Enjoy Everything. Cling to Nothing

In this episode of Pearls of Wisdom, I reflect on the theme of attachment and the freedom that comes from learning to let go.

Inspired by drawing the Miser card from the Osho Zen Tarot, I explore how holding on is not only about money or possessions. We can cling just as tightly to our beliefs, opinions, identities, relationships, achievements, memories, expectations, and even our ideas of who we think we should be.

So much of our suffering comes not from having these things, but from believing we cannot be without them.

In this episode, I explore:

• What attachment really is and how it quietly shapes our lives
• Why holding on can limit our freedom
• The difference between enjoying life and becoming attached to it
• Letting go of identities formed through conditioning and expectation
• Why some attachments protect us until we are ready to release them
• Returning to awareness, presence, and inner peace

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

But I also lay in the ambulance and looked at the blue sky out of the sky roof that I could see through. And I was reflected, I've let go of everything, just let go of everything. Welcome to another episode of Powers of Wisdom. Today I'm going to be exploring holding on. And I chose this subject because I was reflecting on what to talk about and couldn't decide. So I have some Zen tarot cards, spiritual Zen Osho tarot cards. So I just picked a card and thought that I'd allow that to guide me into what we what we explored or I explored today. And I picked the Miser card. And the miser card is essentially about holding on. So it's not just about the traditional idea of a miser, which is holding on to your money and keeping it tight to you. It's actually just about holding on. And in truth, when we hold on to anything, we are limited from experiencing the truth of who we are. Because the truth of who we are is eternal. There is no beginning, no end to it. It is free. And this experience as we are here incarnated, incarnated, um as a human being here here in on planet Earth, we get identified with the the playout, whereas really it is just a play out of our eternal energy, of our eternal spirit, having an experience as a human with spiritual beings on a human journey. And the trap is to get caught in holding on to all the things that are human or the experiences we have rather than just experiencing them. And the process of letting go and the process of not holding frees us because we will keep, if we keep letting go, we keep losing things, we keep not holding, we keep letting everything go around us. It feels that we end up having you know nothing. But actually, what we have is all that matters. We have presence, we have the essence of our being, we have truth, we have peace. And that is all easily said, but ultimately it's the practice of letting go. So one of the practices of letting go, as I always come back to and refer to again and again and again, is letting go of reactivity because our reactivity is what holds us, and we're on a human journey, so we're very likely to be going to react. It's a very human experience to feel anger, resentment, jealousy, hurt, all manner of emotions will arise in us, and the secret is to let them go. The secret is to not get caught in a narrative of what caused it, who caused it, why we have been wronged in a certain way, or people have not treated us well, or all of these things. Now, as always, I do recognise there's a process with this, and that as I've been in the privileged position of working in people's lives for years and years and years and years and years, I recognize that I can speak a podcast of 20 minutes and say, okay, let go of your anger, let go of your hurt, let go of your prejudice, let go of all those things, and you'll be free. That's easily said. But I've worked with many people who they're not ready to let go of their anger. It's it's necessary for them to survive, not ready to let go of their hurt, it's necessary for them to survive, to know who they are. They're not ready. So although I'm saying ultimately our freedom comes from letting go, I'm also recognizing, I'm also see it, that it's a process that it can't be rushed, and things of spirit happen in their own time, and there is no rush. But to have the intention, to have the awareness that we are awareness, that we are presence, and that ultimately letting go is freedom. So, therefore, the practice, the absolute practice of at the core level, the simple practice is we will feel a reaction to something, we'll feel offended by somebody, we'll feel hurt, we'll feel wronged, whatever it is, angry, we press that pause button. We, if we're on a path of letting go, we know that the next process is to not feed that with a narrative and to let the emotion pass through us, to let it go, to let it go, to let it go, not to hold it, because the holding is what traps us and what keeps us um in pain, and actually in the samsara of life, where the the we're swinging between sadness and and joy or good and bad, light, dark, we're swinging between the two, and of course, the letting go, the not holding, takes us to the place of peace, the place of ease. So, really, if we go from the perspective that let's not hold on to anything, let's let's see what it's like, see what we are holding on to. And of course, there is an importance that we're honest with this, because people, we mustn't hold people, and yet that's one of the biggest things that people hold on to people. People feel that they've got the right to hold on for people if they give birth to them or they are given birth to. So people feel that they've got a right to expect something from their parents. Parents expect something from children, friends have all sorts of negotiations implicit often of what's expected, and that there's a uh a holding partnerships in business, in marriage, in relationships, there's a there's an expectation that we that person is ours, and that therefore they've got to