Little Book of Letting Go: Cleanse Your Mind, Lift Your Spirit, and Replenish Your Soul - Softcover

Prather, Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573246921 ISBN 13: 9781573246927

Verlag: CONARI PR, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

"Letting go is the bottom-line key to happiness," states Hugh Prather. And in The Little Book of Letting Go, he offers a simple 3-step process for shedding prejudices, preconceptions, and pre-judgments and facing each moment with openness and enthusiasm. Prather first explains why it is essential to learn to let go and then outlines a 30-day plan for spiritual renewal. Finally, he offers specific techniques for getting a grip on habitual reactions, the need to control, and the addiction to conflict.

In this little book on mental cleansing, Prather uses personal stories as well as step-by-step exercises to help readers understand the rewards and the process of letting go. For example, in the section on letting go of guilt and hurtful actions, Prather suggests that for at least one day readers "rise from sleep and make your purpose only this: 'I will go through this day harmlessly. I will hurt no one in my thoughts or in my actions, including myself.'" Prather also includes instructions on how to let go of mental pollutants, misery, prediction and control, and spiritual specialness.

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Hugh Prather was the author of 16 books, including Spiritual Notes to Myself, Love and Courage, The Little Book of Letting Go, How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy, and Shining Through. As a minister and radio talkshow host, he counseled couples, singles, teenagers, and families in crisis. He lived in with his wife, Gayle in Tucson, Arizona.

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The Little Book of Letting Go

Cleanse Your Mind, Lift Your Spirit, and Replenish Your Soul

By HUGH PRATHER

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2017 Hugh Prather
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-692-7

Contents

Foreword by Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, 
The River and the Lion, 
One: Letting Go: The Basics, 
Two: Letting Go of Mental Pollutants, 
Three: Letting Go of Emotion Fixation, 
Four: Letting Go of Misery, 
Five: Letting Go of Prediction and Control, 
Six: Letting Go of Inner Conflict, 
Seven: Letting Go of "Honesty", 
Eight: Letting Go of the Ego Mind, 
Nine: Letting Go of "Spiritual" Specialness, 
Ten: Letting Go, 
Releases, 

CHAPTER 1

Letting Go: The Basics

* * *

Within the human heart, we all feel the call to be simple, to be present, to be real. Yet throughout the day, the world urges us to be at war with ourselves and each other: "Be resentful about the past." "Be anxious about the future." "Be hungry for what you don't see." "Be dissatisfied with what you do see." "Be guilty." "Be important." "Be bored." "Be right." Little else in nature exhibits this need to be more than it is. The simplicity of rain, the clarity of a star, the effortlessness of a bird, the single-mindedness of an ant — all are just what they are.

Underwear on the floor can break up a marriage. Yet the eyes of puppies light up when they see boxers or briefs. To them, dirty socks are not reasons for fights but reasons for play. Obviously, most little animals are hooked on something quite divine. Something within them releases enormous freedom. I suggest that something is simplicity and purity, and that we can experience the possibilities of this natural state as well. A mind that learns to let go gradually returns to its inherent wholeness, happiness, and simplicity.

For example, the people who are in our lives today, are in our lives today — what could be simpler than this? Yet so often we react to those we encounter with a mind churning in conflict: we don't want them here; we can think of other people we would rather have here; we're not even sure we want to be here; when will this be over; why does this always happen to us; and on and on. When we become preoccupied with what we want or don't want from someone, or what we do or don't approve of, we fail to see that person's goodness, malice, gentleness, sadness, or anything else that is present. This habitual reaction to other people and to everything else in life needlessly complicates our lives and blocks simple enjoyment and peace.

Big Truck

When Gayle's and my son, John, was two years old, we lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One day he and I were standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change, when a semi slowly began rounding the corner just as the walk light came on. Suddenly I was caught up in the delay this truck was causing by passing in front of us. Then I heard John say, "Big truck." I looked down and his eyes were wide with amazement. I looked at this enormous semi passing so close we could have reached it in one step. And I said, "Big truck." Because now I really saw it. It seemed like the mother ship in a Star Wars movie.

Maybe I'd been thinking that the truck shouldn't have been there or that what I had to do was more important than what the truck driver had to do. Whatever it was, that thought was all it took to keep me from enjoying just standing beside my son and holding his hand. Just one unnecessary thought. Little children have very few, if any, unnecessary thoughts, and that's why they are usually focused, present, and happy.

A mother bird sees a snake climbing her tree and thinks "snake." Immediately she starts dive-bombing it. I have seen what a bird can do to a snake that doesn't climb down fast enough. However, it's clear what would happen to her babies if that same mother bird saw the snake and thought, "I do more good in the world than that snake." Or, "I don't like that snake; it's slimy looking." Or, "A snake in the grass has no business being in a tree." Or, "I'm going to give that snake a piece of my mind."

Not only do we give people a piece of our mind, we give them a piece of our happiness, wholeness, focus, and sometimes, a piece of our health.

Our lives are filled with useless battles because our minds are filled with useless thoughts. We never finish thinking about anything. We carry around unhappy scenes from the past as if they were still happening, and we chew on the memory of whatever we just did. This glut of thoughts profoundly affects the world we perceive and the life we live. A man who sees his mother in every woman he meets can't see the women he meets. This one unnecessary thought lands him in solitary confinement and assures he will die alone. A mother who can't accept her son-in-law into her heart because he has "a lot of metal" (say, double earrings, a nose stud, and something rumored to be somewhere else) merely attacks her own capacity to love and be happy. She doesn't change the son-in-law and she doesn't eradicate her daughter's love for him. Yet this one unnecessary thought means her daughter will not have the mother she needs.

These last two are somewhat poisonous examples of what happens when we don't let go. Yet throughout each day, failure to let go can eat up every small chance we have to be happy. Just trying to write this page has been a typical example.

Weenies

About an hour ago, our son Jordan asked me if I could fix him "weenies the way Mother fixes them." I stopped writing and headed into the kitchen where John, who is now twenty, asked me if I could look at a business proposal he had outlined for his managerial accounting class. Gayle, being a banker's daughter, ordinarily would handle this one too, but she's at Trader Joe's buying organic yogurt.

"As soon as I fix Jordan's weenies," I said.

"Oh," John said, "would you fix me some too?"

"Yes," I said, through only gently clenched teeth.

Seasoned with my ambivalence over having been asked to stop writing about kindness and peace and actually practice them, the free-range weenies soon were simmering away in free-range chicken broth — oxymorons cooking in an oxymoron watched over by a large oxymoron.

So there I was thinking about how I wasn't getting to do what I wanted to do; wondering where Gayle and I went wrong if our boys couldn't fix their own weenies; thinking it was a good thing we were on record against forcing kids to be vegetarians; and debating whether a dead free-range chicken was more spiritual than a dead chicken.

In a sense, we all have two minds — one whole and peaceful, the other, fragmented and busy. I was definitely in my busy mind. Just then I remembered Gayle's final words as she headed out the door: "I think we should say in the book, 'Make your state of mind more important than what you are doing.'"

Oh.

And maybe apply that to ourselves as well?

I have practiced letting go enough to know that it feels a whole lot better than not letting go. Although my mental state wasn't too bad, it was not whole, happy, or at peace. Why must even this little bit of misery be endured? Why can't a couple of small tasks be done happily?

My mistake was the one Gayle indicated. I had made circumstances more important than my state of mind. Now I had to reverse that. I had to let go. In my experience of this process, I've come to see that it involves three steps:

The first step of letting go: To remove what...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: CONARI PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1573246921
• ISBN 13: 9781573246927
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar