......this is not mine

Yogis,

Yesterday I led a yin workshop with the theme of letting go. In our hectic world this has become a much talked about, written about, taught about topic with courses, meditations and self-help books all available to supposedly teach us how to do it. But at it’s core, what does it really mean to let go?

Autumn is the season which shows us how letting go looks. Fall, filled with loss, clearly displays impermanence. How nothing (with one exception) remains the same. Oh, how that law of the universe makes us suffer. And there is no better role model within autumn for us to look up to, than the tree.

Imagine being a tree. Throughout the entire spring, summer and early fall it is your leaves that keep you alive. Every day these leaves work, reaching for the sun to draw in its energy and convert it to nourishment. However, once the days become shorter the tree must turn its attention inward to prepare for hibernation. Without hesitation, in a celebration bursting with color it begins to let go of those life-giving leaves. Every single leaf allowed to blow off in a breeze.

The tree doesn’t hold on to the ones that bring back memories. Nor the ones that have a high value. It doesn’t only send off those that are worn and tired or hold each one up and ask if it still brings joy. No….it allows all of them to fall.  Knowing that it is not only fine, but necessary to empty at times.

Our minds make this all a little more complicated. The list of things we cling to is long. Possessions, anger, the past, control, other people, expectations and perhaps the most challenging – thoughts and beliefs. We attach to all of them as if they define who we are. The tree knows that the leaves are not her and don’t ‘belong’ to her. She is secure in her sense of self.

This is not mine……

We arrive in this world with only the human body the encases us, and we will leave the same way. In between we will accumulate, cling to and proclaim that objects, people, property, beliefs are ‘mine’, but how silly that all truly is. They are simply spending time with us, but all are impermanent, none can be ‘owned’ and they can be swept away in a blink of the eye. Oh, how that makes us suffer.

You can only lose what you cling to   ~ Buddha

I was up at my parents last week to celebrate my father’s 85^th birthday and my mom and I had a conversation we have often. As the two of us travel through the different decades of life, we agree that we never feel any different inside. The body has changed a bit, different clothes, changes to the houses, evolving beliefs, but deep inside those same young girls live untouched. The soul that arrived at birth and will someday merge back is the one constant. The only thing worth holding as ‘mine’.

Everything else, like the leaves, should be enjoyed and loved wholeheartedly, but let go of effortlessly whenever it is time. One cannot try to let go……one needs only to let go. No book can teach us that. We must go inward, like the tree, to find this one truth.

This is not mine,
SARAH