S1E6 Growth and Letting Go

Sometimes we are asked to let go of things in a profound or even permanent way. By looking at their deeper meanings, we may find greater ability to process and carry forward in a new direction of growth and renewal. 

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Transcript

00;00;09;08 - 00;00;38;26
Thomas
Happy Easter everyone, and happy springtime. I wanted to make this short recording because I am in the middle of some major transformation right now. For the last 12 days, I've been up at my parents property in the mountains and preparing for an estate sale. And this is about a year after my father's memorial service, so it's taken us this long to get to this point.

00;00;38;28 - 00;01;13;04
Thomas
You know, in this theme of Easter and resurrection, there's also a lot of letting go that has to happen because as I walk through this house, it's just decades of memories, decades of things that are familiar, decades of, you know, my mom's vases, my father's photographs, all these kinds of things that are becoming relics of the past. Sure, I'll take some of them with me, but.

00;01;13;06 - 00;01;43;08
Thomas
At the end of the day, it's actually not my house. It's not even my home. It was the home that was generated by my parents. So I think there's a few threads that sort of connect here. One is about letting go. You know, in springtime, the seed emerges and begins to sprout, and that means having to let go of the husk eventually.

00;01;43;11 - 00;02;21;15
Thomas
And so I feel that for so many people I know, they're shedding a husk. And the new thing needs to take shape. It's growing, and it needs to be tended and shaped. And so I wanted this recording to be a demonstration of that, because the truth of the matter is, I miss my target. I have been trying to ramp up to one full produced podcast episode per month, and I've finished the recording and interview for this month, but I haven't completed the editing.

00;02;21;15 - 00;02;42;26
Thomas
I need another week or two for that. So the question then was, well, what do I do about it? Do I push through and release a substandard episode? Do I release a shortened improv episode? Do I not worry about meeting a monthly mark? How important is that actually? Or should I just trust spirit? And when it's ready, it's ready.

00;02;42;26 - 00;02;48;19
Thomas
And that's how I'm going to do this show. So brings up a lot of these questions.

00;02;48;22 - 00;03;14;02
Thomas
But as I was thinking about that sprout, it doesn't know its final shape yet. It's just trying to grow to the light. And every day, you know, like last night it rained. So this grass is going to start growing a lot faster now. Until then, it had been drought and things were growing very slowly and then some several days there's been clouds, so maybe there's not as much sun right now.

00;03;14;04 - 00;03;43;00
Thomas
So things happen. I've had 12 days to go through a large house to try to downsize it. Things happen, but how can we uphold our intention within those ups and downs of what happens in life? So that's why I wanted to record this, partly to uphold my intention. It's the first Sunday of the month. I've wanted to release something on the first Sunday of the month.

00;03;43;02 - 00;03;54;28
Thomas
And so at least get something out the door. You know, I think of that with dieting. I think of that with going to the gym. I think of that with whatever practice or change we're wanting.

00;03;55;00 - 00;04;01;29
Thomas
So I think the name of this recording is going to be called Holding a New Shape.

00;04;02;01 - 00;04;12;07
Thomas
And I think that's a lot of what spring time can be about, is there's growth involved, but we get to manage and shape and guide it.

00;04;12;09 - 00;04;44;00
Thomas
And so to find a new shape, one of the things we have to do is release or acknowledge or change our relationship to a previous shape. Right. Literally growth is taking a new shape, which implies there's something not meeting us about. The old shape. Right? So first I wanted to talk about the depths of things. You can release.

00;04;44;03 - 00;05;07;26
Thomas
You know, for the first half of my life, I've had a family home from my parents and walking through it. It's not just the home. It's the security of that feeling of having a warm welcome. If you need to come visit or a place to have a retreat to or, you know, at worst to fall back or escape hatch.

00;05;08;02 - 00;05;14;07
Thomas
You know, many people don't have that. I've been lucky.

00;05;14;09 - 00;05;41;05
Thomas
In the release process, I think it's not just the things you're changing or saying goodbye to, but I think it would be helped by acknowledging the meaning of those things. So, like, what has this place meant to me? What has this friend meant to me? What has that interest or aspect of my personality or expression of my personality?

