Giving up? Or merely letting go?

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell

A Song of What Will Be

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Daniell Koepke, founder of the Internal Acceptance Movement, speaks of the wide gap between what it means to give up and what it means to let go, to accept things as they are. She says, "There is a big difference between giving up and letting go. Giving up means selling yourself short. It means allowing fear and struggle to limit your opportunities and keep you stuck. Letting go means freeing yourself from something that is no longer serving you. Giving up reduces your life. Letting go expands it. Giving up is imprisoning. Letting go is liberation. Giving up is self-defeat. Letting go is self-care."

We've probably all struggled at some time or another with this difference and often our unwillingness to let go is a sign that we see that act as giving up, as failing to live up to our own standards or promises. We don't see letting go as an opportunity to change for the better or to move on to a greater sense of self-worth or happier relationships. Particularly when it comes to relationships, we have a tendency to cling to the past, even to romanticize or idealize them. Letting go of someone we have loved intensely, someone WE chose, seems both an admission of failure and a betrayal of a love we promised would be everlasting. Too often, even when someone breaks our hearts, we just cannot make ourselves let go. We lie to ourselves, in fact, calling our determination to stick it out even when the relationship is brutally demeaning an act of hope. 

I've watched friends hold on to relationships that were abusive, destructive and completely unfulfilling. I've stayed with relationships myself that totally undermined my self-esteem, convinced me that I was not "good enough" to merit a fully loving and intimate relationship. I've rationalized the choice to stay as the result of how I was raised, the way my Church defines love as all giving and no getting, self-sacrifice, and loving without expectations. To expect something from another is selfish love - or so I was led to believe. I've continued to love through hurt after hurt and comforted myself with the idea that I was a person of my word, faithful to my promises. That's all well and good but cold comfort when all one has at the end of the day - or a life - is a chimera.

But through all that I've learned a lot of valuable lessons and I hear the same thing from others who have finally been able to let go of the past - whether it involves a relationship, a career failure, a loss of a friend or loved one, a pet, or even one's long lost youth. Says American Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, "To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit." To let go is to release our spirit to soar and dive, to find its own heights and depths. To let go is to believe in a future that is "more." To let go is to forgive not only the "other" to which we cling, but ourselves for not having the courage to untie the ropes that have bound us to the past.

So it's important not to confuse giving up - on a dream, a relationship, a goal - with letting go and moving on to what is still possible, to becoming who we were meant to be. While this post is primarily about relationships, the same truth applies to our efforts in other areas of life too - our art, our careers, our lifestyle and health choices. We can't keep repeating the strategies of the past that did not work and expect them to work the next time! Don't give up - but do let go of what is not serving you. When I first tried to take this lesson to heart and put it into practice, I wrote this poem to express my willingness to finally "let go."

A song of what will be.

I released the anchors around a heart

that long tied me to a clouded past,

to heartache, need or suffering,

unknotted sturdy ropes that bound me

to a dock of mournful memories.

I've felt the churning chaos of life's storms,

wild whitecaps of my search for self,

endured those times I was becalmed,

adrift in open ocean without breeze

or sight of islands of safe refuge.

But now, as if by heaven's gift

I feel the westerlies begin to rise,

to clear ghostly cobwebs from the deck;

winds fill white sails to billowing,

and give gentle lift to my silvered hair.

I see myself standing at the helm

with new confidence and clarity,

a bright vision in my eager eyes

of inspiring ports of call to find

before life's journey ever ends.

With prayers to some universal source

as I set my course for parts unknown,

I imagine new horizons I will find

and give thanks for all my future joys.

Are you a visionary??

To be a visionary, and thus have a higher level of inner power to change and create the world around you, one must learn to live at the level of vision. 

Michael Skye - founder of Vision Force Academy

Brave New World

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/brave-new-world-lianne-schneider.html

My horoscope today said this:

"Luckily, you're on a roll and you are able to coordinate all the pieces to make things happen just as you envision it. But remember that logic will only take you so far; imagination, on the other hand, inspires others and carries you anywhere you want to go. Don't stop believing; if you can dream it with enough clarity, you can make it real." (Rick Levine at Tarot.com)

Mr. Levine has made a common mistake here in equating dreams and imagination with vision and they are really vastly different. Corporations that stress leadership, team building, staff development and goal setting know the difference - employees are not asked to write or create a "dream statement" but are often expected to craft a "vision statement" for the company or department. Dreams are actually pretty ordinary and we all have them whether night dreams or daydreams. We fantasize or creatively imagine hypothetical scenarios. Waking or sleeping, we often participate in imaginative thinking...perhaps not quite as adventurously as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - but imaginative just the same. The problem is that a dream has no power to fulfill itself...it's "wishful" thinking, "what if" thinking, "wouldn't it be grand if" thinking.

According to Michael Skye, founder of Vision Force Academy and creator of proprietary software called "iStand" which is used in his leadership training courses, a vision on the other hand is, "What you see when you look to the future without hypothesizing, wishing or imagining." A vision is the reality you fully EXPECT for your future, not what you wish for. A vision arises from an inner sight and inner light rather than from the rational mind - what those engaged in Chakra-based meditation call the "third eye." To convert a dream or imaginary scenario into reality, one must become a visionary.  A visionary lives out of his/her vision  and, "To the extent that we can take control of our vision - or live at the level of vision - we can have much more power to lead our lives and create what we want in life and with others - as visionaries," says Skye.

