Letting go of old stuff is not an easy discipline - Letting go of old quarrels, old sorrow, old attachments. How do we actually do this?

During a meditation-evening we talked about the art of letting go - If we look at the process of letting go, what elements does it consist of? If we sliced the "letting go" up in small slices, what would the different elements be?

In the beginning there is nothing but anger, sorrow, defence, remorse, attachment - whatever the dominant feeling is.

If you are doing a spiritual practise, you might even put another layer of quilt on top of this one - why am I not able to be more forgiving - why can't I let go? So you weave another web of emotion on top of the first situation.

Now we have served ourselves a menu of guilt - Guilt as entree, guilt as the main-course and for dessert: Guilt Flambé.

So how do we cut our way through these webs of emotion?

In stead of starting with the original situation and ending up endlessly going over this situation in our head and in our memory, we could start by looking at letting go of our second web of guilt - if we develop a little understanding and compassion towards ourselves in our "stuckness" and acknowledge where we are, maybe we will be able to introduce some movement into the stalemate situation. To me being stuck is a lack of movement - a lack of movement of thoughts, ideas and emotions.

To me there is also a secret ingredient involved in the process - an ingredient that I haven’t figured out yet - is it Grace? Is it Compassion? One thing I know is that I have to open my head and heart towards this miraculous unknown ingredient of change in order for the process of letting go to begin its work in my head and heart.