Thoughts in and of themselves are painless, but not the feelings that underlie them! Because we are afraid to face them, they continue to accumulate and, finally, we secretly begin looking forward to death to bring all of the pain to an end.

Feeling tones organize thoughts and memory. Thoughts are filed in the memory bank according to the various shades of feelings associated with those thoughts. Therefore, when we relinquish or let go of a feeling, we are freeing ourselves from all of the associated thoughts.

ON REPRESSION AND EXPRESSION

We push feelings down and put them aside. In repression, this happens unconsciously; in suppression, it happens consciously.

What Freud actually said, in classical psychoanalysis, was that the repressed impulse or feeling was to be neutralized, sublimated, socialized, and channeled into constructive drives of love, work and creativity.

When we repress a feeling, it is because there is so much guilt and fear over the feeling that it is not even consciously felt at all. It becomes instantly thrust into the unconscious as soon as it threatens to emerge.

The expression of a feeling, first, tends to propagate that feeling and give it greater energy. Second, the expression of the feeling merely allows the remainder to be suppressed out of awareness.

A far better alternative is to take responsibility for our own feelings and neutralize them.

People are terrified of facing themselves. They dread even a moment of aloneness. What we are feeling is merely the letting out of the inner pressure of repressed emotions. It is these repressed feelings that make us vulnerable to external stress.

It is not the external stimulus, then, that is the cause of stress, but our degree of reactivity. The more surrendered we are, the less prone we are to stress. The damage caused by stress is merely the result of our own emotions.

Muscle tension is the aftermath of anxiety, fear, anger, and guilt. A course in the techniques of muscle relaxation is going to be of very limited benefit. It would be far more effective, instead, to remove the source of the underlying tension, which is the repressed and suppressed anger, fear, guilt, or other negative feelings.

Thoughts are merely rationalizations of the mind to try and explain the presence of the feeling. The real reason for the feeling is the accumulated pressure behind the feeling that is forcing it to come up in the moment.

Sometimes we surrender a feeling and we notice that it returns or continues. This is because there is more of it yet to be surrendered. We have stuffed these feelings all of our lives and there can be a lot of energy pushed down that needs to come up and be acknowledged.

When surrender occurs, there is an immediate lighter, happier feeling, almost like a “high.” By continuously letting go, it is possible to stay in that state of freedom. Feelings come and go, and eventually you realize that you are not your feelings, but that the real “you” is merely witnessing them. You become progressively primarily the witness rather than the experiencer of phenomena. You get closer and closer to the real Self and begin to see that you had been duped by feelings all along.

The results of letting go are deceptively quick and subtle, but the effects are very powerful. Often we have let go but think that we haven’t. It will be our friends who make us aware of the change.

When something is fully surrendered, it disappears from consciousness. Now, because we never think of it, we don’t realize that it has gone. This is a common phenomenon among people who are growing in consciousness.

To keep track of progress, many people keep a chart of their gains. This helps to overcome the resistance that usually takes the form, “This isn’t working.” It is common for people who have made enormous gains to claim, “It just isn’t working.” We have to remind ourselves sometimes what we were like before we started this process.

The ego is not our friend. One of its tricks is to go unconscious about the technique itself, for instance, to decide suddenly that the mechanism of surrender isn’t working, things are still the same, it is confusing, and too hard to remember and do. This is a sign of real progress! It means that the ego knows we have a knife with which to cut ourselves free and it is losing ground. 

Pursuing thoughts can keep us occupied endlessly. We will discover one day that we are right where we started. Thoughts are like gold fish in a bowl; the real Self is like the water. The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.

Thoughts are like bait to a fish; if we bite at them, we get caught. It’s best not to bite at the thoughts. We don’t need them. Inside of us, but out of awareness, is the truth that “I already know everything I need to know.”

There are no other goals than to overcome fear and achieve happiness. Every activity or desire will reveal that the basic goal is to achieve a certain feeling. Emotions are connected with what we believe will ensure our survival, not with what actually will. Emotions themselves are actually the cause of the basic fear that drives everyone to seek security constantly.

This is the common experience of all who surrender their negative feelings. They become more and more conscious. That which is impossible to see or experience at lower levels of consciousness becomes self-evident and stunningly obvious at higher levels. The fastest way to move from the bottom to the top is by telling the truth to ourselves and to others.

All thoughts are filed in the mind’s memory bank under a filing system based upon the associated feeling and its finer gradations (Gray–LaViolette, 1982). They are filed according to feeling tone, not fact. Consequently, there is a scientific basis for the observation that self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts.

Handling a crisis from the emotional rather than the intellectual level will shorten its duration dramatically. 

