the answer is “no,” or if you are not sure, ask yourself: Would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free? Even if the answer is still “no,” go on to Step 4.
Step 4: Ask yourself this simpler question: When?
This is an invitation to just let it go NOW. You may find yourself easily letting go. Remember that letting go is a decision you can make any time you choose.
Step 5: Repeat the preceding four steps as often as needed until you feel free of that particular feeling.
You will probably find yourself letting go a little more on each step of the process. The results at first may be quite subtle. Very quickly, if you are persistent, the results will get more and more noticeable. You may find that you have layers of feelings about a particular topic. However, what you let go of is gone for good.
Welcoming an Emotion
You may have noticed that when you focused on your feelings in Step 2 of the releasing process above, you let them go. They simply dissipated. Because we spend so much time resisting and suppressing our emotions, rather than letting them flow freely through us, welcoming or allowing an emotion to be is often all that is necessary to allow it to release.
My student Natalie learned to release effortlessly by acknowledging her feelings in the moment. As a daily commuter, she often used to have trouble passing trucks on the highway because she was anxious. Noisy thoughts and gruesome images of accidents would rush into her mind and she’d panic. Then, she began listening to a guided releasing tape from one of our audio programs while traveling to and from work on the interstate. She would dialogue with herself. “So, you’re anxious?” “Yes, I’m anxious.” “Could you allow yourself to feel as anxious as you do?” “Yes.” She discovered that, in a short time, she’d be over it. Just by allowing her panic rather than resisting it, her physical sensations of rapid breathing and shakiness would evaporate, and her mind would become quiet.
Diving In
Your experience of letting go through diving in may be quite different from the processes described above. First of all, it is not recommended that you try diving in while doing anything else. It works much better when you take time out, by yourself, to focus inside. It also works best when you are in touch with a stronger feeling.
Here is what you may experience: You receive some news that gets you upset. You start to feel a strong feeling of fear or grief, and you have the time to take a few minutes to release. You sit down, close your eyes, and relax into the feeling as best you can. Then you ask yourself questions like:
• What is at the core of this feeling?
• Could I allow myself to go in consciousness to the core of this feeling?
• Could I allow myself to dive into this feeling?
You will probably come up with your own versions of these questions as you work with them over time. You may picture yourself actually diving into the center of the feeling and/or you may find yourself merely feeling what is at the core.
Once you start to go deeper, you may experience various pictures and sensations. You may also notice a temporary intensification of the emotion. So, keep asking yourself: Could I go even deeper? Cajole yourself to go even deeper beyond whatever picture, feeling, or story you may be telling yourself about the emotion.
As you persist in this direction, you will reach a point where something pops inside, or you may find that you can go no deeper. You will know you have reached the core when you mind is calm and you feel peaceful inside. You may even see yourself bathed in an inner light or surrounded by a warm, welcoming emptiness and silence.
If you are not sure, or you get stuck and feel like you can go no further at any point in this process, or you do not feel complete and free of the original feeling, then switch to one of the other forms of releasing.
Remember, if the feeling still feels strong or has even intensified, you are not at the core. All feelings except peace are on the surface. This may be very different from what you have been told before about going deeply into a feeling. Many of us avoid diving into a feeling, because we are afraid we will get lost or it will get worse. However, if you really let yourself go past the surface and get to the actual core, you’ll discover that this could not be further from the truth, as my student Margie found out.
Margie came to class with a deep sense of grief that she had been carrying around for over ten years, ever since she had felt betrayed by the staff of another self-help organization. Without getting involved in the elements of her story, we mutually decided that diving in to the grief would be the best way for her to let go of it. I asked her the questions from above, and at first her grief intensified. As she began to cry, I simply encouraged her to go even deeper than the sensations and the story, and we kept going. To Margie’s surprise, in just a few minutes, she entered a state of profound peace. She said afterwards that she’d avoided the grief because she felt like she was drowning in an ocean of it. After she released, she realized that the grief was always just on the surface. What she’d actually been avoiding inside, without knowing it, was an ocean of love.
As most people work with this way of letting go, they find that it gets easier and easier to drop into the core of any emotion and allow it to dissolve. They notice that every feeling, no matter how traumatic, has little substance and is much ado about nothing.
Feelings Only Lie
When you catch yourself rationalizing a specific emotion, telling yourself what a useful function it serves and justifying why you’re absolutely right to hold on to it, it is a signal that you’re being handed a pack of lies. As you move further into the exploration of letting go, one of the things that you’ll notice is that the feelings you’re releasing tend to argue for their own preservation. Feelings lie and make empty promises, such as: “Fear keeps you safe,” “If I feel guilty, I won’t do it again,” “If I hold on to my anger, I’m getting back at another person (rather than only hurting myself).” All that’s happening is that a particular feeling is perpetuating the problem it appears to be preventing. It’s a lie.
Two simple sentences that I use in my classes sum this up. You may find them a little like a Zen Buddhist koan that cannot be understood unless you just let go. So, here we go: “Feelings only lie. They tell us we are going to get from letting go of them what we already have from holding on to them.”
The Mind Is Like a Computer
To put the Sedona Method in perspective, let’s take a look at the many ways in which the human mind functions similarly to a computer. Computer functioning, of course, is partly based on the model of the human mind, so this shouldn’t seem like too much of a stretch. You are probably aware that a computer needs both hardware and software to operate. For the sake of this analogy, consider the hardware the equivalent to the brain and nervous system, and consider the software the equivalent of our thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs, as well as our basic, inborn intelligence.
What does the human operating system consist of? Software programs that run the body and the mind are the underlying intelligence that allows the system to function and accumulate knowledge. Almost everything we need in order to function well in life is innate. The only exceptions are the specific skills we acquire, which can vary widely. These range from playing a musical instrument
