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Daina Puodziunas

The Gift of Letting Go In Midlife
by Daina Puodziunas



There is a very big gift waiting on the other end of learning how to let go when we reach middle age. The gift is an abundance of energy. In midlife, we begin to see how precious energy is and how without it, nothing else really matters. After all, who cares if you are able to amass a large sum of money if you don't have the energy to enjoy it? Who cares if you are blessed with beautiful grandchildren if you don't have the energy to get down on your hands and knees and play with them? Who cares if you live to be a hundred if your life is dull and boring?

I believe that everything is made of energy....everything. At its most primal level, everything IS energy. Even money is energy! In fact, my concept of God/ess, great mystery, spirit is Energy. I've said for a long time that God is a verb and not a noun. As human beings we are made of life force energy and are constantly being infused with it. What we do with that energy is completely up to us. We are totally in charge of it and becoming aware of it is key.

Unfortunately, when we went to school, we weren't shown this important life skill. We were memorizing dates of wars and periodic tables instead. We didn't get into the proper mindset and life enhancing habits during our first half, but we certainly can cultivate them for ourselves in midlife if it means our health, vitality, joy and abundance on all fronts.

When we hit midlife, the bare fact is that we are at a crossroads. Our energy is either going up and building us up right down to the cellular or going down and depleting us. So, when we hit midlife we have the opportunity to become our own best friend, teacher, and confidant and start taking charge of our energy. We need to do it for ourselves. Nobody can do it for us.

I love to think of it in terms of learning how to become our own midlife fairy godmothers. As we are learning to let go of people, memories, activities, guilt, shame, and blame, we are getting our wings which make us lighter in many, many ways including taking ourselves and life a lot less seriously. We need to start seeing our energetic life force as the most precious gift that we are in charge of. Where our energy is going and what we are doing with it needs to be examined if we want to live a long life full of vitality and joy till the blissful end. I call it "inner magic" because it is inner work which gives magical results.

In "Anatomy Of The Spirit", author Carolyn Myss talks about the energetics of healing. In her opinion, we can have the best tools, techniques, and healers available, but if we don't know how to take charge of our own energy, we will not heal. If we don't know how to let go of dramas (our own and those of others), if we can't forgive (ourselves and others), if we don't know how to let go and let God (and keep trying to manage the entire universe), we are digging ourselves an early grave. Healing cannot be activated unless we become energy wise.

I guess I had to learn this lesson the hard way when I bottomed out physically, emotionally, and spiritually over a decade ago. It was then that I became keenly aware of how the life force is operating within my body and when it was leaking out of me. I discovered how to plug up the leaks and started focusing on what enhanced my life force and what gave me more of it. I continue to receive lessons that seem so unfair and harsh, only to get the gift of renewed energy once I get the spiritual insight and take the necessary action.

Letting go of anything and everything that is pinching off our energy stream, allowing it to leak out of us and deplete us should be our primary focus once we hit midlife. Our entire lives should be re-examined in terms of what enhances our energy (life force, spirit/God) essence and what depletes it. In order to do this we will have to be brave and relentless as we question our preconceived assumptions and beliefs, and our investments of energy in people, situations, projects, activities, work, and ourselves. We will have to see everything through new eyes....our energetic eyes.

When we learn how to let go of our attachments to negative judgments, the desire to be right, the need for revenge, to be understood, we literally set our energy free. Forgiveness, as an example, is an amazingly kind act, but not so much for the other person as for ourselves. That's why a skilled healer will tell you that is imperative that you examine your consciousness for anyone you need to forgive before any healing can begin to take place. I used to think of it as a moral thing, but now I see it as purely an energetic thing. It's just that it's sooooo very challenging to do!!! But when you consider it in terms of your own life or death, it can help you rise to the challenge. This is the real gift in losing our health and of many other crises. They have the potential to wake us up and to help us see life in a very simplified way. It is up to us if we rise to the challenge. We are literally saving our own lives.

I've had some major challenges within the past year and I could easily feel what was happening to my energy and what I needed to do about it. I just didn't know how and so I prayed for spiritual insight and guidance. One of the challenges was ending a ten-year relationship last fall. After I ended it, I was left with a massive debt that I had no idea how I was going to pay off. I felt betrayed, lied to, and ripped off. I could feel how my victim consciousness was zapping my energy, but the facts were the facts!! Just the thought of letting go made me feel even more like a victim. It made me feel like I was giving in!