These philosophers, some of whom have become celebrated over the years, are obviously mere victims of painful emotions that they did not handle and which triggered endless intellectualization and elaboration. Some spent their entire lifetime constructing sophisticated intellectual systems to justify what is glaringly obvious as a simple suppressed emotion.

Fear of life is really the fear of emotions. It is not the facts that we fear but our feelings about them. Once we have mastery over our feelings, our fear of life diminishes. We feel a greater self-confidence, and we are willing to take greater chances because we now feel that we can handle the emotional consequences, whatever they might be. Because fear is the basis of all inhibitions, mastery over fear means the unblocking of whole avenues of life experience that previously had been avoided.

One benefit from a life crisis is greater self-awareness. The situation is overwhelming, and we are forced to stop all of our diversionary games, take a good look at our life situation, and re-evaluate our beliefs, goals, values, and life direction. It is an opportunity to re-evaluate and let go of guilt.

Life crises, as we pass through them, confront us with polar opposites. Shall we hate or forgive that person? Shall we learn from this experience and grow, or resent it and become bitter? Every emotional experience is an opportunity to go up or down. Which do we choose?

Since in reality, we are very capable beings, most “I can’ts” are really “I won’ts.” Fear is a higher energy state than apathy. Fear at least begins to motivate us into action and, in that action, we can again surrender fear and move up to anger or pride or courage, all of which are higher states than apathy.

Apathy and depression are the prices we pay for having settled for and bought into our smallness. It’s what we get for having played the victim. It’s what results from resisting the part of ourselves that is loving, courageous, and great. Other people who have had similar circumstances have forgiven, forgotten, and handled the same situation in a totally different way.

When we stop the vanity of labeling thoughts as “mine” (and therefore sacrosanct), we notice that thoughts can be looked at objectively.

It is not a matter of right or wrong; it is merely a matter of taking responsibility for our own consciousness.

Blaming others or ourselves is simply not necessary. The mind often thinks, “Well, if the other person or event is not to blame, then I must be.” Why must something always be someone’s “fault”? Why must the whole concept of “wrong” be introduced to the situation in the first place? Why must one of us be wrong, bad, or at fault? What seemed like a good idea at the time may not have turned out well. That’s all. Unfortunate events may have just happened.

ON APATHY

We are only subject to a negative thought or belief if we consciously say that it applies to us.

How much self-punishment is enough? When will I give up the secret pleasure of the self-punishment? When does the sentence come to an end?” When we really examine it, we will always find that we have been punishing ourselves for ignorance, naïveté, innocence, and lack of inner education.

They, too, were doing what they thought was best at the time. We don’t have to blame them or ourselves any more.

Whether or not we agree with their religious concept is immaterial. What is important to notice is that the alleviation of guilt is accompanied by a resurgence of life energy, well-being, and physical health.

We resent their aliveness in the areas in which we feel disabled. The degree to which we have not allowed ourselves to experience the reality of our true Self is represented by our resentment toward those who have actually done so. 

As we keep letting go, getting lighter, and becoming freer, we will, unfortunately, see that the nature of the world is like that pail of crabs (who pull each other down when they want to escape the bucket).

When we are at the effect of desire, we are no longer free. The underlying quality of this emotion is its drivenness. 

Identify the goals and then let go of wanting them. As we experience the letting go of desires, we begin to see that what we have chosen will come into our life almost magically. “If it weren’t for the desire, how would I have gotten them?”  The truth is, we could have gotten them anyway, only without anxiety (fear of not getting).

If we suddenly become successful almost effortlessly, then people are envious. It really annoys them that we didn’t have to go through all kinds of anguish, pain, and suffering to get there. Isn’t that a rather sadistic view of the world and the universe?

Now what we are, within ourselves and to others, becomes most important. We have proven to ourselves that we can have what we need, that we can do almost anything, given the willingness. People now seek our company, not because of what we have, not because of what we do and society’s labels, but because of what we have become. Because of the quality of our presence, people just want to be around us and experience us.

They are interested in our quality of beingness. They are only interested in whether or not we have achieved certain inner goals, such as those of honesty, openness, sharingness, lovingness, willingness to help, humility, genuineness, and awareness.

While he pictured that he would get admiration, what he often finds at the top levels is viciousness, competitiveness, envy, and the endless fawning and dishonest manipulations that occur to people in power. His wife complains that he is too exhausted to make love, too depleted to give her the energy she needs, too worn-out to be a good father, and too tired even to enjoy a favorite recreational activity.

As women make gains in the corporate and political arenas, they face the disappointment that accompanies longed-for, glamorized leadership roles in the public. Glamorization is living at a fantasy level.

Once we have relinquished the glamour, it will be relatively easy to surrender the desire itself. When we proceed to let go of a desire, we must dissect away that which is exaggeration, fantasy, and romanticization.

