Like many of us who have walked a path of inner healing, I have used a 12-step program. I meditate and practice several healing art forms to calm and center me.
I enjoy regular yoga, journaling, long walks and bodywork to release my monkey-mind and moments of anger, frustration and worry. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, I practice being peace.
But in spite of all the vigilance, like a psychic boomerang, certain old ghosts come back to haunt me. For a long time I’d think: What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I let go and let God? Why am I still attached to this old pattern or person?
Since the dwarf-planet Pluto slipped into the sign of Capricorn, my opinion on my letting-go limitations has shifted.
Pluto was the god of the Underworld, so to an astrologer he symbolizes death, birth, resurrection, surrender and transformation.
With all these impressive key words, his would be the realm of 12-step programs, addictions and letting go. Because Pluto has been in the sign of Capricorn since 2008 (yes! the financial earthquake), we are in a period where we need to make transformation more concrete.
Capricorn is about the tangible, it strives to do what it must to achieve the goal. So if we are concretizing the concept of letting go; it is time to recycle.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
As a result, when we let go of an addiction, person, belief system or situation, we must transform our relationship with it. Otherwise, we let it go and it hangs out in the ether, waiting to become something else.
When I let go of my ex-husband, the person disappeared from my life. But something remained; a phantom piece of my psyche which I religiously scrubbed until every fragment seemed to evaporate as though it never existed.
Yet years later, he pops up – in dreams or in found objects. I realize I cannot exorcise such a formative part of my life and I no longer want to. What I have to do is recycle it.
I have no idea who he is as a person anymore, but I do know he is still part of my cellular structure. Since all people in our lives teach us about parts of ourselves, to simply let go without transforming a relationship, may always leave us wanting.
This is not something I can do or wish to do with this actual human being, but I can certainly recycle what he represents in my psyche.
Instead of tossing out that plastic bottle of grief, addiction, limitation in your brain: consider transmuting it.
When I threw out the negative, I also discarded the positive.
Since I’ve been recycling my psyche, I feel less fractured. I realize this is a radical concept for many people, but for me it has made the difference between dismembering a part of who I am as opposed to performing reconstruction.
In recycling the psyche, I now look for ways to change that lead into gold.
How about you? Anything or anyone that you would like to recycle? Please tell us how you are letting go and living more authentically.
Pam Cucinell, a partner in Authentic Abundance, provides insight to enable personal revelations
Flickr Photo – Divine Vision II by pasotraspaso
Excellent post, Pam! I like your ‘recycle’ idea. I think it’s what I call ‘reframe’ or ‘look for the gift amidst the crap’.
You’re right – when we throw out the whole thing, person or situation, we’re throwing out not only the parts we don’t like or that give us heartburn, but we’re throwing out the gifts, too.
I have a few negative people still in my world that I’m kinda “stuck with”, but as much as they irritate me in many ways, if I look at them and their presence in my life through the lens of ‘where’s the gift in this?’, it’s usually much easier to find, and they are much easier to tolerate.
Pam,
This phrase is poignant for me, “…like a psychic boomerang, certain old ghosts come back to haunt me.”
What a great word picture. No matter how much I try at times to throw the negatives and the unwanteds out of my life, they seem to circle back and smack me in the head.
Recycling or, as Suzanne said, reframing, appears to be the perfect solution.
Every cloud may indeed have a silver lining. I just have to be willing to accept and embrace that possibility as being real for me.
Great post.
Thanks.
John
Hey John, my grandma told me once that of course the dark clouds have a silver lining! That’s WHY they are dark!
I sure miss her.
What a wonderfully complex topic you have shared with us here Pamela! I’d be willing to bet there are few living through these times who don’t have their own version of it
The power in reclaiming value even from wounds is enormous. And we can spend a whole lot of time and energy trying not to “go there” — when we could just as simply (NOT easily) accept the truth for what it is and make decisions about how to work with the learning we glean.
That is a whole whale of a lot harder to do than it sounds, as you point out. But it’s valuable work for those brave enough to take it on. Count me as one of them
Would I rather duck and hide when “it” hits the fan (whatever “it” happens to be in the moment)? Heck yah! But that is not any kind of way to live and it’s a bad way to die. So, as challenging and ugly as it gets sometimes in the doing of it, I choose to face up to whatever music is playing — and write some new melodies whose sounds I vastly prefer to the chaotic rhythms so often sought out by the masses.
Here’s to beauty, joy, love, and harmony!! And to the effort to put them into one’s life.
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Count me in, too, Nancy. It’s messy, but so worth it.
Hi Pamela,
So many times in my life i thought that I resolved a problem only to have it resurface in a different form. I like what you said about transforming it into something else.
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“Letting go” is a major theme for me and I’ve been working on improving my skills at it for the last 3 years. I think that in reference to letting go in regard to relationships that have been terminated there are three things that have helped me. Practicing gratitude, offering blessings, and practicing forgiveness. Forgiveness, I’ve learned, really is just a matter of letting go. In the stillness of meditation I can practice forgiveness: “What you did was wrong, and I forgive you.” I may have to do it more than once… to allow myself to feel that I have really forgiven… and begun to let go of the offense. And at that time it is also possible to send a blessing to that person – dead or alive – “I wish you happiness and peace. I am grateful for what you taught me.” I always have to remember that forgiving does not mean that what happened never happened or that it wasn’t wrong or that I will resume a relationship with that person. It is enough to forgive – let go – and to wish the person well.
I think that practicing gratitude is a great tool for helping one to let go. If we can see for just a moment what we have to be grateful for the transmutation is bound to take place.
I have found that it has helped me with mourning the loss of a loved one. I send blessings to my parents and I can easily get lost in a meditation feeling gratitude for them. And once you get rolling on gratitude you might find you can’t get enough of it. I found that I can feel gratitude for ancestors whom I’ve never met (except for my discovery of them via Ancestry.com) – and bless them. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for their having the courage to leave their homeland in the 19th Century to start a new life.
When you practice gratitude letting go of the negatives just happens of it’s own accord.
thank you all for your comments…
I’ve been wading through some more “recycling” over here and yes, gratitude is a lovely accelerator for the process….
on a physical level, I am grateful for tears that can sweep over with an uncontrollable force- so humbling, creating such vulnerability, that when they subside I have felt gratitude for their completion. And then there is such a tranquil peace; it is not logical.
And that’s when the composting comes. The ultimate recycling, after which the rich fertile new beginnings spring forth.
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An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a coworker who has
been conducting a little research on this. And he actually bought me dinner because
I found it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this.
… Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending
the time to discuss this matter here on your blog.
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