The Ability to LET GO of Struggle

Because the belief in struggle is so strong in our world, I wanted to share with you a dream I had which helped me to realize struggle was a choice. At the time I had this dream, I was in a great deal of emotional pain. I, like most people, believed I needed to suffer in order to grow.

The dream did not change my outside circumstances, but it helped me see my life in a new way.

In my dream, I was in a room with many other people. In the process of moving across the room, we had to crawl through a tunnel filled with bees. It was impossible to accomplish our journey without being stung several times. After I had completed a pass through the first tunnel, I came to a resting place. The people here were recovering from their bites while preparing to enter a second tunnel.

Although I wanted to complete my journey, I was not eager to go through the same painful experience again. I looked around the room and I noticed a man standing by a door. I approached him, asking if there was another way to travel without all the suffering. He smiled at me and said, “Yes, you can go through here.” He opened the door into a beautiful garden. I completed my journey by following the path through the garden, enjoying the sun light and beauty all around me.

As I reviewed this dream, I realized most of us go through life experiencing the pain and struggle of life, never looking for any alternatives. The people in my dream assumed there was only one way to accomplish the task before them. When I got tired of being bitten, I decided to look for another route. The man at the door was not blocking the way nor hiding its presence. He was there to assist anyone who asked for help. When I decided to let go of the struggle, my journey became one of joy and beauty.

Over the years, I have shared this dream with many people. Most people are shocked at the idea that struggle is a choice. It is not a concept they have ever entertained. Their experience of life has taught them to expect to struggle. For some, it is a pleasant relief to release this old concept. Others are not ready to make such a drastic change in perspective.

Struggle is a choice. It is your right and responsibility to choose. As shown in my dream, whenever you decide to look for another path, there is always someone there to show you the way.

Letting go of struggle does not mean I will never again run into obstacles in my life. Challenges still present themselves to me. It is my perspective that has changed. I see these events as opportunities to watch as the power of God is demonstrated in my life.

Consider these ideas about “letting be” and “letting go”:

*Feelings naturally are felt and integrate when we allow them to be there or let them be.

*Feeling will intensify and endure if we try to get rid of them, resist having them or try to move them in anyway.

*Words have different emotional connotations. The phrase to “let go” may have different meanings to folks. Consider these typical meanings of the word “go” In the Random House College Dictionary:

(1) To move or to proceed to or from something.
(2) To leave a place, to depart.
(3) To keep in motion or to be in motion.

With such typical meanings, the word “go” can easily be experienced as moving something or putting something in motion. Viewed in this way “letting go” becomes anywhere from subtle to very pure resistance. Couple this “letting go” with the image of letting an object drop and you are neither allowing or permitting which are the heart of integration, you are trying to move something or put it in motion. Here letting go is resistance.

If “letting go” is understood in the Buddhist mindfulness sense as allowing or permitting it to be there, to “let it be” then there is no resistance. “Letting be” leads to feeling and to integration.

Unless someone understands “letting go” as “letting be” then they are doomed to be resist their feelings in a subtle and often not so subtle way. Any methods that try to move something is teaching resistance. Someone may indeed let go of some surface tension, but that’s hardly the heart of a feeling. The emotional coloring’s projection or the emotional charge remains.

The stuff of the intuitive message remains to be reprojected. Naturally this will reform and before long the surface tension starts to make its way back. In a day or two, a week. When the relaxation is no longer there, then the issue begins it’s return.

By all means let your feeling “be”, allow it to be there, or welcome and permit it’s presence. Your feelings and emotions are valuable bio-messengers, not something to be shunted away because they may feel distinctly uncomfortable at times. Every problem contains its own solution. I may not know how things will be resolved, but I am sure a solution will appear.

I can now flow with the circumstances in my life, trusting that the answer will soon be revealed. This perspective creates a feeling of peace and joyous anticipation. Without trust, I resist those difficult situations, creating a feeling of struggle. The feelings and thoughts of fear create more chaos and pain. I may not be able to choose every event that appears in my life, but I can always choose how I will view those situations.

An Affirmation for Letting Go

I am willing to trust. I know that to the degree I am willing to give up my search for a healthy love relationship, I can have it. I know I can have whatever I am ready and willing to receive. Individual receptivity is everything. Without it, nothing changes. With it, all things are possible. I no longer insist upon my choice.

