The Little Book of Letting Go. Hugh Prather
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diets, enemas and high colonics, saltwater baths, and numerous “therapies” such as heat, breath, Vitamin C, and water are recommended and trusted. Within the body-mind-spirit movement, everything from exorcisms to the burning of sage is used to cleanse rooms, residences, and buildings of their negative forces.
In the mornings, we shower and brush our teeth. During the day we wash our hands after each visit to the restroom. We use special antibacterial products to cleanse “kitchen surfaces.” Our laundry detergents include disinfectants. Our dishwashers super-heat the water. Many homes and even some cars now have air filtering systems. Tap water is out and purified water is in. A growing number of people carry liquid “hand sanitizers” to cleanse their hands of germs after coming out of a store or restaurant.
It's curious that we are so preoccupied with cleansing our bodies and environment of everything that can harm our health, beauty, and energy, yet we feel no real need to cleanse our minds of what can sour our attitudes, block our intuition, tear apart our relationships, and undermine the very aim and purpose of our lives. Yet what do those who are physically pristine gain if within their sparkling habitats they live in a downward spiral of darkness and misery? What difference does it make if a body is always scrubbed, detoxified, and all its surfaces germ-free if no living thing the body encounters is comforted?
In our houses of worship, we pay lip service to the truth that our bodies are mortal but our internal spirit is everlasting. We sing hymns and listen to words that denounce the out-ward and corruptible and praise the inner and eternal. We even say that time will end and the world will pass away but that “within us” is the kingdom of heaven.
Yet in daily life, we obviously are not concerned in the least about what is within. All we care about is getting the outside clean. Each day we walk forth with clean clothes, clean hair, clean teeth, but with a mind stuffed with worthless anxieties, dull resentments, stale outlooks, toxic prejudices, and an endless array of shabby self-images. We haven't even bothered to sweep out the mental junk we picked up yesterday, not to speak of the debris we have been hauling around for a lifetime.
Our mind is not some little unencumbered spirit free to traverse whatever airy realm it chooses. But we would like to believe it is. We see movies and read books about fantastic fantasies and unfettered thoughts. We talk to children about the “power of the imagination.”We attend seminars that tell us our minds have immense reserves of untapped capacity. All in all, we have done a superb job of kidding ourselves that in our roomy “attic” all is useful, worth keeping, and in good repair. But if we observe our minds closely for just one hour, we see that instead of a boundless chamber of magic and wonder, our minds are more like stuffed and stodgy refrigerators that emit peculiar odors. Pick any shelf and just one brief expedition reveals items in the back so old we don't even remember acquiring them.
Nor have these containers of leftovers and ancient jars of condiments been sitting quietly in the corners where they were pushed. They are now so thick with mold and mildew that they have taken on lives of their own. Indeed, the back recesses of our refrigerator mind are in revolt and have set up sour and stinky kingdoms of their own. It's so scary a sight that our impulse is to shove all the front-line items quickly back in place so that now sunny orange juice, freshly picked mangoes, and organic celery once again appear to be all that's in there.
It's not a small task to clean out our overstuffed minds. It takes a little time and courage, and we have to brace ourselves for some unpleasant discoveries. But when the shelves are once again clean and orderly, when only fresh edibles and true nourishment are on the horizon, and when soft aromas fill the air, we will know we have made a very small sacrifice for such bounty.
This book asks you to swim against the tide of opinion: Decide that happiness is an essential part of a life well lived.
It's curious that I or anyone would have to make a pitch for simple peace and fulfillment. Yet this illustrates the state of modern culture. It is acceptable, if not expected, that individuals devote huge chunks of their lifetimes to accumulation, professional status, physical attractiveness, social acceptance, and a better golf swing. Mention enjoyment and inner ease and most people think these are luxuries they don't have time to pursue. It's enough to hope that their life might someday look successful.
If you want to know what it feels like to stock your refrigerator with the items you choose rather than those chosen for you by culture and family dynamics, just look at little children playing—which they do most of the time. The average preschool child laughs over 350 times a day. The average adult laughs about ten. Why? Because children come into the world with clean refrigerators!
So let's begin. To help us assess how much mental litter we collect in a single day, let's consider just one useless item that we all accumulate: worry.
Letting Go of Worry
Very few people are convinced that worry is useless mental debris. Somehow, it just seems right to worry. We reason that since everyone does it, it must serve a purpose. This is like saying that since we all betray each other in little ways, betrayal must be beneficial to the human species. It is patently untrue that each human impulse has a positive aspect and fits into “the grand scheme of things.”
To progress spiritually, we have to acknowledge that we make mistakes, sometimes bad mistakes, and that we have at least some innate tendencies that are harmful and unreasonable.
“The wisdom of the body” is highly questionable, as anyone with insomnia or allergies is reminded almost daily. The wisdom of the brain, as part of the body, is equally questionable. In fact, the body, including the brain, doesn't react consistently or as a whole to anything. What is good for one part of the body is often bad for another part. In countless small and large ways, the body divides and wars against itself and is often the primary cause of its own destruction.
Likewise, the mind has many parts, each with its own agenda. For instance, it often longs for something and is repulsed by it simultaneously—whether money, sweets, sex, or leisure. We simply can't say that because most minds worry, they do so “for a reason.” Not every human proclivity is rational, as is shown for example by the staggering number of humans who must be confined to jails, penitentiaries, psychiatric wards, and mental hospitals throughout the world. So let's first examine several “enabling” attitudes our culture has about worrying to see if there is any benefit in using our minds in this way.
Seven Attitudes That Enable the Worrier
Attitude 1: “It's natural to worry.”
Every day we construct a shrine of worry and carefully set in place each cherished object of concern. There is often a central focal point of worship—perhaps an upcoming event or a question about our health. The subject may seem reasonable, yet notice that an embarrassment from the day before or even from ten years earlier can also occupy an honored place at the shrine. It's as if our aim is to worship problems, not solutions; to worship questions, not answers. We are quick to find fault with any remedy that comes to mind or that someone suggests, just so we can keep worrying.
But isn't this “natural”?
Certainly it's natural in the sense that it's universal. But so are tooth decay, death, jealousy, colds, accidents, losing one's train of thought, hiccups, arriving late, forgetting names, and lecturing teenagers. Very few of us would argue that these natural states and traits are beneficial. Worrying doesn't cause us to feel more comfortable or facilitate better decisions.
Worrying fragments the mind, shatters focus, distorts perspective, and destroys inner ease. Worrying is self-afflicted distress. It has no consistent practical outcome, one that can be predicted and relied on. For example, worrying is not planning. Indeed, worry can delay and even prevent the planning that would otherwise remove a chronic concern. Worry is mental chaos and feels bad. Therefore it is junk—but junk we accumulate and endure every day of our lives.
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