The Greatest Secret on Earth
"The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and me as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion — that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws — these same friendly forces are waiting to do for you what you haven't been able to do for yourself. You need only learn to cooperate with these powerful and timeless principles to be able to let go of any emotional bitterness, relentless regret, anxious worry, or troubling thought. The rest will be done for you.
"This is what the secret of letting go is all about. First must come the understanding that we are still carrying around the accumulated defeats of a lifetime, and that these weary weights have only served to make us someone sorry, not someone special. This initial shock may shake us, but it is really a major breakthrough. It heralds the first in a series of miraculous self-separations in which we begin to see that we have been living from an unseen part of ourselves: a self that thinks clinging to wreckage is the same as being rescued! Now we understand why all of our past efforts to let go have only left us holding a new problem. But now we also know, at last, exactly what it is that must be dropped. We must let go of this sorry self that is certain it is better to suffer and feel like someone than it is to just let go and quietly be no one. Have no concerns how this task will be accomplished. That is reality's responsibility.
"This higher knowledge that is now beginning to reveal you to yourself is not mental. It is coming to you from a lofty, wise, and powerful part of yourself that lives way above everyday thinking and its ceaseless conflict over what may or may not be best. Your newly awakening inner nature knows what is best for you because it sees life without the painful confusion and contradictions that always accompany compulsive self-interest. For instance, this higher intelligence knows that you don't need to ache, even when you are sure you must. Once you have made contact with the still, secret self within, it does the rest. That's right. It is this higher part of yourself alone that has the strength and wisdom to gently open your hand so that out of it may drop all that has been making you unhappy.
"Believe me, you are on the verge of the single greatest discovery any human being can make. The secret of letting go not only holds the keys for ending what is unwanted, but locked within this same supreme secret is the beginning of your new life — the birth of a new nature that never has to hold on to anything because it is already everything. Dare to proceed. Let the following special insights speed you on your way.
"1 Letting go of yourself is letting go of your problems, for they are one and the same.
"2 Go along with your longing to be limitless.
"3 Uncovering what is wrong must always precede the discovery of what is right.
"4 You can only be as free as you are willing to be truthful about yourself.
"5 Letting go is strictly an inside job.
"6 There is nothing hidden in the world from you if you will reveal yourself to yourself.
"7 You can live from true intelligence or with self-insistence.
"8 Letting go takes no strength — only a willingness to see the need for it.
"9 You can never act any higher toward a situation than your understanding of that situation.
"10 Once you see a problem, you know the solution.
"11 A weakness detected is a weakness rejected.
"12 Letting go is the natural release that always follows the realization that holding on hurts.
"13 Unhappiness does not come at you, it comes from you.
"14 Suffering is only something you picked up by mistake.
"15 What you really want is to stop thinking about yourself.
"16 Defeat comes from clinging to solutions that don't work.
"17 Letting go happens effortlessly once you see there is no other choice.
"18 Real freedom is the absence of the self that feels trapped, not the trappings that self acquires to make it feel free.
"19 Wanting to learn about yourself while limiting your discoveries to what you want to find is like saying 'I want to see the whole world from my bed.'
"20 The only thing you lose when you let go of something you are afraid to live without is the fear itself."