We will find over and over again that the desire was attached to the glamorous fantasy; there was no reality in it in the first place. Because there was no reality in it, the world is constantly selling us dishonesty, catering to our desire for that romantic, glamorized aspect. It promises to make us more important than we really are. Glamour at that level of dishonesty is a fake.

In contrast to having and doing, the level of being has the most power and energy. When it is given priority, it automatically integrates and organizes one’s activities. We simply picture the kind of person we want to be and surrender all the negative feelings and blocks that prevent us from being that. What happens, then, is that all we need to have and to do will automatically fall into place. 

It is good to keep a diary to write down goals that we would really like to achieve and then check them off and make follow-up notes. Why? Because it will take a while before we believe that it is truly our own power that is accomplishing these ends.

The small self glorifies in how miserable life is, how tough luck is, how rotten our experiences have been and how mean people have been to us. But we pay a big price when we listen to this set of programs.

The reason to let go of selfishness is simply because it is impractical. It doesn’t work. It’s too costly. It consumes too much energy. It delays the accomplishment of our goals and the realization of our wants. The reason to let go of selfishness is not because of guilt. Not because it’s a “sin.” Not because it’s “wrong.” All such motivations come from lower consciousness and self-judgment.

Out of guilt we strive to accomplish and achieve success. Then, when we achieve success, we feel guilty because we have it. There is no winning of the guilt game. The only solution is to give it up, to let it go.

ON ANGER

Few are the persons who can take responsibility for their own anger and just say, “I am angry because I am full of angriness.” We typically feel so much guilt about anger that we find it necessary to make the object of our anger “wrong” so that we can say our anger is “justified.”

(We can use anger) in a constructive way. It can be the inspiration for us to create a project that, because of its excellence, proves our point. It might be the energy for us to move up and out of a situation that is unsatisfactory. We can utilize that energy to create new job opportunities or find a better job, form a committee, improve our employment situation, start a union, or whatever we think would benefit our personal goals.

One source of pride is connected with self-sacrifice. If our relationships with others are associated with our small self in the form of sacrifice, then we are setting ourselves up for later anger, because the other person is usually unaware of our “sacrifice” and is, therefore, unlikely to fulfill our expectations.

That which we want, desire, and insist upon from another person is felt by them as pressure. The unconscious formula goes, “Give me what I want or I will punish you by withdrawal, anger, pouting, sulking, and resentment.” We all resent feeling emotionally blackmailed.

The behavior of others toward us always includes a hidden gift. Let’s say, for example, that somebody calls us “stupid.” Our natural response is one of anger. We can use the energy of that anger consciously: “What is that person asking me to become more aware of?” If we ask ourselves the question, we may come to the realization that we were being self-centered … we were not being conscious and aware of what was going on in the relationship. If we constantly follow this procedure, we will come to the awareness that everyone in our life is acting as a mirror.

They are forcing us to look at what needs to be addressed. What aspect of our smaller self needs to be relinquished? This means that we have to constantly let go of our pride in order to undo anger, so that we can be grateful for the continual opportunities of growth with which we are presented in the course of everyday experience.

Anger can be offset and prevented when we see the enormous value of simply acknowledging the gestures of others toward us. This means to acknowledge all of their communications to us. For instance, if friends call us on the phone, we thank them for calling us. The reason for doing this is that it makes the other persons feel complete and secure with us.

Pick someone in our life who, in our view, is critical toward us and now, within ourselves, begin to look at how we have failed to acknowledge them. Almost always in this sort of situation, such persons are not feeling acknowledged for the contribution they are making to our life. 

The Stanford University Forgiveness Project confirms the cardiac benefits of relinquishing anger and resentment. All the people with hypertension showed drops in their blood pressure, both the systolic and diastolic (the upper and lower numerical readings), once they started letting go of the emotional pressure that they had built up over the years. 

Forgiveness healed their hearts—literally. As we have said before, with muscle testing we can prove instantly that anger and resentment have a deleterious effect on the body, emotions, energy flow, and on the synchronization of the brain hemispheres. Anger kills the angry person, not the so-called “enemy.”

The internal position we hold about another person is forcing them to adopt a complementary defensive position.

The ideal situation is to form a working hypothesis with intuition and then to use reason and logic to check it out.

We never know whom, in a later chapter of the book of life, we are going to need as a friend. The effort involved in converting people we once considered enemies into friends brought gratification and a later reward. In most cases, they proved to be a positive benefit to our life. 

The letting go technique frees us from keeping close account of the “wrongs” made against us. Our time and attention are freed up to see the beauty and opportunity around us. Anger is binding, not freeing.

ON PRIDE & HUMILITY

Intellectual pride leads to ignorance, and spiritual pride is the main block to spiritual development and maturation in everyone.

