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The following excerpt was reproduced with permission from Marci Shimoff.
Marci is my good friend, fellow featured teacher from the book and movie "The Secret" and fellow founding member of The Transformational Leadership Council as well as a Sedona Method graduate.
I highly recommend you read the whole book!
Love,
Hale Dwoskin
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Learn how the Sedona Method spreads happiness worldwide.
Excerpt from
“Happy For No Reason”
By Marci Shimoff
HAPPINESS HABIT FOR THE MIND #2:
GO BEYOND THE MIND AND LET GO
If you let go a little
You will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot
You will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely
You will have complete peace.
—The Venerable Ajahn Chah, 20th century Buddhist monk
In Borneo, the natives have an ingenious technique for capturing the wild monkeys that raid their crops and stores of food. They take an empty coconut shell and make a small hole in it, just large enough for a monkey’s hand. They put some rice into the coconut for bait and tie the coconut down to the ground. The thieving monkey, smelling the food, comes to investigate. He sticks his hand inside the coconut to grab the rice, but when he tries to pull his hand out, because it’s clasped in a fist around the rice, it won’t fit through the hole anymore. To escape, the monkey must let go of the rice. Because they won’t let go, the monkeys of Borneo remain trapped!
A lot of us are like those monkeys: trapped by our negative thoughts because we just won’t let go of them. And the more we resist them, the more they stick around. It doesn’t help to try pushing them away—they’ll just keep coming back.
Another way to address our troubling thoughts is to go beyond our minds and connect with the feelings associated with the negative thoughts. It’s the feeling that keeps the thought glued to the mind. When we welcome the feeling, accept it and then let it go, the thought will quite miraculously dissolve. An effective way to do this is through a simple, yet powerful, technique called the Sedona Method.
Lester’s Miracle
The Sedona Method was discovered over fifty years ago by a man named Lester Levenson. In 1952, Lester, a physicist and successful entrepreneur, was 42 years old. Although he was at the pinnacle of worldly success, he was very unhappy and unhealthy. He suffered from depression, an enlarged liver, kidney stones, spleen trouble, hyperacidity, and ulcers that had perforated his stomach and formed lesions. After having his second coronary, Lester’s doctors sent him home to his Central Park South penthouse apartment in New York City to die.
But Lester was a man who loved challenges. So, instead of giving up, he decided to find some answers. He holed himself up in his apartment and did some serious soul-searching. He found what he considered the ultimate tool for personal growth—a way of letting go of all inner limitations—that is the basis of the Sedona Method still taught today. He was so excited by his discovery that he used it intensively for a period of three months. By the end of that period, his body had become totally healthy again. What’s more, he entered a state of profound peace and happiness that never left him. Instead of dying in just a few weeks as the doctors predicted, he lived to the age of 84—another 42 years.
Dropping the Pen
I first learned about the Sedona Method from my dear friend, Hale Dwoskin, who was one of Lester’s students and today carries on Lester’s work all over the world. Hale is amazing! He’s like a laughing Buddha and it’s contagious. I can’t be around him without wanting to giggle. He’s definitely one of my Happy for No Reason mentors.
When I met Hale, letting go was not my strong suit. Sometimes I fought my negative thoughts and feelings, but mostly I was the queen of holding on to them—doggedly determined to figure them out, to understand where they came from and what they meant. Hale kept telling me, “Marci, just do the process.” But I didn’t think I could just let my thoughts and feelings go. It seemed too ridiculously simple.
What helped me finally get it was a little demonstration Hale showed me of how letting go works. Try it for yourself. First, get a pen. Now hold the pen tightly in your hand—the pen represents your thoughts and feelings and your hand is your awareness. Notice that although gripping the pen is uncomfortable, after a little time it begins to feel familiar or “normal.” Are you feeling that yet? In this same way, your awareness holds on tightly to your thoughts and feelings, and eventually you get used to holding on and don’t even realize you’re doing it.
Now open your hand and roll the pen around on your palm. Notice that your pen and your hand are not attached to each other. The same is true for your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts and feelings are no more attached to you than the pen is attached to your hand. You are not your thoughts or feelings.
Now turn your hand over and let the pen go. What happened? The pen dropped to the floor. Was that hard? No—you simply stopped holding on! That’s what it means to let go.
