Let go and Let God.
Don’t worry.
Just relax.
Easy for you to say!
I love a good slogan as much as the next person. But some of them cause more of the anxiety- or a new kind of anxiety- than they’re supposed to alleviate.
For example: Let go and Let God.
I can remember hearing this at a time when I felt I had fallen off the cliff and was hanging on to the last limb I’d managed to grab on the way down. And as I hung there, struggling with my terrible upper body strength to hang on a bit longer while grit and gravel fell into my eyes, mouth and clogged my nostrils, some fool (I mean, well meaning concerned friend) comes along and says Let go and Let God.
If I could have spared a hand from the limb, I would have smacked them.
But I learned a meditation technique a while ago that I have found to be really powerful.
It is also related to what I brought up a while ago about resiliency, the ability to bounce back.
It has to do with another R-word: Resistance.
What has proven true more often than I would like- in fact just about every single time- is what has me all wound up in knots is not worth the energy. It is not that bad (or not as bad as it feels). It is the knots, the fight, the resistance in me that is causing most of the strife. Sort of like, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Or like trying to fight natural buoyancy in the water rather than turning on your back and floating.
But floating is hard. It is one of the hardest things to teach in swimming lessons. How you teach it is to hold your student and get them to do nothing to help stay on top of the water, to lean completely on you as you support them. Then when you feel the resistance gone from their body, you can gradually let go and presto! they are floating. One of my step dads taught me to float by constantly telling me to Do Nothing.
So this meditation process I learned and use in a modified way is about inviting the scary in, the worry, the anxiety. Examining it, questioning it, befriending it and blowing it away like an eyelash on a fingertip.
Let go.Let God.
Because that cliff you’re clinging to? The drop may be into a river flowing through a tropical forest and you could just float.
Love this! You’re so funny and insightful, friend.