Letting Go and Letting Be

An Excerpt from Spontaneous Creativity by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Our emotional energy can derail us or be dynamic fuel for creative expression. Through meditation we can explore our emotions and give a spacious, luminous, warm hug to our emotional conflicts and unfinished business. Do you know what I mean by unfinished business? I am referring to life experiences that remain undigested. We have turned away from them or left them behind because they were uncomfortable, or we were too young or too frightened or not sufficiently supported to integrate them. But our undigested experiences do no leave us. They appear in our dreams; they appear in situations we encounter; they appear as people who enter our lives. Again and again we are brought to familiar painful places. The good news is that we can properly compost our experiences, allowing them to become the rich soil of our continued growth and expression.

Again, the advice in meditation in relation to any emotional experience is: Leave it as it is. My teacher repeated this phrase often. I needed to hear it again and again to integrate it fully into my life. How can we understand this pith instruction, this essential teaching? Let's take the metaphor of a pond. If the water in a pond is stirred up by the wind, it appears cloudy. The windier it is, the dirtier the pond appears. But if the air is calm, gradually the dirt and debris sink to the bottom of the pond, and the water becomes clear. By not stirring the pond, by leaving it as it is, the water clears. For most of us, however, it is difficult to leave it as it is. When we have strong feelings, we feel that we have to do something, have to take care of something. It is hard for us to leave it as it is.

I encourage you to explore and trust these ancient teachings. Follow them with an open heart and apply them whenever you need them. Then you will experience what I am talking about. Your mind will be crystal clear. That's the nature of mind – it is always clear. The mind is like a lotus flower. Even though the lotus has its roots in the mud, its blossom is spotless. As with the lotus, so with the mind. No matter how much confusion and pain is present, this spotless, clear mind can be discovered right in the middle of the confusion and conflict. But often, we are not interested in discovering this mind. We are more interested in talking about that person who is causing us so many problems. When we are mired in internal pain and confusion and emotional drama, we are not looking at the space or awareness that is ever present.

Our hesitation to express ourselves fully and creatively in life comes from our conflicted emotions or mental pain. Basically, negative emotions are present because we don't know our true selves. That is the definition of ignorance. From this basic sense of disconnection from our true nature, negative emotions arise and we suffer.

(Spontaneous Creativity: Meditations for Manifesting Your Positive Qualities, was published in 2018 by Hay House. It is available through Amazon and other venues, including Hay House.)