{"id":5033,"date":"2016-10-21T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?p=5033"},"modified":"2016-10-16T10:37:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T14:37:34","slug":"go-ahead-let-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2016\/10\/go-ahead-let-go.html","title":{"rendered":"Go Ahead and Let Go of Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any human being who has to hold himself together is someone who is ready to fall apart. Trying to hold yourself together is a terrible way to go through life. Our task is to prove this to ourselves. The fears of falling apart can never be quieted by adding more pieces to your self, such as success or the hopes of success. With this approach to life, you wear out faster, because you now have even more conditions you believe you must control in order to keep your life together. Consider closely the following higher insight. It reveals the intelligence behind your wish to let go.<\/p>\n<p>Anything that you have to control, controls you. The problem with self-control is that it is part of a war inside of you. No one ever wins in a war! Let\u2019s look at this same idea again from a slightly different perspective. Whenever an uncertain situation arises, the mind works feverishly to resolve it in order to regain a sense of being in control. However, the more feverishly the mind works, the more out of control you become! You can see this for yourself. Anything that is afraid of losing control is already out of control: an accident waiting to happen. There is more, and we must see it all if we are ever going to rise above our present life-level to true self-certainty.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever we picture ourselves, there is one image that rarely, if ever, enters into our mental movie: that of being someone who is ready to fall apart. But again, few of us see ourselves in any self-compromising light at all. We feel safe within the dimly lit theater of our own circle-of-self pictures, and we return to it often\u2014especially when the harsh light of reality starts to break through and show us that we may not be as together as we\u2019d like to think. This is why we need the truth in our lives. The truth is what allows us to see reality without being frightened about what we see. Part of the truth\u2019s rescuing action is to reveal to us that we are not apart from what we see. From this unique, inner vantage point, the light of reality isn\u2019t harsh\u2014it\u2019s Home. The more of this light we can welcome into our circle-of-self and its cast of 1,001 self-images, the easier it becomes to let go. Why? Because we aren\u2019t losing anything except for what has been keeping us in the darkness.<\/p>\n<p>If we are honest, we realize that our lives seem to grow smaller as we grow older. We have fewer friends, fewer activities; we take fewer and fewer risks. But why? Why should a person\u2019s possibilities for new and stimulating impressions diminish with their age? Why, if we are continuing to develop and grow as we should be, shouldn\u2019t we be looking for greater and greater personal challenges instead of avoiding them? Could this slowly constricting life of ours be the result of an unconscious urge on our part to avoid any situation or relationship that might toss the proverbial straw onto the camel\u2019s back of our picture of ourselves?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can see the logic of what you are saying, but as you said, I don\u2019t think this applies to me.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAre you willing to see if it does?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cOf course.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cGood. Do you ever get angry or anxious?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYes, I do, but what does that have to do with falling apart?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cLet\u2019s see. What makes you angry or anxious?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWhen things don\u2019t go the way I want them to.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cIn other words, you\u2019ve pictured how things should be, and when life doesn\u2019t confirm these pictures, you get negative in one way or another.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYes, that about describes it. What are you getting at?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cLet\u2019s work together at this. You said that when life doesn\u2019t confirm your self-pictures, your hope of future security, love in relationships, or whatever it is, then some kind of stress or unhappiness comes up as these pictures of yours begin to fall apart?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cPlease proceed.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThis shows us that within your present way of thinking, you believe your future happiness actually depends upon these pictures. This is why, as your pictures begin to crumble, so do you!\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYes, but why do I get angry or anxious?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cBecause these punishing emotions are part of a subtle system of self-subterfuge that accomplishes two dark things at once: it keeps the problem alive and, at the same time, it keeps the real solution out of sight.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWhat is the problem?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cEssentially, it is a lack of understanding about your true nature. You are about to discover that you are not who you think you are. No matter how attractive or repulsive, you are not any picture you may be holding of yourself.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAnd what is the real solution?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cGo ahead and let yourself fall apart!\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWhat? That\u2019s going to take some explanation!\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAnd there is one if you will go through the experience; but for now, here is the intelligence behind this unexpected answer: you are not what will fall apart. Who you are can never fall apart. What will collapse is the haunted house of self-flattering and security-seeking pictures you had mistakenly identified as a solution to your shaky life. These pictures are not the solution to your shakiness, they are the source of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any human being who has to hold himself together is someone who is ready to fall apart. Trying to hold yourself together is a terrible way to go through life. Our task is to prove this to ourselves. The fears of falling apart can never be quieted by adding more pieces to your self, such&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[45,27,2597,23,13,2598,2066],"class_list":["post-5033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enlightenment-self-realization","category-letting-go","tag-anger","tag-anxiety","tag-falling-apart","tag-losing-control","tag-negativity","tag-punishing-emotions","tag-self-certainty"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Go Ahead and Let Go of Yourself - 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\/2016\/10\/go-ahead-let-go.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Go Ahead and Let Go of Yourself - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Any human being who has to hold himself together is someone who is ready to fall apart. 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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\/5033","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=5033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5034,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}