The Miracle of Letting Go

To be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, such as myasthenia gravis is devastating, often leading to many emotional traumas, such as “why me?” To cope with the symptoms and to have positive prognosis of the disease, it is important to let go—letting go of all negative perspectives.

“Letting go is the art of living well. There is much human wisdom in letting go. Only true human wisdom brings about true human happiness.  With human wisdom, you may see why you are unhappy. Unhappiness comes from attachments to too many things in the physical world, such as emotions and memories from careers, relationships, success and failure, pleasant and unpleasant life experiences. They have become the raw materials with which you have created your own identity or ego-self. Over the years, they have become attachments that you are reluctant to let go of.

But you must let go of yesterday so that you may live today as if everything is a miracle; you must let go of the material world so that you may have the universe; and, most importantly, you must let go of all attachments so that you may have empty space to be filled with spiritual blessings and wisdom.

But why are we unwilling to let go of our attachments? All attachments come from the ego-self. We want to define who we are, and we want to separate ourselves from others. Driving a car more expensive than that of our next door neighbor makes us feel good.

Tao wisdom may help uslet go of all attachments. Tao wisdom focuses on clarity of thinking, which is essentially having an empty mind with reverse thinking. With that mindset, we may see that all things in this world are impermanent. Therefore, any attachment is no more than a distraction from the fear and the reluctance of losing what we have; the more attachments we have, the less our mind will be aware of the impermanence of all things. In other words, attachment is a self-delusion of the reality of all things.

“Letting go is emptying the mundane,

to be filled with heavenly grace.

Blessed is he who has an empty mind.

He will be filled with knowledg

He will be filled with knowledge and wisdom from the Creator.

Blessed is he who has no attachment to worldly things.

He will be compensated with heavenly riches.

Blessed is he who has no ego-self.

He will be rewarded with humility to connect with the Creator.

Blessed is he who has no judgment of self and others.

He will find contentment and empathy in everyone.

Letting go of everything is the Way to the Creator.”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 9)

TIPS: Happiness comes from the mental awareness that the pursuit of worldly things is futile because nothing lasts. True and lasting happiness is made up of feelings of joy, love, hope, compassion, and gratitude experienced by the mind at the present moment.”

The above is from Health and Wisdom Tips.

The bottom line: empower your mind with information to heal your autoimmune disease; you might even say: “Doctor, you’re fired!” just as I did some two decades ago when I self-healed my myasthenia gravis, and now I am completely drug-free.

Stephen Lau