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.
Suggested time: 1 or more days
One day is all you need to prove to yourself the effectiveness of this Release, but it's a tool you can use to great effect for the rest of your life. This Release also illustrates several of the fundamental concepts of this book, namely, that our ego is our desire to be separate; that the experience of connection or unity with someone or some thing outside ourselves neutralizes our ego; and that sincerity (focus, commitment) is the key to successfully letting go of anything.
Identify a line of thought that is torturing you.
This should be a piece of cake. You probably already have one in mind. Perhaps the two most common ones are something we keep worrying about, and someone we keep arguing with in our mind. The first involves the future—a fear of what might happen. The second involves the past—distress over someone's behavior or distress over the way some event played out.
It's important to see that even if what we can't stop thinking about is an event, other people's reactions are central to our distress. Our mind doesn't get stuck on events that no one else witnesses or will ever know about. If for instance we do something really stupid while hiking, we may laugh about it, but we don't keep going over and over the mistake—unless of course we know that the mistake will be obvious when we return.
The reason I make this point is that our ego is always up to the same thing—to create more separation (more difference, distance, or distinction) between ourselves and others.
The next time you notice the line of thought you have identified, interrupt it (just don't complete it).
Then think of something, anything, that contains love or connection.
Think of your dog. Think of your garden. Or your partner, child, friend, or a loving relative. Or think of God or the light of God. Or perhaps think of a scene of thoughtfulness, generosity, forgiveness, or humor between two people—an event you once witnessed or were involved in.
To bless, pray for, or hold in light the person who is the object of your worry or judgment is also a connecting thought and a very powerful one. However, you may not be able to do this if your feelings about this person are too disturbed, in which case any other thought of oneness or joining will do.
Just identify the thought. Interrupt the thought. And think of anything with love in it. Do this procedure even once and you will see that you can always let go of a distressing line of thought in the present. Most people, however, don't seem to know that.
We believe that we simply can't stop worrying or judging—it's just something the mind does—so we halfheartedly fight this mental activity by getting mad at ourselves or by trying to reinterpret the situation.
The mind-splitting effect of getting mad at ourselves is perhaps obvious. Yet many people assume that reinterpreting what someone did or what some future event will mean is a gentler, more reasonable approach. Actually, the effect is the same. We introduce a new interpretation to do battle with our first interpretation and thus split our mind. We never quite believe the new interpretation (“He probably wasn't trying to hurt my feelings; he just gets yelled at a lot at work”; “She probably wasn't trying