Skye seems to think that one can become a visionary through practice and he's not alone. Lots of spiritual leaders these days speak of the power of vision - Ram Dass, Sri Chinmoy, Pema Chodron, Neale Donald Walsch, among others. And many motivational and self-help gurus say much the same thing - Wayne Dyer, Gregg Braden, Carolyn Myss, Deepak Chopra, and Marianne Williamson to name just a few popular figures in this field. 

Do you have a clear vision of yourself as an artist/writer, know without conscious thought where you want to go and what you want to express as an artist/writer? Are you living and creating from that inner sight?  With practice and intention, those with a vision turn their imagination into reality. I'm going to give it a try...how about you? To quote a remarkable visionary:

There are monsters in my closet!

“We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.”

― John Hughes

Songbird

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/songbird-lianne-schneider.html

The other day I saw an awe inspiring video of a brief TED talk by Ash Beckham that has lingered with me since I saw it. Ash is lesbian – and the video started out as the tale of an experience probably fairly common to gay men and women everywhere…being questioned by a child about their gender. But there’s no way that’s even the point of the speech because Ms. Beckham turned her own experience into a totally human experience, one that, whether we’ll admit it or not, we all share. It has nothing to do with whether we are gay or straight – it’s simply about life.

Ms. Beckham made the point beautifully that we all have closets too and coming out of them is HARD. So I got to thinking…what are my closets and more to the point, what’s in them? What secrets are hidden there that, if left in the dark, become monsters that haunt my dreams at night? How long have I lived in certain closets that contain those “skeletons” I don’t want to talk about or admit to. Ms. Beckham defines a closet as “nothing more than a hard conversation,” one we’re afraid to have because it might cost us something or someone we care about might turn his/her back on us once we have that conversation. She gave the examples of telling someone you have cancer or having a conversation about infidelity. And I can see those would be hard conversations to have. But there are other conversations that are equally hard to have – conversations about our feelings, our self-image, conversations about what it is that gives our life meaning or what we think defines us.

Maybe our closets are dark spaces because we’ve spent our entire lives doing and being who others thought we should be. We never had the courage or enough self-love to say, “Look, I don’t want to be a pharmacist or a broker or a nurse. I want to paint. I want to sing. I don’t care if I struggle to make ends meet – those are the things that give my life meaning.” Perhaps not saying those things is why we have mid-life crises. Imagine how different our lives might have been had we said to our partners…”I love you, yes, and I want to spend my life with you. But for that to be a good life, a happy life, we both need to be ourselves completely. This is MY dream (to be an artist, a musician, a songwriter, a poet). What is yours?”

Certainly that doesn’t mean tossing responsibility to the wind, neglecting our loved ones or abandoning those who matter to us. But over time, if we keep stuffing our authentic selves into the closets of our lives, pretty soon those suppressed dreams become the monsters that destroy our peace of mind, our chance at happiness. Abandoned dreams cause resentment and anger or force us to lie to ourselves and say, “Well, I wasn’t good enough at it anyway.” Or they leave us grief-stricken in our later years that there is nothing of ourselves in what we leave behind, feeling that it’s too late to open that closet door now. The great mythologist/philosopher, Joseph Campbell espoused a philosophy that should be taught from nursery school right on through school – “Follow your bliss.” That means pursue those avenues of work, relationship, recreation that truly bring you joy. Challenged by Bill Moyers about whether that was a practical thing to do, Campbell added, “If you follow your bliss, the money will follow.” That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can raise a family well by joining the starving artist parade from hotel to hotel selling paintings “some as low as $7.95.” But if we’ve always wanted to be an artist, felt inside that that is who we are, then we must pursue that with our whole hearts wherever and whenever we can, including it in every possible way in our lives. So what if the kitchen table is covered with splotches of oil paint, or the desk is a hoarder’s nest of story drafts and unfinished poems? Whatever dream you’ve hauled into the closet and locked yourself in, it’s time to have that hard conversation with the people in your life. It’s time to say, “I am an artist, I am a writer, I am a singer…” and it’s time to mean it. Swing those closet doors wide open but don’t do it anticipating a rousing reception or constant affirmation or even financial success. Do it – because it’s YOU and that’s who you have to be. After all, as Ash Beckham says, “A closet is a dark and lonely…a lousy place to live.”

THE NOTE NOT SUNG –

What is the note if not sung,

the thought if not shared?

If I do not sing my song where it might be heard,

or speak my thought where it might do good,

paint my dream where it might be seen,

then of what use is it?

I do not “own” my song, my thought, my art

in the sense that I can keep it to myself -

for if I do that, it loses any value at all

toward the expansion of the human spirit

…including my own.

                ©Lianne Schneider 2013

If you’d like to see Ash Beckham’s entire speech (it’s about 10 minutes) you can find it at