I know that the only thing I lose when I let go of something I am afraid to live without is the fear itself. I am stronger than anything that frightens me!

I let go of the past, and I am free to think clearly and positively in the present. I am not my past.

Letting go is the natural release which always follows the realization that holding on is an energy drain and it hurts. Letting go happens effortlessly when there is no other choice. Letting go does not mean giving up.

** Love Note. . . A life without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth — with the fire dead, the laughter stilled, and the light extinguished. – Frank P. Tebbetts

Letting go is a journey that never ends. Never. It only begins — over and over again — each time I can glimpse something higher than my own painful certainty over who I think I am. There is always something higher; a life beyond the limits of my present sight.

To see what is farther I must be willing to lift my eyes from their present point of focus. Release always follows revelation and real revelation is always a glimpse of something that was only just out of sight.

I know that stress in my love relationship exists because I insist! What I resist, persists. I am tied to whatever I avoid.

**Love Note. . . The heart loves, but moods have no loyalty. Moods should be heard but never danced to. – Hugh Prather

It is a mistaken belief that I must push my love relationship in the direction I choose that keeps me in a strained and unhappy relationship with it. Reality has its own effortless course, and I can either embrace its way or struggle endlessly with mine.

I do not need power to flow.

I let go of that part of myself that is certain it is better to suffer and feel like someone than it is to just let go and quietly be no one. I give birth to a new me that never has to hold on to anything because it is already everything.

I dare to walk away from all of the familiar but useless mental and emotional relationships that give me a temporary but unsatisfactory sense of self. My true identity is calling me and to hear it I must be willing to endure, for as long as necessary, the fear of self-uncertainty.

This form of seeming self-abandonment eventually turns into my greatest pleasure as it becomes increasingly evident that the only thing certain about fear is that it will always compromise me. When it comes to who I really am, there is no compromise.

Let go of the past. The past is yesterday. It is irretrievable. When you relate to the past, you relate to no one or any thing. You are literally talking to yourself. No one else is listening. You have already heard all you have to say about that, so, let go.

A Course in Miracles says, “You cannot really not let go what has already gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that it has not gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want fulfilled.”

It is certifiable insanity to conjure up your own reality based on the past and relate to it, rather than to relate to the present which is the only reality.

**Love Note. . . Relationships are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which he brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. – Marianne Williamson

I say goodbye to the past and hello to the present.

I am enthusiastic about who I am becoming! I know that no one sincerely asks for a new life until they are thoroughly dissatisfied with the old one. I am and I let go. When I allow myself to let go of what is old, I stay true to what is new.

I believe that as with all insight, higher understanding itself contains not only the instructions I must follow, but the strength I will need to carry them out.

Starting life over again is the key to a new me. I see the beauty and significance of starting over – over and over and over. Every present moment is always new and new is always right now! The new dies to the ever-new in an endless celebration of Life.

This is it!

I live in the present. I never let the past dictate the direction of the present moment. I give my best to my endeavors.

What lies ahead for me can only be good.

True peace and harmony are a part of who I am.

I have come to the realization that what is possible for me to become only truly changes when I am willing to see what is impossible for me to continue being.

My true nature is already fully independent and flying freely. I have found my wings.

I let go and let God. And so it is.

The Healing Power Of Dreams

“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.” – C.G. Jung

Dreams are doorways to the subconscious, pathways to the spirit realm and keys to the future. Dreams serve as a communication line between the invisible and visible worlds. Or, if you prefer, between heaven and earth. A dream is a real-life experience an individual has on another plane. We, in our true nature as Soul, are able to have experiences in a far-reaching panorama of life. Dreams are constantly rehearsing us for challenges and opportunities that lie around the corner in waking life. This is why Dream Work is also important.

There is a healing instinct within you that can manifest in dreams. You’d be surprised at the straightforward health advice they give, either spontaneously or on request. Tips on food, preventive therapies, treatment options constantly come through-but we miss them. Once remembered the essence of many of our dreams is lost because we, or our therapists, misinterpret them.