The humble person cannot be humiliated for they are immune to vulnerability, having let go of pride.

Genuine self-esteem does not actually arise until pride is relinquished. That which inflates the ego does not result in inner strength. Pride infers subtly that there is room for debate and that the worth of something is open to question. It was Lucifer’s pride that was his Achilles’ heel, despite the great standing that he had acquired.

When we no longer feel called upon to defend our image, criticisms and attacks from others diminish and finally stop. Self-awareness of one’s true value is characterized by lack of defensiveness.

Once we see pride for what it is, it is one of the easier emotions to surrender. The real answer is merely to let go of it by examining its true nature.

The truly humble cannot be humbled. They are immune to humiliation. They have nothing to defend. True humility cannot be experienced by the person who is said to possess it, because it is not an emotion. A truly humble person sees the critical verbalization by another person as merely a statement of the other person’s inner problems.

What is wrong with joy as the reward for successful achievement, rather than pride? Pridefulness means that we can be manipulated with great ease. In return for an absurdity, a great deal of money is lifted out of our pocketbooks. The situation is currently comical in that people take great pride in how much they have been exploited. It is a current status symbol among certain circles to brag about how much one has paid for certain things.

When we settle for the pridefulness of ostentation, we impress no one.

Pride always means a loss of peace of mind. Pride, like all the other negative emotions, engenders guilt. Guilt engenders fear. Fear means potential loss. 

The opposite of prideful acquisitiveness is simplicity. Simplicity does not mean poverty of possessions; rather, it is a state of mind.

Gratitude is one of the antidotes of pride. If we happen to be born with a high IQ, we can be grateful for it rather than take pride in it. It’s not an accomplishment; we were born with it. If we are grateful for what has been given us and for what has been fulfilled through our God-given talents and endeavors, then we are in a peaceful state of mind and invulnerable to pain.

If we view one of our thoughts as “an opinion” instead of “my opinion,” the feeling tone changes. Why do people get so hot under the collar about their opinions? It is just because of that sense of “mine.” If opinions are viewed instead as “only an opinion,” then there is no longer the vulnerability to prideful anger.

If we look back on our life, we will see that every mistake we ever made was based on an opinion. When we look at our opinions, we will see that it is primarily our emotions that are giving them any value in the first place.

If someone tells us that they eat the way they eat because they enjoy it, there is nothing much we can say about it, is there? If, on the other hand, they infer that theirs is the right way of eating and, by inference, that ours is wrong, what they are really saying is that they are better than we are. That always arouses resentment.

If we don’t take a prideful stance about our opinions, then we are at liberty to change them. 

Pride is also responsible for holding up scientific progress.

When we let go of pride, help comes into our life to address the problems with which we are struggling. We can experiment and prove the truth of that principle by picking one area in which we are having difficulty and thoroughly surrendering all the pride involved. When we do that, some surprising things begin to happen.

Are we willing to let go of pride and feeling superior to others? When we are willing to let go of the pseudo-security of pride, we experience the real security that comes with courage, self-acceptance, and joy.

ON COURAGE & LOVE

When we are in the state of courage, we sense our own inner power, strength, and self-worth. We know that we have the capacity to make a difference in the world, not just gain something from it for ourselves. The levels of consciousness up to this point are concerned primarily with gain. Now, on the level of courage, there is greater power and energy. We have the ability to give to others.

There is the awareness on this level that our life is either positively or negatively influencing those around us.

Carl Jung said that the healthy personality is equally balanced between work, play, love, and an aspect of personality called spirituality, which we could also define as the search for meaning and value.

Could it be that, beyond the turbulence of the world and our own mind, there is silence? A realm of peace that is always waiting? The way people appear to us from this space is that everyone is actually doing the best they can with what they have at the moment.

The source of love is seen to be within ourselves, emanating from our own nature and reaching out to include others. In the state of desire, by contrast, we speak of being “in love,” as the source of happiness and love is thought to be outside of ourselves.

There are many pathways that carry us to the state of acceptance, and this is the gateway which leads eventually to the next highest states, described as the consciousness levels of love and peace. To many people who have been surrendering for periods of time, this ultimate objective progressively supersedes all others. To dwell in states of unconditional love and imperturbable peace becomes the inner aim, more important than any other achievement.

We look inside a person and see the frightened animal that just doesn’t know any better. We are able to see innocence even behind the most rash and apparently horrible behaviors. 

We face today with optimism and are grateful to be alive. We see that yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come, and we have only today.

Love is more than an emotion or a thought—it is a state of being. Love is what we have become through the pathway of surrender. It is a way of being in the world that says: “How can I be of help to you?” Lovingness is a way through which we light up the world.

