We human beings have the urge to control everything. This belief of ours that we can control everything is nothing more than an illusion. An illusion that creates suffering and grief for us.
I believe in the power of visioning and active imagination and still, I believe in the power of the ability to surrender and let it go.
The balance where I find is paying incredible attention to be present and whatever I am doing, doing my best and doing it with love.
How one can do that? It is not an easy job. The first thing we need to do is being attentive and present. Being in your temple and checking yourself in continuously, to see if you are centered, or another way to say it is to check if you are in your Axis Mundi.
I guess this is the only thing we can control. Our own situation of being in the center or not. If we are centered, perfect. If not, taking the necessary step to come to our center.
Once we are centered and grounded, it is easier to let go. Once we are letting go, then we are just clearing the way for the creative force to pass through.
Letting go or releasing can be for strong feelings of grief, or simply for any little blocks or thought patterns that you are becoming aware of during the day.
The rule is simple, be aware, take control of your temple and clean your space, let the creative force flow from you.
Preparation for rituals for letting go: how can I be aware?
By simply slowing down. Checking in during the day, as many times as you need. This means simply asking you the question of: How do I feel right now? How are my thoughts right now, my body feeling right now? How are my emotions right now?
Preparation for rituals for letting go: how can I take control of my own temple?
By taking care of your thoughts- your speech and your actions
When you realize you are in a vicious cycle of controlling thoughts and as a result negative speech, remind yourself that you have 3 options: accept, change, and let go. Take responsibility and look at each option carefully. Decide what you want to or can do and just do it.
Preparation for rituals for letting go: how can I let go?
With a ritual and a prayer and an intention.
When we talk about rituals and prayers, people often think that it is a magical thing or a religious or spiritual thing. For me, they are the keys to a harmonious life.
Look at it this way. We are human meaning that we have some limits and cannot control everything. We are not God. When we begin to feel that we have full control over things, we simply suffer. And it does not make any sense at all.
As we do not have any manual for human beings reminding us that we are limited and we cannot control everything, even we do everything perfectly, the results cannot be all the time, the way we want, we are forgetting.
Another characteristic of being human. We forget very easily man. And this is what it is. We are human. This ability to forget is in our survival, and it is in the game of creation. That is why, we forget again and again, that we cannot control everything, we are not Gods or Goddesses.
That is why, we need to remind ourselves what being human is, so inviting compassion and creative source to our daily life with rituals and prayers.
How do you release and let go?
You can create your ritual for releasing and letting go. Or you can use any of those I will give you below as an example.
The methodology is simple. Set the space – Starting a ritual with a symbolic act – Pray/say your intention – Close the circle with a symbolic act.
First, you will set the space, where you will be feeling safe and trusted, and you can be focused and in silence. This is what I call, creating and being in your sacred space.
Again, sacred does not mean that you have to be in a mosque, in a church, in a temple, whatever. Your body is your temple already. What makes a space sacred is where you can feel present and safe.
Starting a ritual with a symbolic act, I will give you an example from my singing ritual. Every week, I listen to a spiritual song and contemplate on it and at the end of the week, I sing this song and record it. Before recording, I start a ritual with a symbolic act. I fire a candle and some incense, then I meditate. This is how I start my ritual.
Once I started a ritual, rituals bring me to the present, helps me to hold a space, so that I can connect with the unseen, with myself, and with the universe. After my meditation, I simply say my prayer or intention, however, you would like to call it. I say that I intend to be able to get out of the way, so the creative source can come through me for the healing sound.
By being present and with this intention in my heart and mind, I sing by being in the moment. This ritual helps me to be in the moment and while singing a song, I am there fully. This is what makes the song a medicine song. When I am present, I am letting go and then only the creative source can flow from me.
Once I finish, I say thank you and I close the ritual by closing the fire of the candle.
Rituals are symbolic. The unseen world speaks with symbols. Letting go is something you do in the world of meaning; it is not something in the material world. So then if you want to let go, as you are doing it in an unseen world – does not mean that it is not real, it is as real as the unseen world- then you need to speak the language of this world: the symbols!
When you use symbols, you simply welcome yourself to a ritual. You can create your own ritual, which could be simply preparing and drinking a coffee. Or you can also get inspiration from these rituals below:
Burning ritual to let go
If you are facing a negative thought pattern in yourself, burning rituals to let go can be a great help for you.
How do you burn intentions?
You can write down this negative thought pattern and rephrase it as an intention and then burn the paper as a symbolic act to let go.
For example, if you are seeing that you are envying somebody and you are in continuous comparison with people around you. You can simply write down; I am aware of my thought patterns of envying and have compassion for myself and I thank this negative feeling for showing me how I do not want to feel, and I know that I do not need this anymore. I welcome to my life my own uniqueness and my shine.
What does writing a letter and burning it do?
Once you write down your intention, burn it as a symbolic act. Feel it while burning and repeat inside your intention. The more you feel, the better its impact will be.
Rituals are as dreams or as guidance in shamanic journeys. They are using symbols from the image library for your soul. By burning the letter to let go, you are communicating with your soul, talking by its language: symbols.
Water release ritual to let go
Similar to using fire elements, you can also use water elements to release. With your intention in your mind and heart, you can have a shower, bath, immerse fully in a river or sea. Or even you can say your intention of letting go speaking to the water and then pour that water to a place symbolic for you to let go.
