If you’re stuck in the past and having trouble letting go, please pick up this book to help you get unstuck from the past and move on with your life. Learn from the spiritual and wisdom teachers of our times on how to spiritually let go of the pain of past relationships.
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“There comes a day when you realize turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realize there is so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on.” Zayn Malik
I hate endings.
I hate when the movie A Star is Born ends.
I hate when a lunch date ends.
I hate when a pot of Indian sambar in the fridge ends.
I hate when a cup of tart frozen yogurt I’m eating ends.
And, for sure, I hate when a relationship ends.
Like I said, I hate endings.
And when you hate endings, you try your hardest to hold onto the ending.
If it’s a movie, you can replay or rewind it.
If it’s a pot of delicious tofu curry, you can water it down and have more of it.
And if it’s a relationship, you can do one of two things.
You can prolong the end by trying your hardest to hold onto it, avoiding your partner’s attempt to break it off.
Or…you can simply end it and continue holding onto your relationship in your heart and soul.
You can hold onto the relationship in your mind and consciousness, replaying the highlights of that relationship over and over again.
When my relationship ended, I did all these things.
I stayed in the relationship way too long. We did every single thing we could to avoid breaking up…until it got to a breaking point.
And I continued to imagine that this relationship still existed even after I’d gotten out of it.
I replayed our trips to Lake Tahoe, our honeymoon to Kerala, our first trip to Las Vegas and Disneyland, our many conversations on Skype, my secret trip to India to visit her months after we met.
I continued replaying these memories because they felt good and when I had these memories, I felt good.
Like I mentioned last week, memories of the past are soothing and comfortable.
The past is like a cup of hot chocolate or a warm blanket as you sit by the fireplace on a rainy night.
Who would ever want to let go of these warm and comfortable memories?
Yet, to move on with my life, I had to find ways to do exactly that.
I had to let go of these memories so I could move on with my life!
Although it took years of reading, therapy, spiritual discoveries, meditation, learning and understanding, this concept helped me break through and shift away from the past.
It was this teaching about impermanence by the Buddhist teacher and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh:
“We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat. If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest. So instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say, ‘Warm welcome and love live impermanence.’ We should be happy. When we see the miracle of impermanence our sadness and suffering will pass.”
This helped me realize that change and impermanence can be good things.
If life didn’t have endings, we couldn’t have beginnings.
Without winter, there would be no spring.
Without darkness, there would be no light.
Without night, there would be no dawn.
Once I learned this lesson from Thich Nhat Hahn and other spiritual teachers, I started looking at life in a different way.
I could slowly loosen my grip on my past relationship and my marriage because, in its dissolution, I would find discovery and the blooming of new relationships and love.
Growth, understanding, compassion and inner change will fill my life.
In the messiness and complications of a sad ending are the seeds for so many other things to come out of my life.
It was the moment when I realized that practicing law was no longer the thing for me to do.
It was the moment when I realized that I didn’t have to buy into and live the consumerist American dream that everyone around me was living.
It was the moment when I realized that profound spiritual lessons and truths were awaiting me.
So, really, the end was the beginning of change, understanding and growth.
The end was truly the beginning.
This was how I slowly transitioned to present-moment living.
A slow and growing realization that death and endings are the foundations of birth and beginnings.
The idea isn’t to stay stuck on a page. It’s to let go of things that no longer work so you can read the rest of the book.
As the above quote reveals, you can get to the good parts of the book only after you finish the parts that have kept you stuck.
Bottom line: So many good things can come your way but you won’t find them if you don’t let go of the past.
The beautiful thing is, you have the power of choice. You get to decide how to view the impermanence and changes that enter your life.
Not only did I walk this journey but I confirmed each of the 12 steps of that journey I took on the wisdom of spiritual masters and teachers.
These are not just my steps of walking back from the past to present-moment living. Rather, these are actions that teachers, old and new, have prescribed – everyone from the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh to Deepak Chopra and Ram Dass.
As comfortable as it may seem to remain in this space of living in the past, at some point you must give up this place and return the keys to its rightful owner: the past itself.
You may not have a new place to live yet but the future promises soul expansion, heart growth and new opportunities to fulfill your destiny.
A little uncomfortable but so worth it.
You can pick up The Sacred Art of Letting Go on June 1, 2019 on Amazon.
“Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full.” Yasmin Mogahed
I had tied my identity into our relationship.
I was she. She was me. And together, we were “we.”
I had entwined my social, professional and personal identities with this concept of “us.”
Both our names appeared on the return labels of the letters I sent out.
Inside our Christmas cards, both our names appeared as silver-stamped signatures.
Knowing my place in the world was easy when I was married.
No matter how bad our marriage was, it was comfortable, certain and complete compared to the world around us.
If divorce or a long-term breakup creeps into your life and you’ve created an identity with another person, you’re about to experience a life-altering event – one that shakes your identity to the core.
I mean, who would Queen Elizabeth be without Prince Phillip? Who would Lil Dicky be without Chris Brown? Kim without Kanye? Donald without Melania? Ben without Jerry?
Your heart, mind and soul will do everything in their power to hold onto something that feels like a necessary part of your identity.