Once you become loving, there are certain things you can never do again. And there are certain things you can do in the energy field of love that are impossible otherwise. Moreover, people do things for you that they would not do for others.

It is helpful to see the ego or small part of ourselves as a cute little teddy bear. The teddy bear is not “bad”; we don’t hate or scold the little bear. We love it and accept it for what it is: a cute little animal who doesn’t know any better. We transcend the smaller aspects of ourselves by accepting and loving them. We see the ego as “limited,” not “bad.”

The love of our loved ones, pets, and friends is the love of Divinity for us. When we go to bed at night, we give thanks that we were surrounded with love all day.

The more we love, the more we can love. Love is limitless. Love begets love. In the state of love, we wake up every morning and give thanks for another day of life, and we seek to make life better for everyone around us.

Spiritual progress is known to be the result of Grace, not the result of our personal endeavors. The process of surrender continues ever more deeply, as we let go of all doubt, all belief systems, all perceptions, all positions, all opinions, and all attachments.

Out of humility, all opinions about others are surrendered. In a certain way, nobody can help being other than what they are.

The mind thinks and argues, but the heart knows and continues.

Love makes no demands. A key to making Love unconditional is the willingness to forgive. With forgiveness, events and people are re-contextualized as simply “limited”—not “bad” or “unlovable.”

True surrender means letting go completely of seeing it in such a (judgemental) way. When we surrender our perception completely, letting go of all judgment, then the whole situation is transfigured and we see the person as lovable. With humility, we are willing to relinquish our perception of a past event. We pray for a miracle to see the truth about the situation or person, and we surrender all of our opinions about the matter.

Now that we are connected to a greater dimension, there may be an immersion in it through contemplation, meditation, art, music, movement, reading, writing, teaching, and participation in spiritual groups with similar objectives.

“Big-hearted” or “all heart.” This phrase expresses the shift of interest and focus of the person’s life to that which is loving. He might appear as a liberated soul who has pretty much finished with the world and has evolved into beingness, beyond doingness and havingness.

When the clouds are removed, the sun shines forth and we discover that peace was the truth all along. Surrender is the mechanism that uncovers the true nature of our existence. If we have been in the presence of a great teacher who radiates this energy, we will never be the same. The most beneficial thing that can happen to us is to have been in the presence of a great teacher, because we pick up the vibration by being in the physical presence of that state of peace and complete surrender.

(The surrendered consciousness) seemed to know what to do and did it very effectively and effortlessly. All conversations and interactions were merely witnessed as phenomena, not directed. It seemed like a strange vanity to have once believed that there had been a small self as the author of the body’s actions. In reality, the body was at the effect of the universe, and there had never been a doer of its actions.

It is we ourselves who create stressful reactions as a consequence of what we are holding within us. The suppressed feelings determine our belief systems and our perception of ourselves and others. These, in turn, literally create events and incidents in the world,

Most people are preoccupied with survival in all its subtle forms, and so they reflect primarily fear, anger, and a desire for gain. They have not learned that the state of lovingness is the most powerful of all survival tools.

Having a pet dog can lengthen a human life by years. The love, affection, caring for another being, and companionship that go along with having a dog mitigate the negative effects of stress. Love stimulates endorphins and life energy, bringing a healing balm to stress-prone lives.

Laughing is a method of letting go.

“What is held in mind tends to manifest” Am I holding a lot of anger? Do I condemn other peoples’ behavior? Am I prone to be judgmental? Do I hold resentments and grudges? 

Stress arises from within as a response to a stimulus. The stressor actually is the pressure of the suppressed and repressed emotional energies, which are a reflection of our general low-level consciousness. Thus, it is the content of our consciousness that has to be changed to eliminate and prevent stress.

Without a change of consciousness, there is no real reduction of stress. Only the consequences are ameliorated. All of these after-the-fact techniques and treatments do help and often alleviate a given condition and bring some relief, but they leave the basis of the problem untouched.

Peace comes with total inner surrender to what is. Surrender at great depth is complete when a person has let go of needing or wanting a physical healing to occur. A state of peace about the situation is reached when all three aspects of illness—physical, mental, and spiritual—have been addressed and the final outcome or wished-for recovery has been surrendered.

The more we let go, the more loving we become. More and more of our life will be spent doing things that we love to do, with people for whom we feel increasing love. As this happens, our life becomes transformed. We look different.

Success stems from doing what we like to do best, but most people are tied down to what they imagine they have to do. As limitations are relinquished, whole new avenues of creativity and expression become available. She could cut back to working part time, and she began to pour more time and energy into what was now a blossoming career that brought her great joy and satisfaction.

