Holding On and Letting Go

Holding is a way of love. So is letting go. Both are bhakti practices - devotional love, one of the ultimate yogas.

I am deep in this practice: we just sold the extraordinary house that we owned for 25 years, the one where we raised our kids. It held our joys, laughter, and celebrations.

It also witnessed our pain.

Love is like that. It has many faces.

When I got married at 23, I didn’t expect all these different love incarnations - I thought that love should just be happy, welcoming, and benevolent.

But being wildly devoted means there will be challenges, difficulties, ache, and they’ll stand side by side with happiness. I love and yet, I'm learning to let go.

Holding and letting go.

This ache in my heart is holy.

Accept it as the rise of intimacy with life’s secret ways.

We’ve got a lot of boxes in our storage unit. Filled with books, photos, our kids’ creative writings and art projects, my dad’s stamp collection.

Sometimes I hold on too hard.

But Ilike I do on the mat, I’m learning to keep moving. Let it go.

We put things on Craigslist, Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace and I cried watching my things walk out with new owners.

"Oh honey. It doesn’t get any easier, but we’ll take good care of it," said the woman who bought my farm table and chairs where we made PlayDoh castles, had our Passover Seders and Thanksgiving dinners, where we celebrated birthdays, did homework, ate chocolate chip pancakes after sleepovers, midnight mac and cheese leftovers, the place we just liked to hang around.

I sold our things for a dollar at the garage sale and finally gave lots of stuff away. Including the couch at the curb.

"Enjoy that, it gave us a lot of love!" I said to whoever walked off with a dish, a bookcase, pitchers, vases, games, and frames, my kids’ furniture. It somehow made it easier to let go.

Now our beautiful house belongs to someone else, a young couple – I feel their promise, their hope; I remember ours. After we slid the keys across the table at the closing today, I gave them a malachite heart for protection, an amethyst stone for healing, a tumbled chunk of rose quartz for clarity and love, and a little brass Ganesh to celebrate their new beginnings. It felt better than giving champagne. And we found out that the husband is a devoted yogi.

We’re okay.

Keep moving. Let it go.

I hope they find passion and compassion there.

I hope they fight fair and realize that that’s love too.

.

Be wildly devoted to someone, or something.

Cherish every perception.

At the same time, forget about control.

Allow the Beloved to be itself and to change.

Passion and compassion, holding and letting go.

This ache in your heart is holy.

Accept it as the rise of intimacy

with life’s secret ways.

Devotion is the Divine streaming through you

From that place in you before time.

Love’s energy flows through your body,

Toward a body, and into eternity again.

Surrender to this current of devotion

And become one with the Body of Love.

- Sutra 98, from The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche