Oakville Zen Meditation
Letting go
With different wording this is the forth talk over the last 5 years about letting go because it is a difficult but important skill to learn and master.
The most efficient trap to get a monkey is the box with a small round hole in front and a large banana inside. The monkey grabs the banana but cannot get out while holding the banana.
He cannot let go because he wants, at all cost, keep and eat the banana.
Most monkeys learn quickly and don’t get trapped because they are too smart.
They realize that, releasing the banana will be painful for their ego and hunger but it will make them free. We, humans, are very close to the trapped monkeys because, we too, don’t want and don’t know how to let go a thought, an emotion or an action x, y, z because of the feeling of backing up, failure or weakness and cowardice.
This is weird because we all know that, in order to find some peace of mind and happiness we just have to let go many things glued in our minds especially if we are right.
Like all simple advises, letting go is very challenging because, as said before, it is part of our identity and self-defense mechanism.
One of the reasons that it is so difficult to let go is that we have to release of something with is perceived to be part of us it is like a lost, even if we realize that this “something” can be detrimental.
If you think about yourself, you will realize that we are holding zillion of things that we don’t want to let go.
Most of them are stored in our subconscious like a safe in our mind. Often.......
We have to let go of some of our ego reactions, our neuroses, or mistakes.
We have to let go of some of our habits, addiction, mind-set and useless judgments.
We have to let go of our unrealistic desires, anger, anxiety, fear, grief, failures, nostalgia, and on and on .It can be difficult or even impossible to erase these things out of our mind.
So: What to do?
What we need to do, first, is let go of our understanding about letting go. As I said earlier, letting go is not a sign of failure, weakness or cowardice. In fact, it is a sign of being a smart monkey.
To find peace and happiness, we don’t have to actively fight, release or mentally erase things from our mind. This is active elimination and this is not letting go. The effort is too demanding.
Trying to erase a strong attachment will never work because the emotional bond is too powerful.
The closer we are with this attachment, habit, thought or emotion the stronger it becomes.
Compare this with 2 magnets getting closer. The attraction gets stronger when the magnets are closer to each other’s.
Letting go is allowing the banana trap to leave your mind and not you to leave the trap.
Like for any negative emotions, we have to realize that we are strongly attached, then that we have to accept the fact w/o trying to fight with.
Only after acceptance, things will go on their own and the magnets are moving away from each other. To let go is like acting like a mirror. A mirror reflects everything without passing judgement or getting stuck with the images that appear on its surface. It lets things come and go.
Although we should be mirrors reflecting things as they go, we are also participants interacting with things, people and environment.
Letting things go does not mean that we should withdrawn and not interact with the surrounding world. Our attachments to anger, desire, behavior and ego tricks come all the time and they will go
if we just reflect to them as they are.
There are even situations where we are 100% right and giving up your action, thoughts, position or goal will be inappropriate if not wrong. Letting go them become very hard if not impossible.
Again, when we talk about letting go we are talking about dealing with our emotional reactions in order to act is a more appropriate and constructive way.
Accepting them w/o trying to fight or be attached is letting go. At this point you will release the banana and become a happy monkey.
Thank you
