“The first step in letting go is to let in. To let in an experience is to allow it more fully into awareness, to become curious about what is going on. Take the risk of letting in how it feels. In the present moment, if there is pain, it’s real, it’s there. Resisting the pain doesn’t help; it only adds to the discomfort.
The second part is letting be. By accepting it as it is and allowing the sensations to be just as they are, we may well find that we don’t suffer quite so much. As you let the experience in and let it be, you might notice that it begins to change. A sharp sensation might soften. An ache might grow stronger, and then fade. Numbness might give way to other sensations. A tense muscle may begin to unwind of its own accord.
If I open up to it more fully – letting it in and then just letting it be – the natural wisdom of my body often shows me what needs to happen. Several muscles that I did not realize were tight begin to relax, the area softens and my body readjusts itself. Without my doing anything, the pain goes and comfort returns. The body does the releasing for me — once, that is, my conscious mind gets out of the way.
Werner Erhard taught a similar process in EST — Erhard Seminar Training — a pioneering program of the 1970’s human potential movement. He would ask people to describe a pain in terms of its shape, size, color, and texture to rate each on a scale from 1 to 10. He’d then ask them to go through the process again, rating how it now felt. As they continued repeating the process, the intensity of the pain would tend to decrease, often disappearing completely. By using these sensory metaphors, people were opening up more to the feeling of pain. They were in effect, letting it in and letting it be.
In other situations, where the pain has become deeper, a long-term cause, it may not go away but our relationship to it can change, making it easier to bear. A meditation practice may allow a relaxing around the pain or opening up to it. The pain may not change but the relationship to it can ease.”
Letting Go of Nothing: Relax Your Mind and Discover the Wonder of Your True Nature (An Eckhart Tolle Edition), Peter Russell, pgs. 7 – 9.