Too often intellectual insight is all that’s really achieved, and the emotional working through is slow, often painful, and ultimately avoided. Psychotherapy may be more gratifying intellectually because of its verbal nature and its focus on the “whys” behind behavior. However, that is also its limitation. The mechanism of letting go, on the other hand, is concerned with the emotional “what” from moment to moment, without involving the intellect.

It’s not necessary to probe the “why” of depression to become free from the “what” of it. By allowing the full feeling of it and by letting go of every sensation, every thought, and every little payoff you are getting from it, you are free.

The goals of letting go are far beyond those of psychotherapy. The ultimate aim of letting go and surrendering is total freedom. The goal of therapy is readjustment of the ego to a more healthy balance. The two systems are based on different paradigms of reality. The objective of psychotherapy is to replace unsatisfactory mental programs with more satisfactory ones. In contrast, the objective of letting go is the elimination of limiting mental and emotional programs. It is the attainment of an unconditioned mind and, ultimately, transcendence of the mind itself to higher states of consciousness of love and peace.

Since the purpose of most psychotherapy is a well-adjusted ego, there is no conception of what is beyond the ego.

As one fear is relinquished, all fear is diminished non-specifically.

A healthy patient is considered to be one who shares the same illusions and limitations condoned by society and the therapist.

Each of us has a limit to the amount of negative feelings we have stored up. When the pressure behind an emotion has been let go, that emotion no longer occurs. For instance, if fear is constantly surrendered for a period of time, eventually it runs out. It then becomes difficult or almost impossible to feel further fear.

A quick little surrender done in an almost off-handed manner can sometimes bring about a major change in our life.

It becomes progressively obvious that the body is not experiencing itself at all. On the contrary, it is the mind that is experiencing the body. This is the basis of anesthesia. When the mind is asleep, the body has no sensation. It slowly dawns on us that, in fact, the body doesn’t have any sensation; only the mind is capable of that function.

One day it dawns on us that everyone and everything in the world are responding to our level of consciousness, our intention, and to the inner feeling we have about them.

They have transcended the view that their illness is a barrier to personal happiness and see it as a vehicle of blessing to others … Continual surrender brings healing at the level of inner being so that, even while the body appears to suffer limitation and others may see it as “tragic,” the person is at peace and radiates an inner well-being that uplifts others. Pope John Paul II, who approached his unremitting Parkinson’s disease as a spiritual opportunity to become one with, and even to take on, the suffering of others.

ON MONEY

To the mind that holds limiting belief systems and negative thoughts and feelings, money is a “problem.” It is a source of endless worry and anxiety, hopelessness and despair, or of vanity, pride, arrogance, intolerance of others, jealousy, and envy.

Begin to delineate what its real meanings are in all the various avenues of life. Then, write down the feelings that are associated with each area and begin to surrender on each negative feeling and attitude. As we do this, we have the surprising discovery that money in and of itself is not the most basic issue. More important than money itself are the emotional gratifications that we hope will be ours with the use of that money.

It is like the millionaire who keeps piling up more and more millions. There never seems to be enough. Why is that? The inner insecurity is so extensive that no amount of money can overcome it. It might be said that the smaller we feel inside, the greater amount of power, money, and glamour must be accumulated

When we are in a surrendered state, we are free from that inner smallness, insecurity, and low self-esteem. Then, money becomes merely a tool to achieve our goals in the world. We have an inner security, knowing that there will always be sufficient abundance. We will always get what we need when we need it, because we have an inner feeling of completion.

Once we have the formula for gold, we don’t need to carry a bag of it. When we re-own the power that we have given to money and see that it is our own power, we are no longer concerned about money, nor do we need to accumulate a great deal of it.

ON INNER CHAOS

Because of this inner chaos, the average person must of necessity stay unconscious at all times. It is interesting to watch the means that the mind has invented to accomplish this end.

With this awareness comes a state of total freedom. “I am not the mind either, but that which witnesses and experiences the mind, emotions, and body.” Through inner observation, there is the realization of something that remains constant and the same, no matter what goes on in the external world or with the body, emotions, or mind. 

We had mistakenly equated ourselves with the outer phenomena of our hectic life—the body and its experiences, the obligations, the jobs, the titles, the activities, the problems, and the feelings. But now we realize that we are the timeless space in which the phenomena are happening. We are not the flickering images playing out their drama on the movie screen, but the screen itself—a nonjudgmental witness of the unfolding movie of life, with no beginning and no end, infinite in its potential.

It is necessary to remind ourselves that feelings are programs; that is, they are learned responses that often have a purpose. That purpose is directly related to achieving an effect on the other person’s feelings and, by doing so, to influence their feelings toward ourselves and to fulfill our own inner goals.

We have to come up to the level of courage and look at our worst feelings, admit that they are part of the condition of being human, and remember that we are only held accountable for what we do with them. It is obvious that these negative feelings take an enormous emotional toll on our own inner selves. That reason alone is sufficient to warrant looking at them and letting go of them.

