Invidious

The book Letting Go by David Hawkins has to be one of the most life-changing books I’ve ever read. I’m a different person having read it. Not many books I can say that about!

Here’s a powerful passage from the book, in the final chapter:

“Serious spiritual work is a continuous willingness to let things go as they arise. It is the willingness to surrender wanting to control everything as it arises, the willingness to surrender wanting to change it, and to have it our way.

Eventually, everything that is surrendered that stands in the way of the Presence. The Presence is so obvious, so startling, so overwhelming, that there’s no question about it.

It is profound, total, all-encompassing, absolutely overwhelming, totally transforming, and completely unmistakeable. When everything is surrendered that stands in the way, It is there, shining brilliantly forth.

Enlightenment is not something that occurs in the future, after 50 years of sitting cross-legged and saying “OM.”

It is right here, in this instant. The reason you’re not experiencing this state of total peace and timelessness is because it is being resisted. It is being resisted because you’re trying to control the moment.

If you let go of trying to control your experience of the moment, and if you constantly surrender it like a tone of music, then you live on the crest of this exact alwaysness.

Experience arises like a note of music. The minute you hear a note, it’s already passing away. The instant you’ve heard it, it’s already dissolving. So every single moment is dissolving as it arises.

Let go of anticipating the next moment, trying to control it, trying to hang on to the moment that just passed. Let go clinging to what has just occurred. Let go trying to control what you think is about to occur.

Then, you live in an infinite space of non-time and non-event. There is an infinite peace beyond description. And you are home.”