To welcome new arrangements in our lives, to move ahead and grow, we have to let go of our old ways of being. We can’t be the same and change. In other words: in order for something to change, something’s gotta change!

Parents know this well. We want our children to become independent, happily launch into their adult lives, and carry their own children into an earthly future which we will not inhabit. We spend our entire career as parents getting them ready for this. Along the way we can’t help but be a step or two behind their progress––we just get something figured out and they’re on to the next stage. For the successful parent, this is an ongoing process of letting go. Of letting go of the old and welcoming the new. 

For spiritual travelers, the process is similar. Building new areas of spiritual evolution into our lives requires that we constantly practice letting go of our old ways.

A’riquea:  It is more difficult to shift when someone is working to maintain a predictable path. Then everything that occurs must be made to fit that fixed way of seeing and Being. It is limiting. There is not a recipe or an exercise for making this change. A decision has to be made, a choice. The choice is between being in the moment and being out of the moment. 

The intellect is not in the moment. It takes over because it is basing its action on the past, and assumes that the future can only be the same as the past––that it is not mutable. The emotional self can act in the moment if it is freed of the judgment of the intellect. When the emotional self is acting in the moment, new ways can be created. 

Humans easily judge the emotional self as being “childish,” because it has less regard for consequences than the intellect. But a child-like quality is exactly what is needed to create new ways. Child-like quality values curiosity and adventure and let’s-see-what-happens. It does not pre-judge outcomes. Practice being in the moment, no matter what it is that you are doing.