Why Can’t I Let Go?

By Joana Gockel

I came across this amazing meditation method where I can let go of my false self. This false self consists of all the prejudices, habits and views I have of the world, myself and others. My true self, which can be discovered through meditation, is a never changing, eternal, living existence. Because our body works on the principle of a camera, from the time we are born we have taken in everything through our five senses. From all these pictures we took in, we created our own world, which is not real, because it is only made of our limited experiences of the world. When we let go of this superimposed copy of the world we find the true world.

It is the best thing ever and I am super excited about it, it means finding eternal peace and happiness. It makes us one, because what separates us is that each person lives in their own false world and no two people can agree on those worlds because each person has taken different pictures of the world. When we see the world as it is and not through those pictures, then we can share that world with everyone bringing people together with understanding and appreciation.

But it requires letting go of everything. All attachments, whether positive or negative. Everything the mind holds. It is great freedom and liberation not to be bound and limited by our own minds.

I’ve practised it a lot and got a sense of what it feels like to be free. The method works really well and I am super grateful that it is my daily tool to get one step closer to my true self.

While meditating, there are some things that seem to come up again and again, relentlessly. Sometimes I didn’t even notice that there were these thoughts repeating in my mind because they seemed so normal and natural. But after practising meditation more and more, I began to notice these things, the fixed images or memories in my mind that seemed so normal because I was used to them being there. Now it is time for me to let them go, and I am committed to letting them go. 

There is still some resistance sometimes. I cannot let go of some things. I have found that there are certain images that are unresolved, and are still there. Instead of letting them go, I tried to resolve them from within the mind of pictures. But that was not possible because as Einstein said; “You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.”. Some of  the things I held  in my mind, I just couldn’t understand and resisted letting them go, trying to resolve them from inside my mind, only to find that letting go was the only answer. 

There were feelings that I couldn’t process. For example, the feeling of being in a small room brought up a feeling of shame. I wanted to let it go, but I couldn’t. Until I found a picture of me and my friend building a cave in a small room under the stairs, but we were reprimanded for building it because the same room had just been tidied up. So, I was super ashamed of messing up something that someone else had just tidied up. I had to go back to that exact situation, all the pictures I had taken of it, and look at it again. I wanted to find a solution in it, rather than just giving up and letting it go. I had a mindset of trying to change that feeling somehow, but it is not possible, these are pictures taken of a moment long ago. There was no way to rationally undo that feeling but after I finally just let them go, everything got resolved by itself. Not from within the picture, but from the existing clear mind that was hidden by it. It is not visible from the perspective of the inside of the picture, but it is visible when the picture is gone.

Sometimes I feel that I want to learn from what I have in my mind. I want to solve it or get something out of it. But then I am just trying to dig into something that is just a copy of the world and not alive, I am going round and round in the pictures of the situation. It is greed that makes me want to know or gain something from it, but after letting go of that I can really understand and gain great freedom and wisdom. 

There is also sometimes a lack of trust. What if I let go and lose something? Has anyone ever let go? Is it beneficial? These are the doubts I had, but then I remembered that there are people who have done it, otherwise there wouldn’t be this method. They have gone all the way and let go of everything. That gives me the conviction and the confidence to try it and let go as well.

That is why it is important to let go completely, of everything, even of the self, which is always stuck in the thoughts with its greed. I have found that it is only when I let go that everything dissolves and I gain that greater perspective. 

So, let’s be brave, let’s let go in spite of the difficulties that our mind may give us. Let’s let go together and make this mind and the world a better place to live in and finally find the true self within our mind.