The term letting go, or detachment is important concept for anyone attempting a spiritual journey. We don’t appear to live in a “let go” world; it seems more like a “hold on” world. Let me add another word, “retirement.” Leaving my job at the end of 2016 and “retiring” has provided an opportunity over the last 9 months to observe a milieu of emotions and thoughts related to this thing called retirement. The Dictionary notes that retiring involves withdrawing. I withdrew from my position/occupation and concluded my career. But retire can also mean to withdraw, especially for privacy: “She retired to her room.” So, when you retire, you just don’t disappear, in effect you move to a “different place.” To complicate or perhaps “amplify” my initial retirement experience, my wife and I decided that a two story home was not the perfect future home, so the first 6 month were spent fixing, selling packing and eventually (literally) moving to a new home. The process continues as we build a place (house to home) in our new location. So why is this relevant in the context of the Mystic?
These last nine moths have been a shock. Most of us establish our sense of self, or to expand, a particular society establishes a collective sense of self (we could call it World View ) in relation to our current situation, knowledge-base, occupation/job, family, hobbies, religion, house, possessions, state of health and a plethora of other wrappers; including physical image/body, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, (and moving to the collective — sports, socioeconomic status, country, etc). These are all attachments. This world view is as seen from the person to the outside, but also on the flip side defines the person or “persona.” We present an image to others, in part feeding back an image that others imprint on us. Seems pretty normal and human, right? It’s kind of like having a center and homeostasis. Through memory we establish a self-schema. We weave and bob in this personal and societal web, or network of attributes, making adjustment through time, since nothing ever stays the same, but collectively for ourselves and our greater society it “stays the same,” sufficiently! That is the magical illusion we accept.
My friend, a psychologist, told me that some of the greatest stressors of life are retiring and moving. Wow! Having some rudimentary skill using Mindfulness I was able to observe some of the attachments in my life. Mindfulness employed here was to simply watch my reaction and behavior from a quiet, non-judgmental place. Rip away the routine of work, rip away a place lived in for 16 years. Then build a modified identity… The most important observation for me was that while the physical situation changes the changes themselves manifest as emotions. In this case the emotions were anxiety, sadness, fear, and on the positive side excitement, joy, and hope.
Letting go conjures some sort of image of falling off the edge of the world, loosing ones identity, etc. It is very antithetical to what we consider normal life. I think letting go starts with simply observing our attachments using mindfulness techniques and realizing that there is the Observer that does not have a job, does not get anxious, and seems to extend beyond what we think of as ourselves. Letting go, is likely more a state of mind than perhaps stereo typically thinking of those who let go as having “given up.” Stuff will keep happening around us, but letting go or conversely not being so attached just might bring Happiness!
Little Known Mystic 
