Letting go

Chris, on another thread you said:

"As I just said just this morning to one of the more "aggressively
oriented" folks over on that other board after they had posted how much
one must want and need to "get it done" -- that very want and need, the
aggressive, goal oriented approach, will take you only so far and then
you will find out that it's just another hindrance. At that point, an
inflection point, the only choice you have is to let go, and you will
have to let go of everything you hold sacred."

I thought it was a really interesting topic to pursue further, but in case it leads to a long tangent, perhaps better as its own thread.

What I found particularly interesting about the many, many moments of letting go is just what those things you hold sacred are. For me, I rarely realized what I had been holding so sacred until I let go of it, and then it became clear. Often, that same hindrance came up again and again, as I forgot again and again what it was I had realized on some previous occasion.

Just as an example, one day I was out walking and for the first time suddenly felt a sort of patience and compassion towards my own internal chatter. It just suddenly seemed like a normal kind of thing - what the mind does all day. But only then did I realize that I had previously been thinking of my internal chatter as something annoying, and I'd been attached to that idea, that I should hate on my internal narrative and hope and wish it would shut the fuck up.

I think aversion is not so different from attachment. It seems often when I am resistant or averse to something I am actually clinging to that resistance, getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of the struggle. Not sure, just a ponder.

In the Buddhist teachings Aversion is exactly the same as attachment. Often the text mention just one when they mean both. One way to look at that is that aversion is clinging to a different view of the present moment: if only things could be a little bit different.

Re letting go, I've found several times that I only notice the existence of tension or clinging once it's been released. Very interesting experience.

One of my amusing moments of practicing letting go was when I noticed that I'm actively letting go of tension meaning there's a bit of self invested in the letting go process itself. I've taken to sometimes using the term "letting be" instead of "letting go" in order to highlight that letting go does not come out of action but from no longer acting.

In the Buddhist teachings Aversion is exactly the same as attachment. Often the text mention just one when they mean both. One way to look at that is that aversion is clinging to a different view of the present moment: if only things could be a little bit different.
Re letting go, I've found several times that I only notice the existence of tension or clinging once it's been released. Very interesting experience.
One of my amusing moments of practicing letting go was when I noticed that I'm actively letting go of tension meaning there's a bit of self invested in the letting go process itself. I've taken to sometimes using the term "letting be" instead of "letting go" in order to highlight that letting go does not come out of action but from no longer acting.


-eran

I should read more. "aversion is clinging to a different view...if only things could be a little bit different" is a wonderful way to express what I was clumsily attempting to say.

Interesting point about self being invested in letting go. Some other terminology for letting go that I have found useful includes the ever popular "surrendering" and also "including" (which implies opening to allow everything, including the aversion, the desire to let go, etc etc to just be).

@Chris - don't get me started on fear.