Hi samuel,

The answers you’ve received are all so good, and may I just say that whenever I read from Peter I walk away inspired. “Letting go” is about accepting and observing each thought instead of resisting or identifying with it. If your thoughts consist of problems that you are resisting or identifying with then you will suffer.

For example, say you’ve had a falling out with a close friend because she made a terribly hurtful comment to you, and every time you think about it you relive the suffering of this experience. You may think that one solution to this problem would be to not think about her making the comment to you (resist the thought), but this rarely works because we can’t control our thoughts, so an alternative is to accept that you’re having the thought but choose to not relive the suffering. This can be accomplished by envisioning her making the same hurtful comment to a random person instead of you. In other words, become an objective observer of the situation happening to someone else, like watching two people interacting in a movie. You may feel angry, sad, and sympathetic but there’s some space now between you and the situation meaning less personal suffering for you, right? By observing the situation from this detached perspective you still feel feelings but experience less suffering. Now go ahead and insert yourself back into the situation, and take a deep breath. Objectively observe the situation happening to you just like you did earlier to the random person. How do you feel now? You see and hear the hurtful comment being made to you, and you fully accept that this thought is now in your head and you choose not to resist it, but this time do you identify with the thought a little less than before? Do you feel a little less angry, sad, and hurt? If so, you now have an awareness that you have the ability to observe yourself from a detached perspective and still feel feelings but experience less suffering. Over time the hurt/suffering from the situation may become less and less until it disappears altogether. It doesn’t happen instantaneously; it happens over time. To me, this is “letting go”.

As Peter says, “Letting go is not a state of indifference or forgetting…Its a process of growth as we bravely observe the experience…”

B