Releasing the Mind & Body

It usually hurts to release something.

Getting rid of something - a habit, an emotional trait, a belief - almost always hurts because it feels like you're trading something for nothing. No matter how healthy or unhealthy the behavior or habit is, be it an addiction or a tendency to smile when you see birds, releasing anything can be tough because, at least for a moment, you feel like you have less than you did before.

One trades the sensation of fullness for the sensation of being empty. For this reason, many have a hard time 'letting go' of things like unhealthy relationships, addictions, or habitual behavior. After a time, they begin to identify with it and tend to protect or deny it.


The important thing to recognize here is that releasing something creates room for an infinite multitude of possibilities. Sure, when you release something, you're left feeling like an empty void. In that void, though, lies the unlimited and unmanifested potential of your mind. In that void, you can create whatever you want.

Long-term habits and addictions are often the hardest to deal with because they can become entire lifestyles. To an addict (like myself), letting go of an addiction was like letting go of myself. By the time I needed to quit, I was so identified with the lifestyle that I couldn't let go because I had nothing else to hold on to.

The freedom created in release, however, brings in the room for whatever you want. Never holding on to anything means that you're always able to create more.

This is true not only of psychology but of life. Many of us are afraid to renounce our bodies because we fear that, without them, there will be nothing but the void. So often do we become so attached to this five-fingered form that we hesitate to consider any other possibilities. The world is encompassing, certainly, but much more lies beyond it.

The stillness found in death is not truly the absence of Being but the fullness of infinite possibility. Some fear that letting go of the body is the same as letting go of life, but this is no truer than saying that letting go of an addiction is letting go of life.

Letting go of an addiction provides the space in which you can create whatever sort of life you want. Letting go of the body provides the space for us to create any sort of existence we want.