You can be creative around rituals. Follow your intuitions as they will tell you the best way to speak the language of the symbols.
Closure rituals
Once you finish the ritual, it is important to close it with a symbolic act.
You can tell your gratitude and if there is a candle close it and simply bringing your sacred space in its previous situation can be a closing ritual.
If the ritual was deep for you, you can combine it with a grounding to close the ritual. The grounding exercise below can help:
- Sit with your feet flat on the floor, eyes closed, body straight and comfortable. Keep your hands comfortably open on your lap. Slowly relax your muscles.
- Breathe in and out at a deep and slow pace, and your breathing will keep a certain rhythm.
- Imagine that your breath carries light in your favorite color, and each time you feel calm with this light, and every time you breathe out, you take the boredom out of you.
- Imagine the light first filling your heart and radiating from your heart to your whole body and your every cell shining brightly.
- Let the thoughts that come to your mind flow. If there are feelings such as anger, sadness, disappointment, let them come out.
- Imagine a cord emerging from the coccyx. Feel this grounding cord as it passes down, to the foundation of the building, from there to the earth, through the rock, magma, and gaseous layers beneath it, connecting to the center of the earth.
- Send all the negative emotions, the people you are angry with, the uncomfortable emotions from your cord to the center of the world. Mother Earth turns these feelings into positive.
- Enjoy the balance that occurs while manipulating the negative and focus on the positive.
- Open your eyes and thank the earth and yourself.
Rituals for letting go of grief
You can do letting go rituals for grief as well. All our emotions or signals, so when you feel grief, simply hold space for yourself for some rituals of letting go.
This releasing ritual can help you to let go of grief:
- You can lie down or sit by having your feet on the ground. It is important to have your spine direct, as it is where the energy flows.
- You can close your eyes and cover them with a scarf.
- The relaxation exercise is an amazingly simple exercise that first stretches and then loosens all the muscles of the body and is applied sequentially.
- This stretching and relaxation are done sequentially from the feet to the head for four seconds.
- It is done rhythmically in coordination with breathing.
- The first example is as follows: as you push the abdomen out, take a deep breath, one to four. Take two three four.
- While holding your breath, contract your foot muscles: hold two three four.
- Again counting 4 exhales: give out two three four.
- Then give a break for 4 seconds: stop two three four. Meanwhile, gladly feel your feet relax.
- Quadruple again take the breath, hold the breath, tighten your calves while holding the breath and loosen your calves as you exhale.
- Notice and enjoy the relaxed calves in four seconds.
- Repeat this process on the hips, abdomen, chest, arms, hands, shoulders, neck, face, and skin of the head, respectively.
- When it is over, imagine yourself relaxing as if you were lying in a bathtub of warm water. Stretch out your arms and legs as far as you can and take a few deep breaths.
What is a release or letting go ceremony?
In all cultures, we have the ceremonies of letting go. For example, funerals are great ceremonies for letting go.
When my father died, I understood the importance of funerals. In Turkey, people come to visit your house for 40 days. Especially for 7 days, people come with meals. You do not cook anything; people bring food for you and that food is served and eaten with everybody. At the end of the 40 days, you have a special ceremony, where you cook a special dessert for people and special prayers are sang.
Before my father passed away, I did not understand the importance of it. When he died, thousands of people visited our home for at least 40 days. During the day and night. Each person was explaining another story about my father. We were talking about my father, laughing, crying. The emotions were a roller coaster, and I was living the life of my father again via all these stories told by different people.
I realized that I was gently let go with the help of people supporting us, stories, prayers, songs, shared food. Thanks to this ceremony, I could face my emotional roller coaster and I was passing through it with the community instead of being alone. That ceremony made me stronger to meet my grief for the upcoming months.
Ritual for moving forward
As I have explained before letting go rituals are great to clean the space so that you can move forward. Life is as it is, you cannot stop and stay in the same place. Whatever happens, you need to move forward. As the expression says, you cannot take a bath in the same river twice.
Moon is a great symbol for it. With its ever-changing phases, it is reminding us of the cycles of life and the need to move forward.
Moon is gently reminding us that there is nothing to control.
Letting go ritual full moon
All those letting go rituals that we have talked about above can be done during the full moon. The full moon is a great time in the moon cycle to let go. So simply as a full moon ritual, you can do a ritual of letting go.
New moon rituals for letting go
Letting go is not only for big emotions or blockage that you may have, but it is a continuous awareness state. Every day I do letting go rituals. Before starting working, while starting a bright new day, before writing this blog post, before singing, all these are great ways to let go.
When you start a new moon cycle, to clear your space so that the creative force can flow freely, do your letting go ritual.
Conclusion
We; humans need more self-compassion. It is not easy at all to be a human. We are living in a world of duality and we forget. We are many times unaware of our limits and source, as fishes are unaware of the water or as we are unaware of the air.
So, we need to remind ourselves again and again. So that we can gently remember that we are here supported and loved by the One, the only thing we can do is trying to come to the center, our Axis Mundi, doing our best and doing with Love.
Make letting go ritual, your daily ritual. Let go of the illusion that you can control everything and remember that you are enough as the way you are, and you do not need to anything to be loved.
If you enjoy this article, the articles below could also interest you:
Ritual Meaning and Examples of a Ritual
All You Want to Know About Morning Rituals
Live Life As a Ritual. Convert Your Routines to Rituals
Below is a Pinterest friendly photo…. so, you can pin it to your Rituals Board!