Mariel Hemingway, the famous actress and grand-daughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, has found the Sedona Method very helpful too. A week before our interview, I arranged to meet Mariel at a local bookstore where she was doing a book signing for her most recent book, Healthy Living from the Inside Out. Mariel is lovely, funny and authentic on all levels, a member in good standing of the Happy 100. In our interview Mariel told me the following story, which describes the freedom and happiness she’s experienced as a result of going beyond her mind and letting go.
Mariel’s Story
It Runs in the Family
I come from a family famous for its creative genius, beauty, love of the great outdoors—and problems. My grandfather, writer Ernest Hemingway, struggled with depression for years and was also a notorious drinker.
People are always telling me, “I once had a drink with your grandfather.” This has happened so many times, in so many places, that I am convinced my grandfather had a drink with a significant percentage of the world’s population.
In the end, his depression and drinking drove him over the edge. Four months before I was born, he killed himself, the fourth member of his immediate family to commit suicide. Since then, alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, and depression have continued to plague my family. Although I escaped the “Hemingway curse” in most ways, my biggest struggle in life has been overcoming my self-hatred. For years, a nasty voice in my head was always saying, You’re just not good enough. If a friend had talked to me in that horrible voice, I’d have certainly stopped being her friend.
I was especially hard on myself about how I looked. I was terribly self- conscious about my wide face, my flat chest, and my long, skinny legs. I thought I was ugly and detested my high-pitched voice. I was obsessed with my body.
This obsession also seems to run in the family. It’s a little known fact that my grandfather Ernest used to weigh himself every day and write his weight on the side of the toilet in the bathroom of every house he lived in: March 8, 1945 – 185 pounds and so on. My sister Margaux’s body issues, including her bulimia, were better known, and most likely contributed to her depression and eventual suicide. It isn’t hard to see the disastrous behavior pattern: either go crazy or kill yourself. Sometimes both. It was a grim prospect for a young girl growing up.
For a long time, I worried that I’d wake up one morning and have lost my mind like so many people in my family. So I became a control freak—especially around food. For years all I thought about was what I was going to eat next. It was so embarrassing. What a waste of time, I’d tell myself. But it was where my head would go because I couldn’t face the deeper pain of being afraid to die or go crazy. My body and the food I ate were easier issues to deal with; at least they were controllable.
Of course, I knew better than to drink or do drugs—I’m a Hemingway, for heaven’s sake!—but I was incredibly strict about exercise and what I put in my mouth. One positive side-effect of my intense need for control was that I was afraid of throwing up, which kept me from being bulimic. What I mostly felt was an overriding negativity about myself that I never, ever, ever thought would go away. Like a black cloud obscuring my happiness, it was just a part of my life.
For many years I existed on a steady diet of espressos—the air and caffeine diet—and it damaged my health. I eventually cleaned up my act and started eating healthier and being gentler with myself about exercise, but I still felt the fear inside. If anything went wrong in my life, my need for control would rear its ugly head again.
I thought if I could control my body and my world, then that voice inside that was so filled with judgment would go away. And to top it off, I would judge myself for being so judgmental. Trying to get rid of my negative thoughts never worked; it only made me feel worse.
Then I learned a method for letting go of my thoughts and feelings called the Sedona Method. By asking myself some very simple questions, I could simply let go of even the stickiest feeling and thought. I suddenly understood that a major part of the problem was my conviction that my thoughts and feelings were attached to me. They aren’t! My thoughts stick around because I resist and fight them, and hold on to the feelings that come along with them. What if I stopped holding on and simply let go?
Could it really be that easy?
At first I was resistant. Every flippin’ second of my life, I was thinking I should be better. But right away, I found letting go helped lighten the intensity of my negative thoughts and feelings. The simple process of asking myself the Sedona Method questions, “Could I let go of this feeling?”, “Would I let it go?” and “When?” seemed to pop the bubble of tension I felt around whatever problem I was facing. As I continued to practice, something loosened up inside. It was a relief to stop fighting my need for control and begin to accept myself the way I was. Though I’m not sure why it works, I know it does, and that’s all that matters.
My favorite time to practice letting go is while I am out hiking. Like my father and grandfather, I’ve always loved being out in Nature. When I find myself feeling unhappy about anything, I usually go outside.
I remember one time when something had set me off and I felt terrible about myself; I was convinced that I was unattractive—a huge, oversized blob. It was a gorgeous day, so I took off into the mountains. As I walked along the path that started in our backyard in Sun Valley, Idaho, I went through the letting-go process out loud. There I was, striding along the path, talking to myself. Thank God, no one was in earshot; they’d have thought I was a crazy woman.