behave in a certain way, and they must certainly mustn't leave us. And of course, the truth is if we don't hold people and we know that we don't own anybody, and that even if we've entered into a contract with somebody, even if we've entered into a we've come through somebody and that we're a child of them, or we've given birth to somebody and they're a child of us, or even if we've married somebody, or we become a best friend or a partnership in business. Actually, the best relationships are those when we're not holding and there aren't these implicit expectations and these um oh and and and overt. Often it's very overt, you've got to behave in this way because you are my friend, my husband, my wife, my partner, my lover. This is how you behave. And now that doesn't mean that we don't set up a set of rules in our friendships or our families that we want to set up. But these these, if they're overtly set up of what we're expecting, we want to be in a monogamous relationship, we want to you know have um a certain level of um commitment to when we see somebody or what's yeah, what's what what we want, but if these are overtly um negotiated, then there's much more um freedom because they can also be changed. But in society, there are societal expectations, there are all of the conditionings that we get born into in our family, in our society, in our schooling, everywhere. So inevitably, groups of people coming together, whether it is in families, in schools, in situations, we will work together to set up. I say rules, that sounds quite kind of um containing or constraining. But just who's doing what, when we want this done, when we want that. So I'm always talking in slight contradictions because on one level I'm saying we can't hold on anybody, on another, I'm saying, well, let's make up what we're expecting. But if it's overtly done, but within us we're not holding that person. So we may set up a partnership with somebody, we may marry them, we may have a child, we may set up a business and set up a business partnership. So all of these things, there's a degree of negotiation that's necessary for all of this. However, if in our own soul we're not holding somebody, if if that person wants to go and and we let them, we're free and they're free. So therefore, it's it's having both, it's not holding people, but it's also then being able to. The the paradox is when we don't hold anybody, we can get completely close. We can get so close because we're not holding them. And I I had that experience when I was working with uh people who are dying. I've worked quite a lot with people at the end of their life, and there's a there's an intimacy, or rather, I had an intimacy that was so profound, so close, so completely, yeah. The communication were there wasn't any barriers, there was nothing. But I then knew that to let the person go because they were emotionally we were able to be so close because there wasn't the holding. Um I'm not saying these things are easy, and I'm not saying that I'm not even saying that you have to agree with this. You might go, this is completely alien. I remember actually working with a client and we were talking about this and talking about love and talking about relationship where there was no holding, and he didn't agree with that. He didn't think relationship should be like that. He felt that there was a degree of um the commitment to him meant a holding, and therefore, I completely understand that in the same way as I've worked with clients who aren't ready to let go of um their hurt or their anger or whatever it is that they uh, you know, they're experiencing. So therefore, as I say, I'm only this, I think it says they say in podcasts at the beginning, don't they? These aren't, you know, they're just they're not necessarily a they're not the they're not might not be your truth, but this is just my own experience and my own journeying of that more and more freedom has occurred for me as I let go and let go and don't hold anybody anything, nothing. And actually, when I was 60, I had a collapse on my 60th birthday, believe it or not. And as I lay in the ambulance, and I'd I was meant to be running a race that day, and I had lots of plans, and we were going to fly off to Spain to my favourite beach for a week, anyway. All of that obviously let go of all of that, but I also also let go, obviously, let go of the race I was running in the morning, the whole birthday plans, the whole immediate plans. But I also lay in the ambulance and looked at the blue sky out of the sky roof that I could see through, and I was reflected, I've let go of everything, just let go of everything, and I've even let go of my body because I would collapsed and been unconscious, but then I was that conscious, but I wasn't sure if I was going to die, I didn't know what was wrong with me. Clearly, I didn't die, but I realized I've let go of everything, and that's okay. I've let go of everything, and these I'm now being seven years on from that, and it's it's it's always been an orientation of mine, but there's been a greater freedom since then. Also, when I was my early 50s, so about 15 years ago, 14, 15 years ago, Anadi, my husband, and I decided to shed everything we owned, and we lived as digital nomads. By that I mean we're able to earn money on our computers because I would work with my clients and they'd come out to me, and I used to come back to the UK as well. Um, but actually, my what I actually owned in the world was only what I could carry in a rucksack on my back, and I shared everything, we both shared everything we owned, and I was I was uh interested to notice what I found felt attached to, and I didn't feel attached to any of the things in my life except for books. I did find books books harder to let go of, but it was a lovely um process, and for me, I loved it. I was you know in my 50s, we shared everything, and I I enjoyed that process of letting go and not holding on to any possessions at all. And now that I'm not a nomad, I like