Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Letting Go of the Beautiful and Rare

It's easy to let go of the sorrows and pain of the past. If one comes to any awareness in this life, if one spends any devoted time in meditation, the release of the ugly and difficult gets easier and easier. Let go of the pains of the past? Hell yes, sign me up. Motivation for that task is easy to come by.

But even on a serious and dedicated spiritual path, it's very easy to overlook the incredible importance of letting go of the rare and beautiful . . .where is the motivation for that? The rare and shimmering moments of our life are what make it worth remembering, yes? The sorrows and horrors of a life have some value in the remembering, but the sweet and beautiful memories suspend themselves in the sunlight of our consciousness like multi-facted gems . .. "oh, that one, I remember the depth of that color!" "Oh, look at that one, one of the most brightly shining of them all!" The memories melt again like the most luscious dark chocolate on our warm tongues . . .see? The mind and heart would like to add: tongues which used to touch with curious desire as the eyes opened to Light and closed to find Light within, the contact sending jolts of energy circulating between two human forms, from me to him to me to him to me . . .

It's much more difficult to let go what was rare and beautiful, to look one last time at those gems, and, with tears or without, cast them far into the wintery blue ocean of distant memory. It takes much love and faith to hold the fact that something beautiful will come again. Or to see that letting go is sometimes part of holding on. Or that through is the way home again. Without enough faith, one can't release.

It takes hard-won wisdom to know if we don't let go of what was, there simply can't be room for what is or what will be . . .the heart is huge, but in that way, in only that way, the heart is finite in its capacity to hold. Yes. There is only so much room at one time for present beauty. Rare and heart-opening moments come to us when the Universe detects there is room for another experience to fill the soul.

I am at the Letting Go Point and have been since last summer. I never said I was quick to let go, tenacity being one of my most powerful blessings and curses. And I need to work on the faith piece of the equation: Love + Faith + Releasing = Future Beauty. I have much love, beautiful sweet love---and I have successfully released what needed releasing.

I have enough faith to let go, but not enough to be unafraid I will never again touch or be touched the way I once was. Some religious traditions use the word faith as a verb. I like that. It feels more accurate, because it's something one does. I'm faithing, because I'm letting go while frightened to do so. And that's called courage and I know I have that.