I remember letting go of a severe attachment for 11 days, sitting and doing nothing but letting go of this attachment. Every thought, every feeling, every memory, everything about it—as it arose, it was surrendered. The grief that we feel when we lose a member of our family is not just about losing that person here and now. It’s an accumulation of

the technique of letting go gives you the power of choice over the tendencies of mind. Instead of being at its effect, the mind is now under your mastery. It opens up freedom and the capacity for free choice.

We think that somehow, if we hang on to that feeling, it is going to get us what we want. If we get stuck in a feeling, it is useful to look at the question of what we think we have accomplished by hanging on to it.

a self-investigative technique that rapidly opens up awareness of inner feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.

You just accept that all relationships have their ups and downs. You have to have a sense of humor about the human condition itself and its seeming contradictions and paradoxes. You want the other person to be happy and comfortable, and you know that you are happy and comfortable when they are happy and comfortable. There is a mutual alignment with

become familiar with what the other person is processing and their style of expression. There are often different attitudes and preferences. Very common differences are preferences over room temperature, volume settings, and how to spend money. The key is to let go of being judgmental of the other person’s preferences or feeling prideful about your

Repression is an unconscious process by which unaccepted feelings are put out of awareness and not dealt with. In shifting attention, you make a choice not to indulge the negative emotion. You have already acknowledged and accepted the feeling within yourself as part of being human, but you are choosing to let it go because you want something

There’s a common illusion that spiritually evolved, loving people never have any negativity, as though they are already angelic. They get annoyed that they still have negative feelings, and then it’s compounded by their guilt and self-frustration. They have to realize that feelings are transitory, whereas their intention to evolve remains constant.

As most meditators have discovered, achieving silence of the mind is the main problem of meditation itself. This is because suppressed feelings constantly produce thoughts, which are the main distractions in meditation. Acknowledging and letting go of the energy behind these suppressed feelings, therefore, facilitates the goal of meditation. When