{"id":3705,"date":"2014-11-03T03:00:04","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?p=3705"},"modified":"2014-11-02T23:28:54","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T04:28:54","slug":"the-courage-to-let-go-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/11\/the-courage-to-let-go-of-the-past.html","title":{"rendered":"The Courage to Let Go of the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We may not yet see it as being so, but whenever unwanted situations come along &#8212; stripping us of some beloved attachment &#8212; it is the operation of one world acting upon another. There is our familiar world, the one we&#8217;ve always known &#8212; who and what we&#8217;ve been, filled with our preferences and possessions &#8212; and acting upon it is a new order of reality whose meaning is unknown at first, but whose secret purpose is to help us awaken to our own higher possibilities. But when in such moments &#8212; moments only these colliding worlds can provide, all we see is our resentment or regret &#8212; we lose sight of this spiritual gift that can be offered to us in no other way.<\/p>\n<p>When we are hurt badly, the higher lesson hidden in this trial is to recognize the time has come to let go of who and what we have been up until the moment of loss. And &#8220;how&#8221; do we know this is true? How can we be sure there is something good in the &#8220;bad&#8221; others put us through? Because if we understand that events in themselves have no power to punish us, then who&#8217;s to blame for our pain when life changes as it must? The real culprit here is our present level of Self\u2014literally wrecking itself\u2014as it clings to what can no longer remain in our life . . .<\/p>\n<p>Yes! It does hurt to be left behind, or to be lied to. Yes, we feel lots of grief and anger &#8212; those knee-jerk reactions that rush in and rule a heart that feels so wrongly compromised. But as long as we cling to the false idea that who we really are is meant to be defined by any &#8220;other&#8221; &#8212; regardless how sublime &#8212; we have no choice but to feel that we&#8217;re being pulled apart when our relationships change &#8212; as they must. There&#8217;s a silver lining to this kind of suffering once we learn to see it! Strange as it is, how else could any of our secret attachments ever be realized and released . . . if not for the unwanted events that come along to reveal them! Each &#8220;troubling&#8221; event, seen properly, is the herald of a freedom yet to be known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We may not yet see it as being so, but whenever unwanted situations come along &#8212; stripping us of some beloved attachment &#8212; it is the operation of one world acting upon another. There is our familiar world, the one we&#8217;ve always known &#8212; who and what we&#8217;ve been, filled with our preferences and possessions&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[45,2086,431,753,699,288,596,2082,1920],"class_list":["post-3705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guilt-regret","category-letting-go","tag-anger","tag-attachments","tag-demands","tag-grief","tag-hurt","tag-identification","tag-learning-the-lesson","tag-preferences","tag-unwanted-events"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Courage to Let Go of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/11\/the-courage-to-let-go-of-the-past.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Courage to Let Go of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We may not yet see it as being so, but whenever unwanted situations come along &#8212; stripping us of some beloved attachment &#8212; it is the operation of one world acting upon another. There is our familiar world, the one we&#8217;ve always known &#8212; who and what we&#8217;ve been, filled with our preferences and possessions&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/11\/the-courage-to-let-go-of-the-past.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-11-03T08:00:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-11-03T04:28:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Courage to Let Go of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/11\/the-courage-to-let-go-of-the-past.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Courage to Let Go of the Past - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"We may not yet see it as being so, but whenever unwanted situations come along &#8212; stripping us of some beloved attachment &#8212; it is the operation of one world acting upon another. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3706,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions\/3706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}