00;05;41;08 - 00;06;05;13
Thomas
How has that shaped me? What does that meant to me? And I think when we lose the things that are manifest. So this home, this house is going to be receding into the past. It's going to change from a lived experience into a memory, as I call it. You un decorate the home and return the house to its neutral condition.

00;06;05;15 - 00;06;41;02
Thomas
Empty. It's a blank palette. Blank slate, I guess, is the word. So returning things to a blank slate. Literally. That process, the things we've manifest. There's a certain spirit that has been expressed here with my parents. It's a spirit of travel. It's a spirit of community, you know, music, creativity. You could say these things. And so as a space, even space carries meaning.

00;06;41;02 - 00;07;09;25
Thomas
You know what caused these choices? What is emphasized here? There's things I want to carry with me. Right. So as we say goodbye, it's actually taking inventory. Literally. That's what I've been doing, is taking inventory. But inventory isn't just a list of the stuff. It's. What does this stuff mean? What does it represent? What was expressed or captured by it?

00;07;09;28 - 00;07;44;06
Thomas
What love was seen? What interests were seen? What values? And so I think when we're in a springtime period of growth, we're actually also saying goodbye. We're changing or reducing our relationship to some previous map modes of being. Handling that, I think, is really important, especially if it feels like an old version of ourselves and wanting to honor that and wanting to appreciate that and wanting to carry some parts of that forward.

00;07;44;08 - 00;08;09;14
Thomas
Right. So yeah, the seed husk is shed and help in that process. I think there's ways to help that process. And one of the most important ones for me is all of it is transforming one mode of being one pattern and trying to transform that and take some of that energy into a new expression.

00;08;09;16 - 00;08;32;27
Thomas
So like there's things about the old pattern we might like that, you know, more abstract or more broad universal principles. I really like the camaraderie. When I would go out to, you know, drink with my buddies in college. Well, I don't do that now. But what that means is I don't need to go drinking. But I do miss the camaraderie.

00;08;32;29 - 00;08;53;03
Thomas
So I want to find that. How can I express that? My parents. It's like we grew a garden. You know, my dad did corn. He did, okra, things like that. Well, maybe I don't want to grow a garden in the same way, but the spirit of caregiving, the spirit of tending something. You know, I took care of grapes, as you may know.

00;08;53;03 - 00;09;14;18
Thomas
So I really like that. And it's like, okay, for now, I'm not going to want to do that. But there is I'm going to keep that with me in a way that can reemerge in a new way that may be expected, or it may be unexpected. There may be opportunities to re express that, that I don't expect right now.

00;09;14;20 - 00;09;49;23
Thomas
So I think taking inventory is huge. I think taking stock of what it meant of the meaning and then learning how we can keep it with us if we want, or how we can maybe start to transform it in a way that better aligns with who were becoming or the direction we're growing. Right?

00;09;49;26 - 00;09;55;14
Thomas
You know, another thing that's been hitting me is.

00;09;55;16 - 00;10;03;26
Thomas
The depth with which everything we're attached to eventually must be released.

00;10;03;28 - 00;10;23;00
Thomas
I take a thought experiment, like, okay, so we don't sell this property. What does that mean? Well, now I live here until the end of my life, and then it's going to be too much stuff. It's too many things for me to take care of. At some point, I got to. I got to let it go. Then, you know, we want something eternal to hold on to, but there's not much.

00;10;23;03 - 00;10;52;03
Thomas
There's things that can we can walk with or have with us for a short time or a long time. Letting go is extremely difficult because we have expressed our spirit, and it feels like we're packing our bags, you know? But I'll tell you something. One of my favorite spiritual teachers, maybe I'll do an episode on my my main teachers one of these days was so Jason from the Korean one, Buddhism.

00;10;52;03 - 00;11;26;00
Thomas
And he advised, I think people over the age of 40, maybe I could say 50 now because this was 100 years ago. He said, when you reach this age, it's time to start packing your bags. And I've really, really been seeing that. What does it mean to pack your bags? I think it means to start making peace with all the things around you, honoring the roles they've played, the meaning it's it's had, the love that it carried, the significance, the beauty.

00;11;26;02 - 00;11;31;03
Thomas
And it can be very heartbreaking.

