"Letting go is not a destination - it is part of a process, of our journey.  Letting go on one level is part of daily life, part of going with the flow of life with some serenity - instead of creating artificial, codependent stress and frustration for our self by trying to control life and force our will on it. 

"So, I accept whatever it is that I perceive as deprivation today - and make the best of today.  That doesn't mean that it doesn't generate stress for me.  But the stress is like the 3. earthquake as compared to the 8. earthquake that my perspective of life used to generate for me. 

The great majority of stress felt by any codependent is manufactured out of dysfunctional beliefs and definitions - perspectives and expectations that cause us to feel victimized.  Most of the stress I used to feel had to do with trying to figure out how to control life, worrying about what is right or wrong, obsessing about trying to change someone else.  By learning to accept the things I cannot change, and integrating a Spiritual belief system into my subconscious programming and emotional relationship with life, I reduced my perception of stress by maybe 10,000%.  Learning to let go has removed the illusion of stress from my life that was being caused by living life as if it were a test I could fail.  There is still some legitimate stress that is caused by life events and circumstances.  It is not bad or wrong to feel stressed.  There are times when it was real important for me to own that it was OK to feel stressed - what was important was not to let the impending doom, fear based programming of the disease blow things out of proportion and create artificial stress based upon false beliefs." Dance 11 written June 20, 2002

A great example of how the process of letting go works in moment to moment, day to day life, came when I was trying to explain how important it was to accept - and not judge our self for - our humanity in my January 2002 Update Newsletter.  I was talking about recognizing there can be levels to our motives that are codependent and levels that are "right on" at the same time (some of my e-mails here being perfect examples) and in trying to write about it, I got to demonstrate how the letting go process works. 

"In writing about levels of motivation, and how important it is to surrender to my Higher Power's plan instead of trying to make things work the way I think they should - I was getting frustrated because things weren't working the way I thought they should.  I was aware that I was getting frustrated and what that meant, but being human I tried to hold onto "my way" a little longer.  Which led to more frustration.  Engaging in a power struggle with God is a set up to feel frustrated. 

See what I mean about it being silly to put much energy into my ego's attempts to control.  I was getting frustrated and knew I needed to surrender - but I was being willful and not accepting that I needed to surrender to being willing to surrender.  Pretty amusing really. ;-) 

My writing about levels of motive had led into attempting to communicate a message about how important it is to accept our humanness.  And I get to demonstrate my humanness in my attempts to write about accepting it.  Perfectly ironic - ironically perfect. 

It is so valuable to stop shaming ourselves and instead to start being amused at our human self.  To stop calling ourselves stupid and to start seeing the humor in how silly it is to try to control this life business." -  Joy2MeU Update January 2002 -  Newsletter 1 

Letting go in a major way - of a relationship for instance - is a higher level of the process.  We don't let go of something that we have a strong emotional investment in and have the desire to have it back just disappear.  The desire, pain, wanting, feeling of need, anger, whatever, associated with the lost dream comes back up - and we let it go again, and then again, and then again.  At first maybe hundreds of times a day.  As time starts to heal our wounds, gradually it doesn't come back up as strong or as often - so we don't have to let go as many times a day.  (And the healing process is greatly accelerated when we are able to not shame and judge our self for the loss we have experienced, but rather look for the silver lining and be gentle with our self as we grieve.) 

Then there is even a higher level - times when the letting go / surrender marks a major milestone in our journey.  Times on our path when we go through major transformations in which we surrender / let go of some perspective with which we have been viewing our self and our relationship to life - when we experience a major paradigm shift.  And often these major shifts / transformations are so huge that they change our relationship with everything. 

We are involved in a process, a journey, on multiple levels.  One level is, of course, the individual level.  Another much higher level is the level of the Collective Human Soul:  the ONE Soul of which we are all extensions, of which we are all manifestations. . . . . .

Both the individual process and the larger human process are marked by milestones.  These milestones feel like endings and beginnings, in many instances they feel like and appear to humans to be tragedy.  They are in Truth a perfectly planned series of lessons.  A perfect part of the unfolding of the Divine script.  These milestones are benchmarks in the progress of the process.  They mark the beginnings of new phases, new stages. . . . . . 

(This color of text is used for quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

. . . . . Letting go of this relationship was a catalyst that facilitated a much larger surrender. 

