“Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go…..purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything…..whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out. ”
Tina Turner
Did any of you happen to catch Tina Turner’s performance during the Grammy Awards this year? If you did, you witnessed a splendid example of this entertainer’s timeless presence. Tina is one amazing ball of energy at 68 years of age. I want to be like her when I grow up!
Tina obviously learned an important lesson over the years about how to hold onto her energy. She stays strong by letting go and moving on. She litterally MOVES ON – which I am quite sure lets her burn off stress and produce all sorts of happy neurotransmitters. Her quote says it all. She has found the gift of peace.
Letting go is all fine and good until somebody hits one of your own hot buttons and you realize that you have a reactive ego that holds on to negative events, experiences and memories. As much as we try to become conscious, compassionate and aware it still happens from time to time.
I’ve been trying to understand the patterns behind the people who push my buttons most. Generally I react most when people are pushy, dishonest, greedy or insensitive.
Eckhart Tolle in the book A New Earth writes,
“the particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in YOU, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect in yourself.”
OUCH! Is it possible that deep down inside I am pushy, dishonest, greedy and insensitive underneath all my better intensions to be compassionate and loving? I find this hard to grasp and at the same time I hold onto it and let it bother me more. It’s time for me to be more like Tina – accept my dark side, forgive myself for being human, then let it go.
I suppose the best thing about letting go these days is the awareness that comes from deliberately knowing I can choose to be free and separate from my thoughts. I can choose to let stuff drain my energy, or I can observe myself from a different perspective and create a space for myself to just BE while I figure out the next step. I’m catching myself in the act of having an ego more often, observing it in the present, then letting it go anyway.
Tolle and Tina are angels teaching the same message (Tina just jiggles and dances more!) We can choose admire and learn from them both. Catch yourself in the moment of reaction, surrender to the present moment and just let go.
