Letting go - what exactly does it mean to let go of something? Especially a part of yourself? You can picture letting go of a hand, a cat, a rope. You let go, they leave, or drop, or scamper off. But when you let go of part of yourself what happens? It's still there. It's you. Even if you don't want it to be you, if it's there as part of you, there it is.
There is this other letting go, releasing what you are holding onto so you and it can both evolve. In a way that is the same thing with letting go of parts of yourself. But rather it is letting go of your resistance to knowing it is part of you. Rather than resist, you get to embrace it, which means to feel that part of you.
This is different than accepting it. Accepting is like saying "Okay, I know this is here. I guess I'll just have to deal with it." There is still resistance in that - whether it is the resistance of victim - "I can't help this part of me", or of drama "It's me! Oh god! It's me! What a horrible thing!" or of "NO!!!" It's still resistance.
Embracing, or allowance is "Wow, this is part of me. When I let myself feel it, actually feel it without the resistance, I get to know more of who I am." It takes a great deal of willingness to be curious, and to feel things you don't really think you want to feel. And willingness to let yourself be who you are, warts and all.
So if what is up is that you have an 'insane need to be accepted,' for instance, as a friend of mine just asked me about, maybe you can feel the difference in yourself between "Oh no! I have an insane need to be accepted!" and "Oh well, I have an insane need to be accepted."
For a moment just go into that need, and feel it. Feel all the parts of the desire - for acceptance as you are, for love, for approval, for all of it. Just let yourself feel what is there. These are parts of you, like little abandoned children. Of course they want to be accepted. Of course they want approval and love.
And you, as the parent in the situation, the Self, are really the only one who can give them, the parts of you, love and acceptance. And the only way you can do that is by letting them be a felt and known part of you.
Make sense? The exercise is to slow down and feel what is true in this moment. You don't need to make a story out of it. The more you do this the less you will even feel a desire to make a story to explain what you are feeling. Just keep coming back to your body, to your breath, and to what is actually up for being felt in this particular moment.
When I hear people talk about "letting go of bad habits" or other 'negative' parts of themselves, I have an image of all these different strands, like of a rope, which we are trying to one by one peel away. When you approach the different parts of yourself with allowance it feels to me like the separations between the layers get dissolved and the whole becomes integrated.
There is a great deal said in the spiritual world about one-ness with each other, with the Divine, with whatever. In my experience none of that can happen without one-ness within yourself. When you dissolve the separations you have put up to protect yourself from knowing who you are you become more whole. Then you start realizing that you are one with everyone around you, with the world, with God. It may look like "need for acceptance" is a bad and wrong part of you, that should be removed, but it is just one more little waif hoping to get back home, inside of you, inside of God.
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