Letting Go Can Save Your Life!
I was amazed at the great metaphor that was made available to me this morning in the story of Carole Grant-Sullivan, who was interviewed on CBC radio's program The Current.
She went on to describe how she found herself climbing in South America (The Andes), and in the blink of an eye, while near a peak, she suddenly lost her grip and footing and fell. The height of the fall was measured to be approximately 2,000 feet; higher than the CN Tower!
The metaphor for me came in what she described as the thing that saved her life. She descibed that, as she was in full fall, with her back to the rocky and snowy ground she was expecting to hit any second, a voice came to her telling her to "stay loose, stay flexible" instead of instinctually "bracing" (hardening up) for the impact! and although she could not remember anything else until she came to a full stop on the side of the high mountain, she has no doubt that having done so (stayed soft and letting go), saved her life.
Wow! I thought. What a metaphor for my life!
How often have I found things "harder" than they really were; or made things more difficult myself by holding on to ideas (beliefs, attitudes) that we're bumping up against the thing I was experiencing. I wonder how many heart attacks and strokes might be avoided, if we were made to believe that "softening and being flexible" in the chest area might prevent such things?
Can you imagine a harder impact than a 2000 foot fall onto a rocky cliff side?
I wonder what are the rocks for which we are bracing ourselves, that we might otherwise soften (ourselves) about or become flexible with, before we suffer the big impact?
So often, I have found myself gripping the thing I'm holding onto so hard as to affect the circulation in my hands. There is no way to "grasp" onto something new, some new possibility, when my hands are full, and I don't recognize that it's up to me to let go of the "past" to grab something new that might be more useful to my survival today, this instant?!
It is quite easy for me to remember the many times I was "bracing" myself (worrying, being anxious, nervous, getting depressed) for the "impacts" of my life...and many times, all of that energy went into bracing myself for "imagined impacts" that never developed!
So often, we live in fear, bracing for the things that never happen in the ways we've imagined them. My experience lately is one of "letting go", of softening, being more assured of being present to anything that is going on, rather than preparing for what might come that I may not be ready for. Breathing, trusting my ability to take any fall, only then can I trust myself to fly as high as I want to, knowing that I can survive any landings, as soft or as hard as they come!
creating at the rhythm of my breath,
RAY