Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Holding On

Them: What does this expression 'holding on' even mean??

Me: How ever you interpret it, I suppose. I could tell you what I thought it meant, my interpretation, but then you would just be interpreting that, so what's the point? What does holding on mean? What does letting go mean?

Them: I'd still be interested to hear your interpretation.

Me: Fixing something, in a forced way. Keeping something in your experience - at times, this thing may want to stay, and at other times, this thing may want to leave. I suspect that holding on when something wants to stay is pleasurable. I suspect that holding on when something wants to or has left is painful.

Them: You are a wise, wise dude...

Me: I am just a dude.

Them: I am entitled to my own interpretation of you.

Me: That you are, my dear. Oh, another thought. Often when something wants to leave our experience, and we hold on, and because of this we suffer, there is the belief that we are suffering because the thing is going away. We project our suffering onto the object that is leaving or has left. I suspect that most of this suffering arises because we are still holding on, not because the thing left.

Suffering is different than the bitter sweet sadness that arises at loss; suffering is resistance and attachment. In circumstances of holding on to an illusion (the idea that something that has left should still, somehow, be in your experience) and not letting go, the sadness rests in our own holding on and not in the other's leaving.

3 comments:

megs said...

what if the one to leave is also the one holding on?

Unknown said...

If it is you, then release your resistance to your choice. As Charlotte, from Sex and the City, said, "choose your choice."

If it's someone else, then let allow them to be as they are. Don't resist their holding and their choosing.

Anonymous said...

my hips have experienced the tormented heart of violence and abandonment, and then without my consent held onto the bitterness and anger that once prevailed..my brain was in denial ..my my body was/is truth...i hold onto things for as long as they are there to teach me then they dissolve naturally on their own when i allow the denial to dissolve into truths and the lesson is observed and i move on...but still my hips hold on...ughhh
dont get me wrong i have flexible hips..and potentially very flexible..lol
however my moon fills up and releases with the tides..so holding on is a very feminine trait with the womb comes gestation and with gestation comes birth and awakening...hold on let go hold on let go..i just wish my hips would let go... by the way that video is fucking great!