Let it Go: Conversations on Letting Go & Guided Letting Go Sessions

By Mario Ange

Letting go is a powerful tool to free yourself from emotional suffering in its most diverse forms, but also from certain unconscious patterns, habits and blockages. This book helps you get a better understanding of letting go and teaches you how to practice it in your daily life so you can reclaim the peace and joy that you are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387522019

Book preview

1. Suffering is universal/happiness is the most and only important thing

Q: I'm grateful my mental health is sort of improving lately. I'm at a good place and I love it, though I don't know if it's something that's going to be constant or it's the 'calm' before a storm.

I’m grateful I’m still alive. I've thought of ending my life a lot of times but somehow, I just never get to do it, so I'm proud I'm still alive.

A: Oh. And I guess nobody around you knows that you suffer from depression?

Q: Yes, no one knows.

A: And when was the last time you felt like taking your life?

Q: A month or two ago.

A: Well, if you haven't done anything to deal with it –I mean if it has improved just on its own, without any active agent of change, or because you are satisfied with the external circumstances of your life at the moment – then yes, I think it's just an illusion/the calm before a storm…

Learning to deal with your emotions and being happy/at peace all the time is literally the most important thing in life. Being in control of one's emotional well-being is the most difficult thing ever. People don't know. Becoming a billionaire or curing cancer is absolutely nothing compared to that. Do you know how many famous, rich, beautiful and successful people commit suicide every year in the world?...

Anyway, my point is that it's a very universal problem. A problem that has absolutely nothing to do with how much money you have or how poor you are, or how successful you are or whether you are single or married to the love of your life. It's a problem absolutely independent of all the other things in life. Either you resolve it or it is there. And nothing external can resolve it for you – whether it's meeting a very special person and falling in love with them or achieving financial success, or any other thing.

And to me, it's the most urgent thing to do. Working on being happy.

For most people happiness is defined by how good things are going in their lives. But that's not happiness. That's just things going great. Happiness is independent of what happens in your life. You are happy or you are not. You can be poor and sick and be happy and you can be rich and healthy and be miserable. People never learn this. So, they spend their lives chasing after things and forget about being happy. And when they finally get all the things they strived for, they notice that they are still not happy. And they don't understand.

Anyway, the subject of happiness is very important for me. I battled with intense unhappiness for years. So I think I can help you. Would you like that?

Q: I would really like that. I’m really ready.

A: I'm happy to hear that.

A: we will start by establishing the facts and the truth about happiness and suffering.

Q: Wait. What do you think about this? It’s from a post about a suicide pod in Switzerland that allows those who want to end their lives to do it painlessly:

Happiness isn’t attainable for everyone, even with all the mental healthcare money can buy. Why prolong other’s suffering for your own sense of comfort?

A: 1/I have nothing against suicide. I just don't think it's a lasting solution to suffering. Because I believe in reincarnation. If you take your life because of suffering, you will just be reborn with that same suffering. So just deal with it now.

2/I agree that we should let people who want to commit suicide commit suicide, as long as they have considered all their options. In general, my opinion is to let people do what they want as long as they are adults who know what they are doing and as long as they are not hurting physically other people. Or hurting physically other people without their consent.

3/Indeed people are against suicide and a lot of other things just because of their own personal feelings/discomfort

4/I don't agree with the view that person has of happiness. I think happiness can be attained in a minute. Literally. And yes, it's for everyone. And no need of money or years of mental healthcare.

Q: Alright, we can proceed.

A: Do you agree with everything I said earlier about happiness?

Q: Yes, I do.

A: And do you also agree that being happy is the most important thing in life?

Q: Yes, I agree.

A: But is there a part of you that thinks that it's more important to be rich than happy for instance?

Sometimes I would say to people that being happy is the most important thing in life, and they will answer: I prefer to be rich and happy than poor and happy. Which is a good choice obviously, but it also means that it's not clear for them that happiness is by far the most important thing in life.

Do you feel like you are in this position too?

Q: Yes, I feel like I'm in that position. I prefer to be rich and happy because most of the things that had been making me feel kind of depressed were money related and I feel like if I had enough money I’d be happy.

But now I guess that's a wrong way of thinking, right?

A: Well, it's not really wrong. I prefer using the word limiting. But yes, if you want to be able to achieve real happiness, thinking like that won't help you.

The thing is some people have no financial problem at all, like never, and yet they still get depressed. They are still unhappy. They still commit suicide.

Q: Yes, right.