A patient told me about a recurring broccoli dream. “You can’t be serious,” he said, chuckling. “It’s actually trying to tell me what to eat? A vegetable?” Yes-it was. We often dismiss such practical suggestions as meaningless. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Keep it simple. Try something new. If you dream of eating a luscious mango, run out, devour one. Or when, in a dream, you’re soaking in natural hot springs, make a date to go. How do you know if the advice you receive is right? Count on common sense to direct you. Though some intuitive flashes may seem impractical or unexpected, the authentic ones will never suggest anything to jeopardize you or anyone else’s physical welfare.

So, for instance, if you have heart disease and a dream tells you, “It’s okay to smoke cigarettes,” don’t do it. Question all messages that risk your health. Along with this guideline, begin to familiarize yourself with traditional dream interpretation. I suggest Carl Jung’s classic text Man and His Symbols, or take a look at Creative Dreaming by Dr. Patricia Garfield.

In addition, there’s an intuitive level to understanding dreams of which I’d like you to be aware. Reliable intuitive information stands out in very specific ways. Watch for these clues:

Statements that simply convey information

Neutral segments that evoke or convey no emotion

A detached feeling, like you’re a witness watching a scene

A voice or person counseling you-as if you’re taking dictation from an outside source

Conversations with people you never met before who give instructions about your health

I’ve found that my most dead-on intuitions either come across as compassionate or have no emotion at all. Develop a careful eye as you practice separating the content of your dreams from your reactions to it. Soon you’ll be able to tell what is reliable health guidance and what is not.

Be aware that your dreams go by different rules than your waking life. Get ready for a mind shift. Physical laws no longer apply. Gravity changes. In dreams you can fly!

Remember as a child (or adult) when you took off wingless, soared over mountains and valleys below. Health wise, this is a reminder of the vitality and freedom that is in you. Silence is pregnant. A dream’s tone can be as restorative as its content; a revelation about staying well can come through someone’s eyes rather than words.

You are in partnership with your dreams. Initiate an ongoing dialogue with them. It’s like consulting the wisest old-time family doctor you can imagine who knows you inside out. You can ask your dreams anything-even what seems most impossible.

How can I keep my blood pressure down? What about my hip pain or allergies? Are there ways to stop catching so many colds? No question is trivial if it is meaningful to you. Expect answers. Some will be direct. Others may require interpretation.

Dreams can keep you well. Dreams provide answers. But first you must retrieve them. How many nights have you awakened with the most amazing dream you were certain you’d recall? The next morning it was gone.

Our memories deceive. During sleep we experience a kind of amnesia. Dreams are not of the rational mind. Your intuitive memory is what is needed. Here is a method I recommend to remember your dreams. It’s helpful to practice it each day. Soon it will become second nature to you.

Four Strategies To Remember Your Dreams

Keep a journal and pen by your bed.

Write a question on a piece of paper before you go to sleep. Formalize your request. Place it on a table beside your bed or under your pillow.

In the morning do not wake up too fast. Stay under the covers for at least a few minutes remembering your dream. Luxuriate in a peaceful feeling between sleep and waking, what scientists call the hypnagogic state. Those initial moments provide a doorway.

Open your eyes. Write down your dream immediately; otherwise it will evaporate. You may recall a face, object, color, or scenario, feel an emotion. It doesn’t matter if it makes perfect sense-or if you retrieve a single image or many. Record everything you remember.

When you’re finished refocus on the health question you asked the previous night. See how your dream applies. One, two, or more impressions about the who/what/where of your solution may have surfaced.

Get in the habit of recording your dreams regularly. Be assured I’ve never met anyone who can’t be taught how to remember. Keep at it. If your answer doesn’t come the first night, try again. More details will emerge, rounding out the picture.

Then look to your daily life for evidence of what your dream tells you. The woman’s face you glimpsed for that split second could just be that of the healer you’ve been searching for.

I am guided every day by the five intuitive steps I’ve just presented. They have become my eyes. They can be yours too. The intuitions about your health I speak of and live by are ordinarily without boundary and are unseen.

As you go through these steps they highlight, truths about your body, providing a framework in which to recognize them. Ordering allows for a simple, focused understanding. I have a great respect for structure as long as it facilitates our freedom.

