“What you are, is creating your future.”
— David Hawkins
My gratitude to Dr. David Hawkins is immeasurable.
His book, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, is perhaps the greatest book I’ve ever read.
Letting Go, his YouTube videos, and his book Power VS Force are clarifying and deepening my understanding in so many ways. I might go as far as to say that they’re occasioning a full-blown paradigm shift in my reality.
I strongly suspect I will read more of his books and continue to revisit them for the rest of my life.
In Letting Go, Hawkins elaborates a path to healing and letting go of wounds/blockages that are preventing the realization of higher states of consciousness. Hawkins details a simple yet profoundly powerful technique called the ‘Letting Go Technique‘ that can be used anytime, anywhere to skillfully process emotions and lead us toward higher, lighter, freer stages of human development.
In the video below, I’ll dive deep into the Letting Go Technique to elucidate my understanding of how it works and why it is so powerful. I’ll also discuss how the technique connects to a presently blossoming realization that is reformatting the deep code of my embodied understanding:
What we are and what we believe is constantly creating the reality we experience; we magnetize people and situations that mirror us.
Heuristic: You create the life that you (unconsciously) believe you deserve.
— Jordan Bates ☯︎ (@_jordan_bates) April 22, 2019
Below the video I’ll include a longer excerpt from Letting Go that describes the precise practical steps of the Letting Go Technique. Without further ado, here is the video:
Hawkins on How to Practice the Letting Go Technique
Here’s an excerpt from Letting Go that explains precisely how to do the technique:
“Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates.
As you begin the process, you will notice that you have fear and guilt over having feelings; there will be resistance to feelings in general. To let feelings come up, it is easier to let go of the reaction to having the feelings in the first place. A fear of fear itself is a prime example of this. Let go of the fear or guilt that you have about the feeling first, and then get into the feeling itself.
When letting go, ignore all thoughts. Focus on the feeling itself, not on the thoughts. Thoughts are endless and self-reinforcing, and they only breed more thoughts. Thoughts are merely rationalizations of the mind to try and explain the presence of the feeling. The real reason for the feeling is the accumulated pressure behind the feeling that is forcing it to come up in the moment. The thoughts or external events are only an excuse made up by the mind.
As we become more familiar with letting go, it will be noticed that all negative feelings are associated with our basic fear related to survival and that all feelings are merely survival programs that the mind believes are necessary. The letting go technique undoes the programs progressively. Through that process, the underlying motive behind the feelings becomes more and more apparent.
To be surrendered means to have no strong emotion about a thing: “It’s okay if it happens, and it’s okay if it doesn’t.” When we are free, there is a letting go of attachments. We can enjoy a thing, but we don’t need it for our happiness. There is progressive diminishing of dependence on anything or anyone outside of ourselves. These principles are in accord with the basic teaching of the Buddha to avoid attachment to worldly phenomena, as well as the basic teaching of Jesus Christ to “be in the world but not of it.”
Sometimes we surrender a feeling and we notice that it returns or continues. This is because there is more of it yet to be surrendered. We have stuffed these feelings all of our lives and there can be a lot of energy pushed down that needs to come up and be acknowledged. When surrender occurs, there is an immediate lighter, happier feeling, almost like a “high.”
By continuously letting go, it is possible to stay in that state of freedom. Feelings come and go, and eventually you realize that you are not your feelings, but that the real “you” is merely witnessing them. You stop identifying with them. The “you” that is observing and is aware of what is happening always stays the same. As you become more and more aware of the changeless witness within, you begin to identify with that level of consciousness. You become progressively primarily the witness rather than the experiencer of phenomena. You get closer and closer to the real Self and begin to see that you had been duped by feelings all along. You thought that you were the victim of your feelings. Now you see that they are not the truth about yourself; they are merely created by the ego, that collector of programs which the mind has mistakenly believed are necessary for survival.”
— David Hawkins
Dr. David Hawkins
Let these words sink in and saturate your being. Let them marinate. I recommend beginning to practice the Letting Go Technique to see what happens. I suspect you will be delighted and moved by the results.
Letting Go is absolutely worth reading in full as well. It is overflowing with Jung-level spiritual-psychological insight.
All glory due to David Hawkins; I’ll leave you with one final quote from him:
“Simple kindness to one’s self and all that lives is the most powerful transformational force of all. It produces no backlash, has no downside, and never leads to loss or despair.”
— David Hawkins
If you want to dive deeper into letting go of fear, anxiety, guilt, resentment, and other blockages + gain a variety of other tools to liberate your mind, heart, and soul, consider joining The Amor Fati Course.
About Jordan Bates
Jordan Bates is a Lover of God, healer, mentor of leaders, writer, and music maker. The best way to keep up with his work is to join nearly 7,000 people who read his Substack newsletter.
Fantastic share Jordan! It felt like you were speaking to me specifically at certain points. I’ve begun using a similar technique of allowing recently and found it powerfully transformative but I suspect I’ll get so much more value out of reading the book and understanding it at a deeper level. I find that I’m reluctant to accept this new paradigm as I haven’t clearly experienced this universal connection for myself. I admire your eudaimonia and the uninhibited expressions of your emotions.
Cheers, Joshua, I’m glad this resonated — Peace and Love to you : ) <3
Indeed, simple but profound technique. To me it helps with some negative emotions which stimulate lots of repetitive thoughts about past stories. The powerful thing is to stop resisting those emotions, let them come and they start to resolve together with thousands of thought patterns attached to those emotions.
One thing to mention. Ego (our small I) can resist this letting go process. Be aware of it. It loves dramas and stories and the technique is actually doing opposite, setting you free from them.
Thank you for that incredibly clear explanation of the process of letting go.
(For some reason it’s posted before I was able to get my correct URL in so the link is bad on my name. Feel free to correct it. It should be http://www.craftyourhappiness.com )