You can’t let go because you’re attached for your life to the people you loved. The threat of losing them threatens your very identify and life.
How do you let go of your deep attachments to the people who were once part of your life and heart?
1. Your heart can go on without another person.
Yes, your heart can go on. I know this with 100% certainty because I’m living proof of it.
A few years ago, if you had asked me if I could go on, I would have emphatically said no.
Yet 5 years later, 500,000 written words later, 10 published ebooks later, 5 moves later, 3 around-the-world journeys later, I can tell you without a doubt: yes!
You can go on!
To get through life, your heart doesn’t need someone else.
You are fine on your own and you can find love by yourself.
You were born as love and came into this world as a loving baby, giving love. That is your true nature.
For much of your life, you’ve masked the truth that you are love because the world hasn’t been particularly kind or loving to you.
It’s never too late to tap into that love that is already there.
2. Your identity does not depend on someone else.
Once again, I’ve found this to be true.
You know, it wasn’t that hard to write address labels with only my name. It was actually shorter and easier.
Also, Prince had an identity of his own.
So did Janis Joplin.
And Santana.
And Elvis.
No, we’re not creative musical geniuses who changed the course of history, but you are a unique, special and one-of-a-kind human being.
There is only one you, just like there’s only one snowflake, only one raindrop, only one type of leaf.
You are you, even without a partner, relationship or significant other.
3.You are made of the same fabric as your ex.
How can you lose someone you can’t lose?
Imagine that you and your ex are clouds in the sky. If one of the clouds hides, does that change the fact that the cloud is there?
You and your ex, and everyone you know, are part of a greater universal spirit; a human threat that encompasses everyone on earth.
Our egos tell us that we are different and separate from each other.
Every spiritual master and divine guide who has walked this earth tells us the opposite. They say that we are all one; we are all representations of the greater divine fabric.
You may break up with your ex but to lessen the sense of loss, remind yourself that you haven’t really lost them. You can’t lose the cloud or the moonlight. It’s present even if some days you can’t see it.
4. Relationships and people are like nature.
You can learn to confront attachment if you simply view it as you view nature.
Nature you can handle but people, not so much. Let me explain.
In nature, creatures are born. They reproduce and kill. Other creatures eat them. There is a continuous cycle of beginning and ending. Lives end and life is birthed.
The weather is similar. The seasons come around like clockwork every year from spring to winter.
You and I don’t cry about these seasons that enter our lives. You don’t go into a deep depression because it’s the fall or because it’s winter. Instead, we learn to accept and celebrate each season of our lives.
You dress for the type of weather. You try to drive in the rain in California (rather unsuccessfully) or in the winter storms in Boston (quite successfully).
You don’t resist nature, the weather or the seasons.
You accept and celebrate the positive and negative of these cycles you have no control over.
Aren’t people and relationships like nature? Can’t we learn to accept and celebrate the good while accepting and saying goodbye to the bad?
5. You can fill the emptiness you now feel.
Removing your ex from your life has created a hole that you can now face.
Only when you experience this hole or vacancy in your heart can you do something about it.
Imagine that your whole life, you’ve been trying to fill this emptiness with something unhealthy or with some person.
Now is the time to acknowledge the emptiness for what it is. Instead of alcohol, drugs or people, fill this emptiness with yourself.
Pour in love, compassion and kindness for yourself. Learn to accept yourself and be loving towards yourself. Learn to stop criticizing yourself and putting yourself down.
You can heal only something that you know is broken. You can fix only something that you can see.
The breakup gave you this opportunity.
6. You can release the grasping and feel more free.
When you can’t let go, you’re continuing to grasp something you once had.
Grasping and being attached raises feelings of neediness, desperation and being stuck.
When you need someone else in your life, you’re not free. You’re at that person’s mercy.
You don’t believe that you can do life on your own. You believe that your identity and future are tied to the person you’re in love with.
Letting go allows you to breathe freely and take your life into your own hands.
You let go of the person by accepting that the relationship is over, similar to how you accept the weather and the seasons.
You can grieve for the relationship you had but you don’t have to hold onto the person you were in the relationship with.
Let go so you can breathe easily and free your soul from the prison you’ve created.
You can walk the path alone for some time before a more significant and loving relationship enters your life.
7. Letting go is not an end but a beginning.
This is an important way to view releasing attachment and letting go.
You can welcome in the new, grow and become anew only when you let go of the past.
You can choose to see the end as either the end or the beginning.
If you believe that the end is the end, loss, sorrow and pain will fill you. If you see the end as the beginning, you’ll see the end as the start of something special.
At the end of that last relationship, you’ll be ready for growth, development and more personal awareness.
You’ll be ready for a new life, a new relationship and new love.
You can welcome in the new only when you release your hold on the old.
Your friends have received the wedding invitation.
Your friend’s Mom, a year later, insists on telling you that your ex is now a proud father of a little human.
Things can’t get any worse, can they?
Your ex is living their life and continuing like it’s normal.
You’re replaying old Adele songs, become a closeted alcoholic, watching endless episodes of Revenge Body with Chloe Kardashian.