Go through the steps with this in mind. With each health question you ask, be prepared to expand or contract in response to whatever fluid motion is called for. Surrender all preconceptions about your healing. This realm I’m attempting to outline ultimately escapes definition. The mastermind of all things intuitive, the brains behind the scene, is of an infinite source.

What if, just once, you let yourself go, accept the gift unconditionally? I dare you. What do you have to lose? And to gain? Breathe fire into what is dormant in you: your intuitions about a healthy body, your sense of spiritual power from which all your intuitions come.

Make these connections count. They will last a lifetime. Open yourself to knowledge of how to heal. Let the mystery touch you. It is everything, everything.

SHARING OUR DREAMS

Everyone wakes up on some mornings and wonders about the dream, or nightmare, they just had. If the dream bothers you, or comes back to you in the daytime and you want to know its meaning, you should be aware of some ways of analyzing or interpreting your dreams.

Analysis, interpretation and looking at the symbols in your dreams give you a good sense of your dreams. You can usually feel better about the bad ones, and feel terrific about the insight you gain from the good ones (there are no “bad” dreams — they can all be used to help you).

5 Reasons To Look At Your Dreams:

Because they give you a startlingly original point of view about your life.

Because some dreams are so fabulous all you should do is learn to recall the feeling.

Because some dreams are awful and you’d just like them to STOP.

Because the dream is telling you something you need to know.

Because the dream always gives you a way of solving the problem that it raises – even for nightmares and recurring dreams.

Benefits from sharing our dreams. When we talk about our dreams with other people, we learn about dreams, ourselves, and the people with whom we are sharing. We learn about dreams. When people tell us their dreams, we gain insight into their personal dreamscape, their symbolism (and their ways of interpreting or dreamwork that symbolism), and their ways of managing dreamland problems and possibilities.

We can use much of this information in our own dream studies. And when we talk about dreams, this attention helps us to recall more of them; this further advances our education.

We learn about ourselves. When we describe our dreams to other people, their feedback gives us different perspectives — perhaps ones which are more honest than our own, because those people don’t have the repressions and biases that distort our interpretations of our own dreams.

They help us to see meanings which we don’t discern because of our limited perspective and possibly because our reluctance to probe into unpleasant parts of our psyche. Also, because dreams have more than one meaning, other people’s interpretations can help us to discover those additional meanings; otherwise, we might have been satisfied with the first interpretation which occurred to us.

We learn about other people. We strengthen relationships when we talk about dreams with people whom we trust and love; the “trust” implies that the information will not be ridiculed or gossiped or used against us later, and the “love” means that we accept the person’s weaknesses and shadowy unpleasantries which might be expressed in the dream. Within the context of dream-sharing, we can talk about our intimate feelings, our fears, our passions, and the ways in which we view our lives and the world.

When we discuss a dream, we have a means of addressing an issue in our relationship without a direct confrontation; the dream itself brought up the issue, and it did so in a manner in which we can comfortably disclaim responsibility (however incorrectly) for the emotions which were expressed, because it was a dream character (and not us) who said something pertaining to the subject.

Remember that a dream in which the other person appears is not necessarily a dream about that person; the character might be representing something else. But sometimes the character does symbolize that person; if so, he or she is likely to have dreamed about us in return.

Everyone dreams!
That’s a remarkable fact.
There are no exceptions.
It’s a rule of life…

Each night we are taken on an experience. We have almost no say in where or with whom. We don’t even have all our wits about us. It is sometimes fun but quite often the experience is very intense or disturbing. Whether we remember our dreams or not, we are always dreaming. And most of us are considering the meaning of the dream.

But how many people talk about their dreams, whether good ones or bad ones? Most people brush them aside as they get out of bed and leave them behind. They miss out on it all. You don’t have to interpret or analyze every dream and — especially at the beginning– you may not feel satisfied with your own interpretations.

You can work with your dreams and you can play with your dreams. You can create your own dream dictionary — the dream symbols that are most meaningful to you.. It makes a big difference to what you know about who you are. I strongly believe that even the simple act of telling someone else your dream can have a great effect on your life.

There are ways of looking at your dreams that are easy to learn, respectful and illuminating. They tend to make nightmares and unpleasant dreams go away and they allow you to look at the mystery and wonder that is always present in a dream.