I am a woman who is proud of speaking up for herself and taking charge of her life, and this felt like the opposite. I see women allowing themselves to be doormats all the time under the guise of being spiritually advanced somehow. You know what I mean? When someone claims to have risen above the situation, but they are burning up inside. You can feel it! Carolyn Myss describes it as putting your gun down, but not the desire to shoot!! I know that kind of self deception. I've been there!! I did not want to do that any more, but didn't' know how to let go. I think of letting go as a spiritual muscle that needs to be developed.

So there I was, waking up in the middle of the night feeling angry and helpless. Planning on which lawyer to talk to next. What drove me crazy the most was that my ex felt like he was the one who was the victim. I told him to leave my home, not the other way around. There was no talking to him. It was a victim face off and I was left with what felt like a sinking ship that I had to save.

One particularly clear and uplifting Sunday morning I was reading one of my favorite mystics, Joel Goldsmith. In "Practicing The Presence" he writes; "Problems must inevitably arise, but they can only be a blessing because it is through these problems that we rise higher in consciousness and through that rising, harmony is brought into our daily life."....."As we forgive, divine love is flowing out from us. As we pray for our enemies, we are loving divinely. Praying for our friends profiteth nothing. The greatest rewards of prayer come when we learn to set aside specific periods every day to pray for those who are our enemies - not only personal enemies because there are some people who have no personal enemies, but religious, racial, or national enemies."

Immediately after that, I could feel my ex's pain and sense of betrayal by me. I could see through his eyes and feel through his heart. He appeared as a little boy in tremendous pain. I felt so much compassion that it burst my heart wide open. Everyone else who I had issues with began to come to my awareness and I experienced the same thing! I could feel the energetic release as I stayed with the feelings of understanding as I experienced the conflicts through their eyes.

"Let them have their own beliefs, assumptions, and judgments of you. Let them have their own journey. Let go of the need to be right in order to be happy," were the words that resounded in my heart. Immediately after that I could not feel one ounce of anger, condemnation, resentment, or sadness!! I felt so very light, so free, so clear! "Those fairy godmother wings are starting to feel mighty darn good," I said out loud. I felt the energy continue to cruise through my body in waves.

Letting go of trying to get others to change, to see your point of view, to right a wrong is one of the hardest things to do, but it is one of the most freeing things we will ever experience. Now that I am energetically free, the money is able to reach me. When we are pinching off our life force energy, we are putting a barrier between us and more energy in the form of loving relationships, money, and everything good that we desire. It simply cannot reach us because we have stopped the flow of life force energy. We are more concerned with being right and settling the score.

As I think about it, isn't achieving this inner peace the answer to peace on earth? As the spiritually self aware matriarchs turn into wise crones within their own lives on this planet, I predict we will begin to see the influence in the rest of the world as time goes on. But it means becoming energetically self aware and self loving enough to save our own lives first. Can we begin to see our enemies wherever they are as little children in horrific pain? I think that the consciousness on the planet has evolved enough that a handful of people are able to stretch themselves that far. I think that it only takes a handful of people to influence the consciousness on the entire planet by letting go of the barriers to their own vitality, creativity, longevity, self expression, and health no matter what it takes. The gift of letting go can go way beyond our own lives, but needs to start in our own back yard.

Are you game? Ask yourself:

What have I known I need to let go of, but haven't had the guts to...yet?
What help do I need to get in order to do it?
What do I get to hold on to by not letting it go? What's my pay off?
What kind of support will I need?
What will replace the pay off I am getting from it?
What will I say and how will I say it?
What will I do when I get a strong reaction from the other end?


Live Your Best Life
by David Whyte
from "Sweet Darkness"

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love....

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.


© Copyright 2004 Daina Puodziunas.  All rights reserved. 


Daina Puodziunas
Daina Puodziunas (Dinah - Midlife Fairy Godmother) helps women become their own midlife fairy godmothers. She has been passionately helping self aware, spiritually focused, fun loving women move past obstacles to an enchanted life her entire life. Midlife Magic For Second Half Bliss is a five step formula she offers through life coaching, telephone and in person workshops, speaking engagements and articles. Visit her website at
www.midlifefairygodmothers.com

 

Visit Daina at:
www.midlifefairygodmothers.com


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