Where Do We Go If We Let Go?
I was heading into a massage session when the instructor entering behind me gently touched my upper back. She leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “what do you think will happen if you let go” and pressing the point said, “right here?” It was stunning. My tears welled up. I didn’t know what it was, but I had been carrying it around since I was a child forever being the good soldier.
Why not let go? What will happens if I lose? What the hell am I trying to prove? What is it I’m carrying?
I can be like a dog with a bone sometimes. 
When I’m passionate about something I hate the idea of letting go. It’s mine, damn it, even if it’s hurting me. But that’s me. Everyone has their own style of attachment. And attachment will always lead to struggle because we’re trying to hold something still in a universe that is always moving. Reality is stretching and expanding, dissolving and moving away from us, as we desperately cling and grab to anything we can. Oh what joy when we find that bone to gnaw!
The late absurdist auteur, David Lynch, once drew a multi-frame cartoon he called “The Angriest Dog in the World.” It was a picture of a dog straining against its tether growling fiercely, that was copied in several frames unchanging, as day turned to night, the the seasons changed around him.
I kind of loved that guy. I think we admire people who are fighting cancer, or refusing to go gently into the night. There seems to be virtue in struggling against the laws of the universe.
One thing about human experience is when something goes awry, it reminds us how little control we have. This makes us feel small. When things don’t go our way, it’s not a punishment. It’s an opportunity to adjust and even grow. But it generally feels pretty bad.
On the other hand, when things work out the way we expect, or better than we expect, there is no end to the auto-backslapping. Perhaps it’s best to employ the middle path and not to take too much credit. It’s just life. It happens to all of us.
But it’s not about any of us. Still, this stubborn Taurus often feels there must be something at the end of the struggle other than a pile of discarded discord.
Once I’m engaged in a struggle, I seem to have to prove something to somebody. I’m going to save this relationship, or I’m going to tell this person off though I never do and just toss about in my bed all night. At some point, I’m just struggling for the struggle. I’m attached to the energy. Attachment brings suffering—I’ve done the research—and it’s a pretty universal human experience. When we grab hold of something we deem important, we don’t want to let it go. Our ego latches on, and whatever grand justification we started with, the war becomes all about us.
Whether we’re gnawing on a bone to pick or basking in a relationship we hope will never end, we’re stuck in attachment. No matter the rationale, the outcome is suffering.
When we grip tightly enough, we lose sight of the suffering 
altogether. We keep going because after all the investment, letting go feels frightening. Being right and refusing to listen can feel like strength, like clarity—but it isn’t clarity at all. It’s ego blindness. The part of us that needs to prove a point takes over. Our view becomes so narrow, so refined, so focused on our objective that it feels like certainty.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says one obstacle in science is when people know enough to think they’re right, but not enough to see they’re wrong. Since we actually don’t know, the wiser move is to let go.
Letting go doesn’t mean we’re wrong. It isn’t judgment or punishment. It’s a physical experience of loosening our grip.
Dogs eventually have to drop the bone to eat. Children eventually leave the tattered, saliva-ridden doll behind when they go to school. The attachment was soothing—but it isn’t sustainable.
Everything changes. Everything is subject to the movement of the universe. Things only appear solid and unchanging. Great pain comes from believing “this is the way it is,” or knowing it will change but insisting it change our way. Needing control, we choose to suffer, holding onto it, growling if anyone tries to take it away.
I once said to a struggling student, “Have you noticed how when you’re tired and underslept, everything feels more important and more dangerous?” She stared at me with dagger eyes and said “no.” An amazing teaching: sometimes the best thing is to shut up and let people discover it themselves.
Surrender means letting go with body, spirit, and mind. Wherever we’re gripping, there’s tension in the body. Feeling that tension, knowing it’s causing discomfort, and doing nothing to fix the story is the first step. We get addicted to the drama because it feels like control.
Letting go in spirit means releasing our attachment to how the struggle makes us feel—powerful, victimized, justified. Letting go in the mind is harder. We don’t just “stop thinking.” We replay arguments in bed at night. The way out is through love and kindness, drawing the attention out of the body. Until we let go of attachment to feeling bad or feeling victorious, we keep planting seeds of suffering.
Love naturally brings openness and surrender. Mindfulness helps us remember that whatever we latch onto becomes inaccurate and becomes suffering—for us and often for others.
In 12-step communities they say, let go and let God. In the Pentecostal tradition I grew up in, surrender was physical—tears, release, catharsis. In Buddhist tantric traditions, a transmission can release gripping in an instant, sometimes with nothing more than a clap of the hands. Letting go doesn’t have to be heavy. It can be joyous. A relief. An offering.
As we surrender and let go of proving anything, our body softens, the struggle ends, and we sit upright and open. We are making an offering to the universe, while allowing ourselves a fresh start.