When I got home, I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t believe I was the same person that had set off on the walk. I was wearing the exact same shirt and shorts. I hadn’t lost a pound, but I thought, You look fine. Just fine. Nothing was different physically; the only thing that had changed was that I’d let go of those feelings associated with self-judgment. I saw so clearly the power of my thoughts and feelings and how they had controlled me.
Although I still beat myself up at times, I forget how it once ruled my life. I used to beat myself up every six minutes—now it’s only every six months. I’ve gone from being painfully obsessed with my body image to not even thinking about it. Though I still take good care of myself, it’s because I want to, not out of a need to control my life.
Today, at age 45, I no longer have that nasty voice in my head. I’m kind to myself and talk to myself as a friend. When I finally saw that my thoughts, my feelings, and that horrible voice weren’t nailed into me, I let them go—and found my true essence, the happiness I was born with. Now most of the time, I feel the way I felt as a small child: as if I am floating through my life, not being judged, but just being.
Dropping the Excess Baggage
Most of us can identify to some degree with Mariel’s struggle with her negative self-worth. For some people this struggle plays out in body image, for others, relationships or career. No matter the area, the underlying feeling of “not being enough” destroys our happiness. We free ourselves when we stop fighting our thoughts and learn to drop them.
Like Mariel, I used to think it was my duty to wrestle every negative thought I had to the ground. It was on the trip to the Himalayas I described in the beginning of the book that I finally saw what I was doing to myself. As I watched that small Indian woman carrying my 91-pound suitcase up the mountain on top of her head, I realized what a potent metaphor she’d given me—it was time to let go of all that unnecessary junk I was carrying around in my head! It was a burden for me and for the people around me. Learning to go beyond my mind and let go of my thoughts and feelings has been an easy and effective way for me to get rid of that dead weight.
Putting The Sedona Method into Practice
The Sedona Method is based on two main premises:
- Thoughts and feelings aren’t facts and they’re not you.
- You can let them go.
At your core you already have the happiness you are seeking and all you need to do is uncover this natural happiness by letting go of the unhappiness or limitation that appears to be covering or obstructing it.
The tendency to hold on and attach ourselves to our unhappy thoughts and feelings is so strong it appears even in the way we use language. When we feel sad, we usually say, “I’m sad.” When we feel unhappy, we usually say, “I’m unhappy.” We are constantly reinforcing the belief of our being attached to our thoughts and feelings. The Sedona Method helps break that attachment. The following exercise is an introduction to the Sedona Method, and will show you how to use the questions that Mariel mentioned in her story.
Exercise:
The Letting Go Process
Make yourself comfortable and focus inwardly. Your eyes may be open or closed.
Step 1: Focus on an issue that you would like to feel better about, and then allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling in this moment. This doesn’t have to be a strong feeling. In fact, if you are feeling numb, flat, cut off, or empty inside, those are feelings that can be let go of just as easily as the more recognizable ones. Just welcome the feeling and allow it to be as fully as you can. This instruction may seem simplistic, but it needs to be. Most of us live in our thoughts, pictures, and stories about the past and the future, rather than being aware of how we actually feel in this moment. The only time that we can actually do anything about the way we feel (and, for that matter, about our businesses or our lives) is NOW.
Step 2: Ask yourself: Could I let this feeling go? This question is merely asking you if it is possible to take this action. “Yes” or “no” are both acceptable answers. You will often let go even if you say “no.” All the questions used in this process are deliberately simple. They are not important in and of themselves but are designed to point you to the experience of letting go.
Step 3: Ask yourself this simple question: Would I let this go? In other words: Am I willing to let go? If the answer is “no,” or if you are not sure, ask yourself: “Would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free?” Even if the answer is still “no,” go on to Step 4.
Step 4: Ask yourself this simpler question: When? This is an invitation to just let it go now. You may find yourself easily letting go. Remember that letting go is a decision you can make any time you choose.
Step 5: Repeat the preceding four steps as often as needed until you feel free of that particular feeling.
NOTE: You will probably find yourself letting go a little more at each step of the process. The results at first may be quite subtle, but if you are persistent, very quickly the results will get more and more noticeable. You may find that you have layers of feelings about a particular topic, so be patient. However, what you let go of is gone for good and you will feel lighter and more peaceful.
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Portions of the preceding exercise were excerpted from The Sedona Method:
Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-being by Hale Dwoskin.
Used by permission of The Sedona Method®, www.sedona.com
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