Our feelings and thoughts always have an effect on … our relationships, whether these thoughts or feelings are verbalized, expressed, or not.

Just look at what you would not want others to know about you and begin to surrender it!

People who carry a lot of hatred find that they are living in a hateful world and that lots of people hate them. They see external situations and the world as hateful. What they fail to see is that this entire situation is self-created.

When the inner feelings are relinquished, the way in which we see the situation changes, and we are often surprised by the abruptness with which feelings of forgiveness suddenly arise and the relationship becomes transformed, even though on the external level we did or said nothing to express this inner change.

If we really want to affect other people, then we ought to really love them. Then, their anger at us will boomerang back upon them with no effect upon us! This was the wisdom of the Buddha’s statement in the Dhammapada, “Hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is an eternal law.”

Because people intuitively pick up our wish to control them, their response is to resist. So the only way to bring about relinquishment of their resisting us is to let go of wanting to influence them in the first place. This means letting go of the inner fears as they come up.

False humility merely says to the other person, “I am a small person; please treat me that way” and, of course, they promptly do.

We puff up with pride whenever we feel insecure. Although we may think that we feel well and secure at the level of pride, that pride is always accompanied by defensiveness due to its basic vulnerability. The inflation of pride is easily susceptible to the puncture of a passing remark or raised eyebrow.

“How would I react if I were the other person and knew exactly what my personal inner feelings and thoughts really were?” The answer to that will usually make clear what the other person’s behavior is all about. The kind of thoughts we are having about them is very likely matched with similar thoughts they are having about us. If we realize this principle, a lot of things that happen in our life will start to make sense.

Everyone from the highest to the lowest has or has had an ego. Best to remember that these feelings are not our real inner Self. They are learned programs we have inherited from being humans. Nobody is exempt from them. 

What we win by the negative emotion is short-lived and inauthentic. It doesn’t really satisfy. It’s like a forced compliment.

This is the last day of our life—our old life with all its conflicts, anxiety, and fear. That is the price we have paid for holding on to the old. As we relinquish the negative suppressed feelings from all the programs we have internalized, they are automatically replaced by the higher ones. We become happier and lighter and so do the people around us.

As we surrender, life becomes more and more effortless. There is a constant increase in happiness and pleasure, which requires less and less from the outer world to be experienced. There is a diminution of needs and expectations of others. We stop looking “out there” for what we now experience as coming from within ourselves.

ON GIVING

Instead of looking to get from others, we now look to give. Scrooge experienced the pleasure of giving instead of looking to get from others. The joy of that transformation is available to us all.

Generosity is the willingness to share your life with others. It’s a gift to people to allow them to love you.

It is a part of greatness to know that sometimes a good deed is not returned.

We can tell if we are really surrendered when we feel okay either way; it’s okay with us if it happens, and it’s okay with us if it doesn’t.

Therefore, to be surrendered does not mean to be passive. It is being active in a positive way. When we are surrendered, there is no longer the pressure of time. Frustration comes from wanting a thing now instead of letting it happen naturally in its own time. Patience is an automatic side effect of letting go, and we know how easy it is to get along with patient people.

If we get stuck in a feeling, it is because we still secretly believe that it will accomplish something for us.

The facial grimacing and breath-holding are restrictions due to fear of loss of control and attempts to limit the experience. If one breathes slowly and deeply, smiling instead of grimacing, the fear will become conscious and can be surrendered.

Giving love instead of looking for it. My whole life has changed now. Instead of feeling desperate to get attention and love, I know I have the power to give it … the awareness that when we seek to give instead of to get, all of our own needs are automatically fulfilled.

Are we willing to look at these feelings? Competitiveness, self-doubt, insecurity, inadequacy, and desire for approval. Once our feelings are recognized, it becomes obvious to us that they work against us. They drain our efforts and impede our success in the world. Unconsciously, this resentment fuels our endless desire for strokes, which, of course, do not come our way because our wantingness repels the very thing we want.

When the clouds are removed, the sun shines forth. The freeing up of abilities, creative ideas, talents, and resourcefulness occurs automatically as a result of the positive state of mind that ensues when the negative aspects have been surrendered. Letting go of negativity frees up inspiration to create an endless flow of creative ideas.

There have been writers, artists, and musicians who came into a sudden breakthrough of inspiration as soon as a negative belief or self-limitation was recognized and surrendered.

Levels of consciousness into three major states: inert, energetic, and peaceful.

The decision that results is not sustainable in the long run because it is based on the feeling state, and when the feeling state changes, the decision has to be changed with it.

