The Wisdom of Letting Go

The Wisdom of Letting Go

What Is “Letting Go”?

“Letting go” literally means releasing your close or tight fist in order to abandon or give up something that you are holding in your hand. If you are close- or tight- fisted, you also cannot receive anything. “Letting go” is detachment.

The opposite of “letting go” is “attaching to” something that you are stubbornly holding on to.

The Wisdom in Asking Questions

There is an old proverb that says: “He who cannot ask cannot live.” Life is all about asking questions, and seeking answers from all the questions asked, including questions about “letting go.”

To live well, you need to ask yourself many self-probing questions as you continue on your life journey in order to find out: who you really are, and not who you think or wish you were; what you really need, and not what you want from life; why certain undesirable things happened while certain desirable things did not happen to you. Without knowing the answers to those questions asked, you can never be genuinely happy because you will always be looking for the unreal and the unattainable, just like the carrot-and-stick mule forever reaching out for the unreachable carrot in front.

In many ways, the human brain is like a computer program. Your whole being is like the computer hardware with the apparatus of a mind, a body, and its five senses. The lens through which you see yourself, as well as others and the world around you, are the software that has been programmed by your thoughts, your past and present experiences, as well as your own desires and expectations. In other words, it is you—and nobody else—who have programmed your own mindset. All these years, you may have been trapped in a constricted sense of the self that has prevented you from knowing and being who you really are. That is to say, your “conditioned” thinking mind may have erroneously made you "think" and even "believe" that you are who and what you are right now; but nothing could be further from the truth.

By asking relevant questions, you may have the human wisdom to "change" that pre-conditioned mindset, and thus enabling you to separate the truths from the half-truths or even the myths that you may have created for yourself voluntarily or involuntarily all these years.

The important thing in questioning is to experience everything related to all the questions you ask concerning yourself, others, and the world around you. Live every question in its full presence.

Always ask yourself many “how” and “why” questions regarding whatever you may do, say, and want in your everyday life and living. Ask questions not just about yourself, but also about all those around you, whether they are connected to your or not.

Be patient toward all those questions that you cannot find the answers right away. Enlightenment may dawn on you one day when you ask fewer or even no more questions, because by then you may already have got all the answers; that is your ultimate self-awakening to the truths.

Empower your thinking mind to increase its wisdom by asking questions to initiate its intent to learn, to discover, and then to change yourself for the better.

Ultimately, you will self-intuit the wisdom of letting go, which plays a pivotal role in how you are going to live the rest of your life.

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Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau