For the last several months and well before the celebration of the Beatles 50th Anniversary (just so you know I wasn’t getting a subliminal message from all the media hoopla around that event), I consistently have heard the words “let it be” during my daily meditation.
Even without the Beatles media blitz, because I am a child of the 60s I immediately made a connection to their song and to my youthful interpretation of it, which is that we are to release our troubles and wait for an answer to come. This is good advice but, this time around, for me the interpretation doesn’t resonate. It feels too passive. So, I opened inquiry and reflected on what “let it be” means for me – and maybe you – today. This is what I discovered:
To “let it be” is to engage in the “active awareness of what Is.”
This means not focusing on the past – all those would-have-could-have-should-have’s or the glory days gone by. The past has done its job. We experienced what we experienced. We learned from those experiences … or not. Either way, the past is in its own state of completion. Its only contribution to Now is that it formed us back then.
To “let it be” also means not focusing on the future – the fear of our “what if’s” or our pie-in-the-sky dreaming. The future, too, is in its own state of completion. In our time/space continuum most of us cannot see around the bend to know this, though we can choose to trust that it is so – this is called “faith.” But for the most part, for many people, focusing on the future is often a huge source of anxiety and preoccupation, and these take us away from “what Is.”
As I mentioned previously, to “let it be” is about not passively waiting for life to move us, but rather to be deeply aware and functioning in the fullness of our senses – listening, watching, touching, breathing in, tasting the present moment with its joys and its challenges; expecting and allowing the unfoldment of the next present moment.
When we are in “active awareness of what Is” we inhabit our spiritual center, are less swayed by outer circumstances and more in touch with this moment of our life’s journey.
In other words, we cut out the chatter of the world around us (which dwells deeply in past and future thinking) and, instead, through our senses listen to our inner voice, which speaks the language of Divine knowledge, the collective knowing of our best and highest good.
I am sure you have heard the phrase “knowledge is power” (attributed to Francis Bacon from his Meditationes Sacrae, 1597). Well, Divine knowledge is the super power of our existence. So, when we listen and flow in rhythm with this knowledge right Now, we are in “active awareness of what Is.”
We are “letting it be.”
Blessings,
Plynn
Plynn Gutman 