Letting Go of our Garbage

There is a man in Alachua, Florida named Mickey Singer. I found him through one of his books called "The Surrender Experiment", and I really resonated with him. I was so drawn to his experiences that I decided to visit him at his "Temple of the Universe" a few months ago. I enjoyed hearing him speak, and then spoke to him briefly in private. He's a fascinating guy. Since the pandemic started, he has been posting his talks on his website. I listened to one of his recent talks, and it inspired me to write the following. To be fair, most of what follows came from Mickey. I am paraphrasing some of what he said and summarizing the main ideas that spoke to me. Hopefully they'll be useful to someone else too.

Temple of the Universe in Alachua, Florida 

Every single thing that happens to us is for our benefit if we are willing to let go and enjoy the ride. It's only when we 1) cling to what we want or 2) resist what we don't want that our lives become a living hell.

By letting go, we allow ourselves to live in the moment. Each action we take becomes an end unto itself. We cease to work for money - we work for the sake of the work we're doing. We cease to interact with loved ones for what we can get out of the relationship - we interact with them for the sake of the interaction. We cease to look for ends and results other than the experience we are having at the moment.

And this can be fulfilling when we recognize that every experience we have makes us a better person. If it's a pleasant experience, we enjoy the pleasantness. If it's an unpleasant experience, we open to it and grow from the challenge it presents.

No more struggle. Life becomes peaceful. The world becomes friendly. There are no more enemies. Every one and every thing that touches our lives works for our good (Romans 8:28) because we use every experience to become a greater being. Everything in the world becomes God to us, lifting us up and helping us reach our full potential.

So it really comes down to letting go and living in the moment. But how do we let go? We have to learn to relax in the midst of trouble. And meditation is a great tool for helping us do that. It can train us to become more conscious and aware of everything that's going on regardless of circumstance.

With this combination of focus and relaxation, a kind of intense state of rest, we can begin to see clearly as garbage we have stored in our psyches begins to come up. As it arises, we can become conscious enough to look at it without getting mixed up in it. We watch it do its thing, and by not investing it with our energy, we begin to let it go.

The practice of focusing our attention on something other than our minds gives us the ability to distance ourselves from the mental chatter when our emotions start to go crazy because something happens that triggers the garbage we have stored inside. Meditation is training for the real spiritual/psychological work that happens when life gets hard. It give us the tools to let go. It enables us to become comfortable being uncomfortable. We recognize when we're not ok - and we're ok with that.

It might take many experiences with a single piece of garbage, whatever it is, before we're able to release it. It could be a traumatic experience in our past or a fear of something that might happen in the future. But whatever it is, if we keep at it, it will eventually disappear. And piece by piece, we will gradually remove the sewage in our psyches, and having cleansed our souls, we'll begin to live more deeply and authentically. Our entire lives can become free, and we simply live life instead of doing battle with it.