It’s cliche to say “just let it go,” but I’ve found that learning how to let go of thoughts, emotions, ideas, and stories has given me the greatest sense of freedom in my life. I would say more so than any other skill. This realization only came about because I had built up and suppressed so much mental “stuff” that it became completely untenable (burnout), which forced me to try doing the opposite for once. That is, let go instead of hold on. And once you let go of one big thing - like a startup, or a relationship, or a painful memory - then it tends to have a cascading effect on your life, begging the question, what else can I let go of?
Of course, it were so easy, and we knew how powerful ongoing surrender and letting go in life actually was, we would all just let go of everything all the time. But we never really get a guidebook on letting go. In fact we often get told to do the opposite. We are told to “suck it up” or “tough it out” or “don’t give up” and “work harder” and “don’t give up just wait a little longer.” Instead of learning how to go with the flowing river of life, society tells us to row upstream, as if that were the smartest way. Wouldn’t it rather make sense to turn the boat around and just let yourself glide in the other direction?
Despite the fact that there are wonderful therapists, friends, coaches, social workers, counselors, shamans, spiritual guides and meditation teachers and other people out there that could help in this Letting Go process, the truth is that they are not always easy to come by. Too busy, too expensive, tricky time zone. Fortunately, what I’ve found is that you don’t need the best teachers, but ones that are good enough to make sure you’re at least on the right track and don’t make things worse.
And, while you are getting this support from others, then you can still take the best ideas out there and implement them, particularly those well thought-out and elaborated-on ideas in books. This mixed approach of deep self-education and self-inquiry through letting go coupled with hands-on guidance from others is a powerful combination, at least from my experience. With that said I wanted to share a few books with paradigm-shifting ideas that have been important to me in this process of letting go. These are also the books I recommend most to friends. They cover meditation techniques, shadow work, emotional processing, reframing your goals, and living a simpler life. The common theme here is letting go. These are in no particular order - enjoy!
1. The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford
“Everyone sees other people differently because everyone is projecting aspects of him or her self.”― Debbie Ford
Gandhi said that “the only devils in the world are those running around in our hearts.” You project your own vices onto others. The process of expanding our consciousness includes acknowledging and accepting disowned parts of ourselves; in turn, we react less to those traits in others. ‘Expanding consciousness’ here simply means that you are no longer contracted into a self-centered view.
This book has a strange title but deep message. It’s a modern take on Carl Jung’s idea of The Shadow, which refers to the unconscious parts of us. Our unconscious drivers rule our life and often create a lot of the internal and external judgment that comes in the form or greed, jealousy, hatred, shame, anger and sadness.
For me this book led me to further exploring my shadow sides through dream analysis and interpretation. There is a lot of material on the Shadow out there and I found this book to me an excellent starting place. It’s not easy work, but some of the most valuable I’ve done that I will continue to go back to.
2. In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine
“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.”― Peter A. Levine
Dr. Peter Levine has spent his whole life studying trauma. In combination with Shadow Work, learning about the nervous system and how to discharge/release somatically stored energy has been key to my personal growth in the last three years and healing from debilitating burnout.
The body has a natural way to discharge stored stress/trauma energy, kind of like the gazelle shaking off its trauma after being chased by a lion. But when the body is unable to do that, perhaps due to a mix of circumstances/ our personality/ overthinking, our bodies are unable to complete this physiological response. That’s when we can develop symptoms of post traumatic stress – the energy getting “stuck” in our bodies. Trauma is, Dr. Levine says, a process through which our body keeps defending against a threat that took place in the distant past.
While many of us may not think we have trauma, there are varying levels that can be stored in our bodies, and it doesn’t just come from a really rough childhood or barely surviving an earthquake. Chronic anxiety, for example, can be seen as that stored survival stress in your nervous system from years and decades that keeps the body in a state of fight-or-flight (sympathetic), resulting in nasty symptoms and negative habit-patterns.
This book was a starting point for me to understand how my own nervous system worked, and proved invaluable as I worked with a Somatic Experiencing (SE) practitioner.
3. Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender by David Hawkins
“The greater our attachment to that which is outside of ourselves, the greater is our overall level of fear and vulnerability to loss.”― David R. Hawkins
I listened to the well-narrated Audiobook version and found myself nodding in agreement every few minutes. Dr. Hawkins introduces the concept of the "Map of Consciousness," a scale measuring levels of human consciousness. He then systematically goes through some of the main emotions we experiences and unpacks each one to understand how they manifest in our lives and then how to let go of some of the survival-based emotions and make your way up (hint: Let Go).
We often are unsure whether or not to “trust” an emotion, and fight an internal battle about the best course of action. Hawkins makes the point that expression of emotions is over-emphasized nowadays, but this is not always necessary, nor healthy. When the emotion is fear, greed, anger, the best course of action is often to let it run its course through your body — to let it go. (how to do this, exactly, is explained in the book)
When the emotion comes from love/joy/peace/appreciation, or higher up on the rungs, then expressing it with this intention usually has a positive force in the world. This echoes a lot of spiritual teachings, however, his book is pragmatic and doesn’t come off as dogmatic or focused on any particular tradition. If you struggle to understand your emotions and when/how to express your feelings, this book is a game changer.
4. The Path to Nibanna by David Johnson
“The practice of metta and the rest of the Bramaviharas are actually mentioned more frequently: in twelve suttas vs. the breath or Anapanasati practice which is only found in four suttas.”