A: So I'd say your financial problems were just the reason your depression hid behind. There were just an expression of the pain you carry inside of you. There is an enormous amount of pain inside of us. And it will always manifest itself, as long as it will be there. You will think you are in pain because of.... Money, love, health, a bad experience, something someone said or did… Anything. While the reality is you are in pain because you carry pain within you. You need to deal with that pain. It's not what happens to us that is the real problem. The real problem is that we are unhappy. And so that unhappiness will always find a way to express itself.

Do you understand?

Q: So when something bad happens and you feel pain, that pain triggers the enormous pain that's been inside and somehow makes you feel twice as bad as or worse than you should actually feel from that bad experience?

A: I'd say, in reality (where I want to take you), there would be no pain at all, whatever happens. Nothing is painful in itself. It's always subjective.

For instance, some people are very sensitive. Imagine someone said you are very stupid to another person. It can really hurt some people. And you also know it would leave some other people absolutely indifferent, right? But it's the same insult.

What I'm trying to say is, if it doesn’t affect two different people the same way it means the insult is not objectively hurtful.

It's the same thing with everything. Nothing is objectively painful. The things that make you feel really bad are nothing to some people. And some of the things that are nothing to you deeply hurt some people. They could commit suicide over those things.

So I mean to say in an ideal world, you should feel no pain at all in any experience.

Because no experience is painful in itself. It's always perception. If it were objective, it would always be equally painful for everyone. Right?

So what actually hurts is the pain with carry with ourselves from within. Not the actual experiences.

Do you see what I mean?

What I'm trying to make you see is that emotional pain is never objective. The same conditions do not produce the same results in everyone. And so the logical conclusion is that the pain comes from another source, not from what happens itself. What happens is always neutral.

Is that clear for you? At least intellectually?

Q: Yes, it is. I understand.

And where is the pain within from? Past traumas that one hasn't healed from or bad experiences that keep accumulating? Or what?

A: All of that and more. It's a deeply seated pain. In a way, the pain within is from past traumas that you didn’t deal with the right way and bad experiences that keep accumulating – although, there are no bad experiences, like we saw. What was bad about the experiences is the way you felt, not even the feelings and emotions themselves, only the way you felt, which you could have let go and feel neutral about the experience).

But there is an initial amount of pain that we are born with. It’s that initial pain that brings about more pain.

And to go deeper, it’s that initial pain that makes physical life as we know it possible. If there wasn’t any initial pain, we simply wouldn’t be here. That initial pain is brought about by separation/fear or is separation/fear. Without it there wouldn’t be any illusion. So, it’s exactly what happens when you are entirely free of unhappiness/pain. The illusion ceases and you awaken to your true nature.

2. What are happiness and suffering exactly

A: Let's agree on a very simple definition of happiness:

You are happy when you feel good.

And when you don't, you are unhappy.

Period.

Do you agree?

Q: I do.

A: Okay. When I say feel good, I don't mean a jumping to the roof type of feeling. I mean simply not feeling bad. It's a simple state where you are at peace. It's kind of a neutral state. There is no mental or emotional movement/agitation. You just feel good. Nothing is going on inside of you.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Do you feel like that often? Or is it kind of rare?

Q: Yes, it's not often, it's kind of rare.

A: Ok. Can you do a quick exercise?

Close your eyes and try not to think about anything.

Inhale, hold your breath for 2 seconds,

Exhale, hold your breath for 2 s

Do it for a second time

Do it for a third time. But this time, after the exhalation, hold your breath for as long as you can.

Do it 3 times in a row.

And then catch your breath, open your eyes and tell me how you feel.

Q: I feel relaxed

A: Okay. And you feel good, right? Emotionally neutral?

Q: Yes.

A: You can feel this way all the time, whatever the conditions are. And that exercise can get you to that state. It can literally erase whatever pain you are feeling, in a lot of cases, in a matter of a minute.

But we will go back to that later

For now, I just want you to take the way you felt as a standard. That was feeling good/being happy/feeling neutral. And whenever you don't feel like that, you'll know you are in some kind of a pain or another.

So yes, being happy/feeling good kind of feels like that. And being unhappy is almost everything else.

Like let's take boredom for instance. When you are bored, do you feel good?

Q: I don't.

A: Then you are in pain. Whenever you don't feel good/at peace you are in pain.

People don't see feelings like boredom as unhappiness/suffering because it's something they are accustomed to. There are a lot of emotions that people overlook as pain because they are not acute enough