"It may, and often does in my experience, turn out that once I have let go of something - let go of trying to dictate to the Universe my idea of what I need in my life to be OK - then the Universe says "OK, now that you have surrendered, you can have what you wanted." 

Because when I let go, I also open up to receive.  As long as I am holding onto something, I am blocking the energy flow of the Universe. I have to let go and open up in order to allow the flow. 

The catch is, that the letting go has to be real.  I have to accept on a gut level that I can be happy and peaceful and fulfilled without: money; a relationship; whatever.  There is no tricking the Universe into thinking I have let go when I am just pretending to let go so that I can get."   Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update 2-4-00

. . . . . . . It doesn't mean my desire for the fantasy is going to go away.  It will keep coming up - and I will let it go again and again as I surrender to the Plan as it is written.  Thy will not my will be done." The Path of One Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul: My Unfolding Dance 22 published October 29, 2003

"I have been having to work real hard at certain times - some periods for hours - on my internal boundaries to keep from being in the kind of energy that drives relationship addiction. The feelings of desperation, panic, and terror that the wounded inner children feel about losing a source of love.  The feeling of energy out of control in my body so that I am not comfortable in my own skin - so that I feel like I am jumping out of my own skin.  The life and death urgency, desperate neediness to be reassured that my love is not going to go away. 

I have, of course, recognized these inner child place for what they are, and have continued to talk to them and try to calm them down - reassuring them that everything is going to be okay.  That does not mean telling them that she will come back, that she won't go away.  It means telling them, that if she does go away it will be what is best for us.  That if she goes away it will be part of our Higher Power's plan.  That maybe our Higher Power brought her into our life to break through the barriers and learn about Love because there is going be another woman in the future who will be able to be more available and willing to commit to the adventure." - My Unfolding Dance 21

"The grief is right near the surface.  All I have to do is consciously breathe into it, and the sobbing starts coming, the tears start flowing. 

What comes out of my mouth is, "I don't want to lose her."  Sobbing.  Crying.  Hurting. 

And then I tell myself, this can't all be about her.  All this grief is not about the possibility of losing this specific person.  I need to separate out the levels here.  The intuitive message I have gotten for years, what I tell the people I am working with, is that, about 20% of what we are feeling in a moment of intense grief is about what is happening now - and about 80% of it is unresolved grief from the past. 

This doesn't feel like childhood grief though.  I am sure some of it is connected to issues from my childhood, some of it is childhood wounds being triggered - but this doesn't feel like inner child wounds. 

And then I get it.  This is adult grief about being alone.  This is about how deprived I have been in my adult life.  Sobs bubbling to the surface in a continuous stream of burp like little explosions (not a very elegant description, but graphically accurate:).  Tears seeping from my eyes. 

This is about being so alone for so long as an adult.  This is about being deprived of companionship, of affection, of romance, of touch, of sexual expression.  This is grief from my adult life that I am feeling now. 

"These deprivation issues bring up a great deal of sadness for me.  It is not old grief from my childhood that I can release and take power away from.  These are ongoing issues that I need to release grief energy about, but then more builds up.  This is grief about now - and the recent past. 

When these issues are triggered, I need to just feel the sadness - to acknowledge it, honor it, release what I can.  I need to accept them as a perfect part of my path somehow, so I don't fall into a victim place of self pity about them.  I can feel sad for myself, affirm that I need and deserve affection, touch, Love, companionship, sexual fulfillment - and then let go of buying into the belief that I am a victim because those needs are not being fulfilled today. 

This is one of those internal boundary areas that I have found so important to practice discernment about in recovery.  I need to feel and honor the feelings - the feeling of being deprived, the feeling of being the victim of both my fear of intimacy and the Divine plan - but it is vital for me to not buy into the belief that I am a victim in relationship to my Spiritual Path.  Buying into the belief in victimization is what creates the artificial emotional state that is self pity." - Dance 12  written June 23, 2002

This is really good.  This grief is really important to feel and identify because it will help me to see things more clearly now. 

This is why internal discernment is so vital to me and my process.  I always initially identify the feelings coming up with the most recent thing that has triggered it - thus my first reaction is that what I was feeling was all about losing her. 