What gives?
I know in my own life that my ex is likely doing better than ever.
Since the time of our marriage and struggles of being a young couple starting on our professional careers, she’s completed a fellowship, become a doctor, bought a home and travels the world.
What gives?
How do you come to terms with your ex’s success and let go of what was?
I’ve made peace with my ex’s success and here’s how you can too. These are all reminders to help you shift your mindset and reframe the situation.
Only when you let go of what was, can you move on to what can be.
Ready?
You helped your ex get to where they are today.
You were part of your ex’s journey. He wouldn’t have gotten to where he is today without you. He ended up in the relationship that he’s in because of you. He ended up in the career that he’s in, partly because of you. He ended up in the good place that life has taken him due to your making. No things didn’t work out between you two, but your relationship bore fruit in his success.
Your ex succeeding means you succeeded!
Yay, for ex’s succeeding. You don’t seem excited or amused but here’s the deal.
Your ex’s success means you succeeded! You were part of the growth journey for your ex, right?
You walked with them for part of the path and thanks to you, they are where they are today.
You may be bitter about it or jealous about their success but you should also feel pride in their accomplishments.
They’re not succeeding because of you.
They ARE succeeding because of you.
You left your ex better off than you found them.
Yay, you!
You were your ex’s life coach.
Sometimes, lovers motivate and inspire each other to turn their life around.
And other times, ex’s motivate each other to turn their lives around.
You were your ex’s life coach in one of two ways. You either helped them get their act together while you were together and helped them up their game. You helped them improve who they were and become a better version of themselves. Or your helped them up their game after your relationship. You helped them become a better person, set better goals and live to their full potential.
You are the life coach you never wanted to be.
Now, how about just life coaching your way to success, love and happiness, huh?
You were both each other’s teachers.
Professor You!
Who would have thought you were responsible for leading and teaching someone else along their path?
We are each other’s spiritual teachers, maybe even guru’s.
You weren’t just a life coach but your ex either got better, improved their life or turned things around because of you.
They learned from you; either how to be more like you or how not to be anything like you.
Either how to be the person they were or how to become an entirely new person.
You likely helped them improve in their relationships, in their marriage and in their life!
Stand up and take a bow.
Not every teacher is thanked or shown appreciation, as you know but deserve all the thanks and appreciation from your ex.
They don’t have to show it or express it.
Your ex’s success is all the appreciate and gratitude that needs to be shown.
Your ex won so you won.
You led the way and lit the path of learning.
Your ex can help guide you on how to move on.
You’re your ex’s professor emeritus.
Your ex can also help teach and guide you.
Your ex can help you see the light on ….how to move on!
The roaring success that your ex is having with life after you should inspire you and help you move forward.
Look at the changes your ex made.
Look at the decisions your ex took.
Look at the risks they took and the challenges your ex overcame.
Their path is likely as rocky as yours. You may no longer be in touch or care what your ex is doing but use their experience to guide you on your path.
Yes, if they can move on, you can move on.
Your life is a journey filled with beginnings on endings.
In the old days, you fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.
If you were 25 and older, per Liz Gilbert’s book Committed, A Love Story, you likely remained married. Yeah, she says that age was the most critical factor on the success of marriages. 25 and up, high likelihood of staying married. Below 25 and marriage, your likelihood of a committed marriage fell below 20%.
Anyway, in life, yours and even Liz Gilbert’s, relationships start and end. They start again and end again.
We are no longer in the olden days.
We can no longer live up to the expecations of Bollywood movies, mythology, Disney stories and every other fictional account of relationships.
Yes, a long term relationship is what you should want but it’s not for everyone and it’s not always possible.
People change.
Relationships change.
You change.
If you open your eyes to the belief that relationships come and go, it will be much easier to digest your past and your ex.
Also, remember this.
The more relationships you go through, the better you get at relationships.
The better you get at selecting the right person who you could end up with in a long-term relationship.
Your ex is your guide. Your ex is your teacher. Your ex is your experience.
Open yourself to relationships ending so your heart can open again.
You have to find success and happiness on your own terms.
Don’t let your ex be the model for success and happiness.
Look at their path for how he found his success and happiness but don’t let his path be your path.
You don’t have to copy-cat your ex’s life.
Your happiness and success does not have to be like everyone else’s.
Yes, you may want a relationship, kids and family but….
There can also be happiness and fulfillment without all that.
Your job, your new home, your good career and your friends may more than make up for what others are going through.
Among married couples, I’ve often thought to myself, am I the happiest person here?
And often, I realize, why yes I am! I am the happiest person here.
I enjoy my freedom, my work, my writing, helping people, traveling and did I say, writing.
I enjoy having less to worry about and the ability do life at my own whim.
I’d like someone in my life but I’m just find without one.
You could say I’ve found happiness.
The Buddha might even say I’ve found enlightenment.
Society has a lot of dumb rules. You don’t have to play by them. Check out my book 7 Sacred Promises to learn more.
How long before you move on and can live your life again?
Some people never move on. Some people believe there is no more hope after their last breakup and vow their previous relationship will be their last relationship.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
