in the quicksand of being in the same place or attracting the same person with a different face. I have come to believe it is not loyalty and love to refuse to surrender a situation, idea, or person that is blocking me from the sunlight of the Spirit of my own happiness . I cannot grow and glow if I am staying attached to something I really have outgrown and learned from. Once I really get this..and it is a very long distance from my head to my heart , and I finally give up the fight and struggle, and claim “enough is enough”, surrender and not look back, I have given myself the proverbial key out of my self imposed cell of unhappiness . That key is called freedom and for me today freedom is a requirement to living a magical life. The exhale that came with this life of learning truly makes my heart sing, and I am excited to watch more amazing things to come!!!