At this point in my writing on the morning of October 7th about what happened yesterday afternoon, I got off into a discussion of the dynamics of my internal processing, of discernment, and of the disease dynamics as it manifests in romantic relationships.  It is a really valuable discussion but it belongs elsewhere, so will be in a few chapters.  Here is a quote from that writing:

By being in my observer consciousness and telling myself the Truth, that this is not just about her - I am able to start identifying what it is really about.  I recognize that part of the anguish I heard in my voice when I said, "I don't want to lose her!" is being caused by my disease.

Anguish and grief are two different things.  Grief is pure emotional energy flowing.   Anguish is caused by the mental filter / perspective that is dictating how I am relating to the emotions.  Anguish is grief sifted / examined through a filter of fear, shame, blame, and black and white thinking.

It feels like it is all about her.  It feels like I am losing her.  It feels like I will never have another love like this. 

Those are feelings - they are not telling me facts, are not telling me the whole Truth. 

Just because it feels like you are being punished does not mean that is the Truth.  Feelings are real - they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body - but they are not necessarily fact. 

What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital '"T" - especially when we our reacting out of an age of our inner child.

Hearing the anguish in my voice as I was crying and sobbing, saying, "I don't want to lose her" was an immediate tip off to me that the disease was in play - was putting a negative, victim based spin on what I was feeling in the moment. 

So, I pulled myself into my observer consciousness, my recovery control center, and started looking at what was happening from the perspective of the empowered adult on a Spiritual Path.  I started using the tools from my codependency recovery tool box. 

The tone and anguish in my voice did go back to an inner child wound.  The genesis of the wound was in my childhood.  It feels like it is probably real connected to the incredible pain, to the loneliness and feelings of isolation, that the 7 year old who tried to commit suicide must have felt. 

But I have substantially healed that 7 year old's wound - it has next to no power in my life any more.  This is about the effects of that wound - about the layers that were piled on top of it.  This grief about how the defenses - that I adapted to protect the part of me that wanted to die - created my relationship phobia / terror of intimacy as an adult.  This grief is about the deprivation I suffered as an adult because of the childhood wounding. 

"I also know that there are layers of grief from the emotional trauma I experienced.  There is not only trauma about what happened back then - there is also grief about the effect those experiences had on me later in life.   I get to cry once again for that little boy as I write this.  I have been sobbing for that little boy and the emotional trauma he experienced - but I am also sobbing for the man that I became. . . . 

. . . . . I have been going through a transformation one more time in my recovery.  Each time that I need to grow some more - need to surrender some more of who I thought I was in order to become who I am - I get to peel another layer of the onion.  Each time this happens I get to reach a deeper level of honesty and see things clearer than I ever have before.  Each time, I also get to release some of the emotional energy through crying and raging. 

Through clearer eyes, and with deeper emotional honesty, I get to look at all of my major issues again to heal them some more.  I used to think that I could deal with an issue and be done with it - but now I know that is not the way the healing process works.  So recently I have gotten the opportunity to revisit my issues of abandonment and betrayal, of deprivation and discounting.  My issues with my mother and father, with my gender and sexuality, with money and success.  My issues with the God I was taught about and the God-Force that I choose to believe in.  My patterns of self-abusive behavior that are driven by my emotional wounds - and the attempts that I make to forgive myself for behavior that I have been powerless over.  And they all lead me back to the core issue.  I am not worthy.  I am not good enough.  Something is wrong with me. 

At the core of my relationship is the little boy who feels unworthy and unlovable.  And my relationship with myself was built on that foundation.  The original wounding caused me to adapt attitudes and behavior patterns which caused me to be further traumatized and wounded - which caused me to adapt different attitudes and behavior patterns which caused me to be further traumatized and wounded in different ways.  Layer upon layer the wounds were laid - multifaceted, incredibly complex and convoluted is the disease of Codependence.  Truly insidious, baffling and powerful." - Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy

To say that what I am going through now feels like a major transformation is an understatement of epic proportions. 

Yesterday when I was going through the grieving, I wasn't doing all this analyzing.  I was just working my program as I have learned to work it.  This is part of the gift of this writing for me - and for you hopefully - is that in writing about my process, I end up breaking it down into an understandable (hopefully) explanation of the underlying dynamics." My Unfolding Dance 19