I first skimmed through this book and found it mildly interesting. Then, with encouragement from a friend, I gave the technique a real go. Talk about a game-changer! This marked a dramatic shift in my meditation practice to experiencing higher chakras, non-dual states and letting go of the feeling I had to chase any sort of “awakening state” any longer. (Although the practice continues, it’s not with the same level of desire and self-focus)
The teachings give very clear instructions to jhana practice, as explained in the earliest Buddhist suttas. If you’re not familiar, jhanas can be described as deep, pleasurable but non-addictive states of meditation. There are 8 of them which culminate in the first stage of awakening, stream entry, according to the Theravada tradition (and the continue to the other three through a deepening process of rinse and repeat). Jhanas are talked about a lot in earlier texts, and in fact most traditions from Christianity to Hinduism have descriptions of similar stages of meditation that have largely been buried in history.
The technique emphasizes relaxing both your mental and physical tightness (using the “6 Rs”) and keeping a smile on your face throughout your meditation sit. The object of meditation is not the breath, but a feeling of loving-kindness, which then naturally shifts into compassion, altruistic joy and equanimity.
I’ll be writing more about my insights from this meditation practice soon. For now I can say that whether you are starting, or are an advanced meditator, the practice outlined in this book is a diamond in the rough.
5. On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers
“…a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” ― Carl R. Rogers
If you tend to find yourself disappointed when you reach goals, or the pleasure from the goal is short-lived, then this is the book for you. It’s written by one of the godfathers of modern psychotherapy, Carl Rogers, who details some of his core views on humanistic psychotherapy. One of the most interesting ideas that resonated with me was this idea of how we relate to ourselves and fixate on goals, and shifting this viewpoint to one of constant change to find greater freedom.
For example, he says that when a client comes in for therapy they typically want to achieve a fixed state: to reach a point where their problems are solved, where they’re more effective at work, or where they have a happy marriage. As the therapy continues and they feel more freedom to express themselves, they tend to drop some of these fixed goals and realize that they’re not a “fixed entity,” but are constantly in a process of becoming something. And that’s when the real therapy starts. Rogers, who counseled thousands of people, says people seem a lot more content in their lives when they take this perspective.
This way of looking at yourself as constantly changing is a choice, and it’s very counter to how the media and society have taught us to think. Meditation can show you this on a very granular level — how things are always changing — and I found Carl Rogers’ explanation from the view of Western psychology to really compliment my existing meditative practice.
6. When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate
“While a young child may not be cognitively aware of family disgrace, emotionally he is absorbing all the negative psychic vibrations of the stressed family system” - Gabor Mate
We live our lives usually in two modes. The cognitive mode, where we use our thinking-mind to plan, organize, stress and worry. Or, we live it through our other senses — feeling the earth beneath our feet, smelling a cup of fresh ginger tea, and watching a sunset.
No doubt that our thinking minds have brought us a long way, and it has its uses. But as far as all the happiness research shows, the tendency of our mind to think of the past/future is counterproductive to our sense of well-being.
More so than that, because of society’s rational-focus, we never learn how to really live in our bodies. We are not embodied. For example, when we feel an afflictive or undesirable emotion like anger or fear — say a colleague pisses you off — we tend to reach for a distraction like food or entertainment. Often times, we numb ourselves and don’t actually process that emotion. A lot of life is spent in a trance, in reaction to things we don’t want to feel.
The consequence of blocking, repressing and suppressing our emotions manifests in our body through higher cortisol levels, higher blood pressure, aches and pains, and whole slew of issues that the massage therapist will never solve until you Let Go and process those emotions. There’s a whole branch of science called psychoneuroimmunology that even links certain emotional states to cancer.
You might have heard of the book by Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score on stored trauma in the body, one of the seminal books on the topic. On the other hand, this book by Gabor Mate The Body Keeps the Score, is kind of like a lighter version of that with examples that are more relatable even if you don’t have severe trauma. This is one of the first books I picked up after my burnout that shed light on what happened. Highly recommended.
7. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.”― Michael A. Singer
We all have a voice inside our head that is constantly judging, criticizing, sizing up, and making comments about our internal and external world. This voice has been around for so long that we believe it is us, and that we should pay close attention to what this voice says. This misunderstanding is the cause for most of the world’s suffering.
However, when we acknowledge that thoughts/emotions can be observed by us in the moment, judgmentally, we can start to see that we are not those things, but rather we are the one observing the thoughts and emotions. We are the observer, not the observed. Building awareness and presence allows you to see the endless stream of thoughts for what they are — the endlessly changing weather, clouds passing the sky — and realizing that we are the blue sky behind it all.
This simple point, explained very eloquently in the book, is the starting point to letting go, of “untethering” the soul. That is, to let go of the stuff, blockages, and gunk from our lives and freeing up consciousness to float up, expand outwards. This book is more spiritual, but it’s practical and like any good meditation book, gives you concrete examples that you can examine in your own life.
If you know nothing about meditation and want a simple yet profound introduction, then start here. Or, if you have been meditating for a while, this book is still useful because it reframes meditation from an on-the-cushion job to a lifelong journey. Michael Singer is unique as a meditation teacher because he’s not a secluded monk on top a mountain top, but has experiencing building more than one very large business and maintaining a yoga and meditation practice throughout. Not as an additional practice, but using the "difficult stuff” of every day life and business for spiritual growth, which is where it matters most.