00;11;31;06 - 00;12;01;29
Thomas
Throughout this process. I've learned that if I take too long, just looking back, just taking inventory, it's a little too much. It's just a little much. There's been periods of grief. Absolutely. There's been periods of exasperation. There's been periods of exhaustion. There's been periods of appreciation and gratitude. But looking back too long, actually can create its own stagnation and psychic stagnation.

00;12;01;29 - 00;12;30;00
Thomas
The energies want to keep moving. That is life. It wants to keep circulating. And so remembering and directing how these previous energies want to now transform and continue circulating in a new way in your life is a critical piece of taking inventory. Keep it moving forward. Smooth it forward. It's like magnetizing yourself into the new expression.

00;12;30;03 - 00;12;47;19
Thomas
So there's that process. And then the last step speaking of moving forward, is what I'm calling holding shape. We literally I think I have and I think is culturally, we've really lost the notion of shaping ourselves.

00;12;47;21 - 00;13;07;16
Thomas
And what I mean by that is, you know, for me, when I go to my current house and current apartment, I feel more in touch with who I currently am, the current version of myself. There's more things that still want to grow. There's more alignment that I wish I could have, but it's getting there. When I come back home.

00;13;07;18 - 00;13;34;15
Thomas
It's these old patterns and it's so easy to fall into these old patterns, right? That's sort of natural. That's predictable. And so the extent to which we can retain some of the shape of our new life within previous patterns is really a key to me of growth, of springtime, even of resurrection. That is the resurrection.

00;13;34;18 - 00;14;11;13
Thomas
Those other forms of it. But right now, on Easter, there's Christ, there's the grass growing, there's our own shape. Where is this spirit within us, reemerging into life, into creation. And so it's this finding a way to retain our intention, even when we're in an old context or context that doesn't seem to value it or support it. Being able to express it, at least in some little way, is a critical seed.

00;14;11;16 - 00;14;36;03
Thomas
That's like sticking the getting the plant root into a section of difficult earth, right? And that's actually a really good thing if you can do that, because now it's way more firmly established. So that's my takeaways today. It's a short episode. This is me trying to just maintain some of my intention when I'm in the midst of an old context, when I'm doing things that aren't predicted.

00;14;36;04 - 00;15;09;17
Thomas
I wasn't planning to be here for 12 days, but here we are. And so I want to get something out. And my takeaways are about not only taking inventory, not only letting things go. And that can be very, very deep. Ultimately, if you get down to it, we can get into this at a later episode. It's a topic that fascinates me about, like, how hard is it to let go of previous identities, identifications, culture, class.

00;15;09;19 - 00;15;39;05
Thomas
Religious beliefs? How deep can this stuff go? And what happens when we're confronted with an alternative perspective or new values that are emerging or down, recognizing just how deeply interwoven these are into our minds as values from each of those things, how deeply they run into the roots of our psyche, and what it takes to look at those.

00;15;39;07 - 00;16;15;00
Thomas
And I think all of that is worth looking at. Ultimately, if you're really interested in attachments and identity and liberation, looking at those within yourself is critical. And so this act of, quote, spring cleaning, taking inventory is actually a practice of examining older versions of self, of examining roots, of examining attachments, of examining values, of letting go.

00;16;15;02 - 00;16;42;28
Thomas
So why do we have spring cleaning? At the same time, we have resurrection and growth. These two go together. This is also the year of the horse. So things are moving quickly. And I've been seeing a lot. Just almost as an aside, the grass is growing, the horses are running. And I think a lot of this is letting go and trusting.

00;16;43;00 - 00;16;53;28
Thomas
Trusting the growth direction, trusting the seed to find the right way to become a plant, the right way to become a plant.

00;16;54;00 - 00;17;19;20
Thomas
Trust the current of the higher intelligence, the DNA. So if the horses are running, we got to let them run. But we can help maintain a shape. We can help let go of things that don't service anymore. We can help clarify the values or the spirit we might want to bring forward from something that might look different in the future.

00;17;19;23 - 00;17;38;07
Thomas
So I wish you luck. I wish you best in the springtime. I wish you best in this year. The horse. If you'd like to reach out, feel free to contact me. You can email me at Thomas at Avenues of awakening.com. Or you can just go to the episode web page or the YouTube channel and post a comment. All the best.