having a few things, but I don't particularly want loads of things. But I don't I don't think there's it isn't it isn't having possessions that's the issue, it's holding them. So I can really appreciate that we're all different and people love having beautiful homes and beautiful cars and beautiful clothes and beautiful art and all the things that it is makes the world go round, all the creativity in the world, but it's the it's the holding it, the attachment to it that's the that's the thing that holds us. And I remember having a client or working with a client many, many years ago, 30 odd years ago, more than 30 years ago, and he um had come from India when he was 17 years old and gone to do his A levels here and then university here, and he was now working um and been working here for 10 years or so. And he said that the Indian philosophy was um that we need to let go of anger, fear, and attachment. And he said, I'm always working with that, I'm always working with letting go of anger, letting go with fear, and we that's the essence of my work is helping people to let go of fear. And he said, But am I attached? I love my flat. I had a beautiful flat and a really lovely, expensive car and lots of lovely clothes, and he could eat out in expensive restaurants. And he said, you know, is it all right, me having all these lovely things? And I said, Of course. I said, of course it's alright, and and and also it's actually alright if we're attached to them. There's no there's no yeah, there's no wrong right at a level because everything couldn't be any different than it is. Now I'm again talking in contradictions, but in terms of holding an attachment, it's whether we can let it go. So the beautiful car, can you let it go? The beautiful home, can you let it go? Do you know who you are without the clothes, the the car, the things? Do you know who you are without the relationships? Do you know who you are without the attachment to the hurt, the anger, the wounding? Because often we're we can become very attached to our trauma, to the stories we tell. We can become very attached to our looks and everything. In the end, everything goes. In the end, everything, everything goes. So that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive and stretch for excellence and achievements and all the things that the human journey offers us, but then it is actually the the experiencing of it that really counts, and that can be the experiencing of achievements, of course, but it can also be the experiencing of um failures. They're all valid and necessary and part of our journey, but it in the end we have to let go of all of those, you know. I've I think choosing running as my art was a very good spiritually um yeah, spiritually helpful thing because I love doing it, but I I'm at the at the moment anyway, I can't run as fast as when I was in my twenties, and I don't exactly know why. Part of me goes, I wonder why, because essentially I can still put one foot in the other and go running, but for some reason the body doesn't run as fast, and it's fine, it's okay. I've let I've let go, but it's an interesting thing to have my art as something that I have to I've let go of it. I can't I can't hold it, but it's um it's freeing to not be able to hold on to things, and really we need to let go of everything, let go of our achievements, our memories, our attachment to all the things we've done, our stories. Now that doesn't mean we won't have stories, we've all got stories and they're fun. I've got loads of stories, I've lived lots of life, and the stories are fun, but it's the attachment to the stories, the identity with the stories. Really, our past needs to be like the wake of a boat. It just needs to, it doesn't exist. There isn't any, there isn't actually a past or a future. There is only now everything's happening now, everything there isn't such a thing as time. We have the concept, we live in a time-space um experience, we live in that paradigm. So we to make some meaning to our life, we have a past, a present, and a future, but actually everything's happening now, so we can actually heal by letting go of the past and not worrying about the future and just being here now and not holding anything. And I do recognise that um what I'm saying can be challenging to people's identity of everything. They're relate they are identified by their past, by their often by the wounding, by their trauma, ironically, but identified with things that have happened to them, identified with the stories of their life, identified with um their achievements, with their standard of living, with what they look like. There's there's so much there's so much that we will end up holding on to. Well, we try not to hold on to it because actually everything ends, and the tide always goes out. It always, always goes out. It comes in, but it always goes out, and we're going to every everything changes, everything leaves. So we everything ends. We can't, we'll have an emotion and it ends. We have relationships, they all end in the end because they end in the end, because even if we are with we've known someone for a lifelong, we die, our our our body, um, our body dies, our body, we leave our body. So the only thing that is eternal is consciousness or our our our truth, our essence, the truth of who we are, is eternal. And therefore, if we don't hold, so we're not misers, we don't hold on to anything, we don't we don't hold on to our memories, we don't hold on to our money, we don't hold on to our identity in any way, we don't hold our opinions. We we can all have opinions, we can all have beliefs, but we don't hold them, we don't identify with them. Therefore, if someone has a different opinion or a different belief, we're not challenged by it. If we don't hold, then what we find is we, you know, life's a process of uh of everything going. So in effect, we can lose absolutely everything, but what we gain and what we experience is is peace, is peace and love and consciousness, and we are free.