Why is it so hard to let go?

To release parts of our lives that no longer serve us?

We know what works and what doesn’t, deep down, but the trick is allowing ourselves to experience the honesty of what truly resonates with us and what no longer does.

The year of the snake has been exceptionally intense for many, many people. Engagements, babies and divorces are unfolding left and right; people are waking up to pursuing their hearts desires, whether through release or commitment. New chapters are being written every day, and even through the most heart-wrenching pain, there is freedom and liberation. There is a new road being traveled, one that we hope will bring us closer to the true calling of our souls and hearts.

We all want happiness, fulfillment, peace and bliss. We’re all creatures of habit, and the worst, most familiar habits are always the hardest to break. But by breaking through these stagnant routines, patterns and bonds, we emerge. We blossom. We become more of ourselves when we allow the easy, graceful flow of energy that we’ve been blocking out of fear.

“They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn’t much love in them.  Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn’t grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn’t grow very well in a place where it was always dark.”

~ Stephen King

There it is again—that gnarly four letter “F” word.

We hide behind it, shudder, recoil from the light of truth that wants to blaze brilliantly and envelope us, loving and holding and caring for us. We run away because sometimes, love is unfamiliar. Sometimes the familiar absence of love poses more security than the possibility of what that immense energy could offer.

So many of us fear change, even if we know it’s good change. Because we don’t know what lies beyond the realm of what we know. Most of us spend our entire lives running from all the healthy change that is dying to make its way into our lives, desperately trying to guide us towards our light, urging us to embrace ourselves and become the most amazing versions of ourselves.

Running away from this light makes us liars. We’re lying to ourselves every single day when we don’t allow these urges and gentle whispers (that morph into desperate cries) to guide us. When we reject this gentle guidance, this loving breeze of clarity, these oceans of epiphanies in our bellies, we reject ourselves. We turn our backs on ourselves and the ones we love. We become shells of everything we have the potential of being. We block possibility, opportunity, expansion and growth. We deny love.

And through these blockages comes denial. We grow blind. We throw a veil over our all-knowing eye, our connection to everything that’s greater than us. We’re fools to think there’s nothing bigger than us, that we’re the center of the universe. Well, we are the center of the universe, but we’re just as much the center as is every other person on this planet. When we shut ourselves off from the possibilities that we’re part of something bigger and move away from the beauty of ourselves and nature, we severe that connection, drawing fulfillment from fleeting luxuries and highs that will never last. Instead we enslave ourselves to the constant, impossible struggle of squeezing blood from a stone.

“Deluded men despise me in the human form I have assumed, ignorant of my higher existence as the great lord of all creatures. Reason warped, hope, action, and knowledge wasted, they fall prey to a seductive, fiendish, demonic nature.”

~ Lord Krishna, The Bhagavad-Gita

We must embrace honesty to embrace ourselves.

A life of honesty means confronting everything you’ve been protecting yourself from, everything you’ve kept from the ones you love, everything you think is better kept in the dark, for the sake and betterment of the whole.

Well, fuck what you think.

Truth rules and radiates and has the power to free or enslave. It’s all a choice. It’s not an easy choice, and it’s not a choice that happens overnight. It’s not even a process that happens overnight. It’s something that comes with patience, faith, trust and time, but once you shed those layers of protection and face the truth, it’s something you can never turn away from. It’s something that is so bright, so radiant, so painfully in your face that even if you try to turn your back on the truth, you’ll forever be haunted by it. You’ll never live a life of fulfillment, of true happiness, because you’ve glimpsed what could be attained, what voids could be fulfilled if you only released that shroud of protection and allowed the light of truth to shine on you.

Protection is all good and well-intentioned, but when you really look protection in the eye, it’s fueled by fear. And anything fueled by fear holds no substance when exposed to the light.

And again, that wretched “F” word.

I say fuck fear. Fuck it right back to that festering hole from whence it came.

Once you look fear in the face and tell it that it is no longer welcome here—that is when your true journey begins. Then and only then will you see clearly. And how loving is our spirit, to allow us to carry on for sometimes years at a time in this haze, knowing that we’re not quite ready to see or handle the truth, cradling us and protecting us until the day when boom! Truth is there, staring you in the eye, unrelenting in the most loving, supportive way, not willing to go back into hiding, taking your hand as you walk through a forest of uncertainty, a desert of the unknown.

But there is peace and love and hope and possibility in the unknown. There is so much beauty and love and joy and bliss waiting for us there. The most enormous thing to always remember is love is greater than fear. And once we tell fear to fuck off, we’ll be serenely on our way.

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Ed: Brianna Bemel