The “go-getter.” Although things are accomplished, there is unevenness of performance because of the mixture of positive and negative thoughts and ideas. Negative feelings such as ambition, desire, or “proving oneself” tend to drive the “go-getter,” and at times the decision-making is compulsive or impulsive.

Many of the decisions are unsustainable because they are based on a win-lose situation rather than on a win-win situation. A win-win decision would have occurred had the feelings and welfare of the other persons involved in the situation been taken into account.

Because their decisions benefit primarily themselves, their success is limited to personal gain. Any benefit to the world is purely secondary and the results, therefore, fall far short of greatness.

The unimpeded creative mind will work out a solution where everyone gains and no one loses. If we look at a situation and claim that a win-win solution is not possible, that should warn us that we have some un-surrendered inner feelings blocking a possibly perfect solution. We need to remember the dictum that the impossible becomes possible as soon as we are totally surrendered to the situation.

He concluded that success in the world is related to our ability to concentrate, which means the ability to keep our attention on one thing at a time without interference of other thoughts or feelings.

A mind that is concentrated on a positive thought has the power to increase the likelihood that the positive thought will materialize in the world of events. The most successful people in the world are those who hold in mind the highest good of all concerned, including themselves. They know that there is a win-win solution to every problem.

They do not seek happiness; they have discovered that happiness is a by-product of doing what they love. A feeling of personal fulfillment comes naturally from their positive contribution to the lives of others, including family, friends, groups, and the world at large.

Thoughts are caused by suppressed and repressed feelings. When a feeling is let go … thoughts that were activated by that feeling disappear.

Choose to surrender negative feelings rather than express them.

Relinquishing a desire does not mean that you won’t get what you want.

Do not label it. A label is a whole program. Surrender what is actually felt, which are the sensations themselves. We cannot feel a disease. We cannot, for instance, feel “asthma.” It is helpful to ask, “What am I actually feeling?” Simply observe the physical sensations, such as, “Tightness in the chest, wheezing, a cough.” Even the word “pain” is a program. In reality, we are feeling a specific body sensation.

The scientific ideal is objectivity. Objectivity means an absence of emotion. The achievement of this ideal in clinical and scientific work necessitated a suppression of feelings.

ON GUILT

There is no such thing as just anger. The actual feeling is anger/guilt. The mind’s constant judging and criticizing of the world, its events and people, is an unending source of guilt. The guilt is so omnipresent that no matter what we are doing we feel somewhere in our mind that we “should” be doing something else.

We have lived with so much guilt for so long that we don’t even recognize it anymore, and somehow that guilt is projected by the average mind onto the world around it.

Guilt emerges as the most frequent reason for which people give up their religion. It is because the goals seem unobtainable. A good place to start is to let go of all of your guilt since it fosters an emotional environment for suffering and disease.

Promiscuity is based on low self-esteem, exploitation, and lack of love. The letting go of negativity and selfishness, concern for others, a heightened pleasure from their company, and higher self-esteem changes one’s perspective of relationships. The capacity for lovingness increases rapidly. Much of promiscuity is an attempt to overcome unconscious fears and seek reassurance.

ON GOD

Even the atheist has feelings about the concept of God. Carl Jung pointed out that, because God is one of the major archetypes in the unconscious, each person has to take a position about God whether they like it or not. So whether God exists or not, the subject has to be dealt with sooner or later. Suppressing our feelings about God or consciously being overwhelmed by the subject is not a satisfactory solution. The letting go technique brings resolution to long-standing inner conflicts, both to the atheist and to the believer.

Over time, the experience of “knowing” replaced thinking. Knowing comes on in a totally different manner. It is just standing there for our recognition. How wonderful to be free and to experience the power of mind! It was obvious in that moment that we are only subject to those things that we hold in mind. It is not necessary to be a slave or victim in the world.

Without exception, all spiritual pathways are based upon a method of dissolving the ego.

The mechanism of surrender is a tool only. You can use it to remove the obstacles to making a million dollars; or you can use it to remove the obstacles to the development of spiritual awareness.

Most people who continuously surrender report that they discover something within themselves akin to love itself, which is independent of the body, emotions, thoughts, and the events of the world.

Achieving silence of the mind is the main problem of meditation itself. This is because suppressed feelings constantly produce thoughts, which are the main distractions in meditation. Acknowledging and letting go of the energy behind these suppressed feelings, therefore, facilitates the goal of meditation.

By constantly surrendering, it is possible to arrive at an extremely silent state of mind. This can be accomplished as one goes about one’s daily activities, thus greatly expanding the capacity to meditate.

The key is to let go of being judgmental of the other person’s preferences or feeling prideful about your own as “the right way.” Each accepts the humanness of the other and that, of course, there are sometimes going to be different attitudes.

Surrendering to God means letting go of one’s willfulness. Willfulness is the ego itself.