I’d like to share a personal story that has to do with practice and letting go.

First of all, if you’re on “the path,” most likely your whole life is practice. Pretty much every single waking moment is conscious, present, and self-aware.

A while back, I found a coin on the ground. And it had a special marking. Given how I felt in the moment I saw the coin and picked it up, it felt like a special message - a totem with meaning. So I kept that coin with me for awhile.

And when it was time to pay, and that coin would have come in handy for its monetary value, I always managed to avoid paying with that specific coin and just doing something else.

Today, it was time for me to leave a tip. And the appropriate amount of tip that I wanted to give would have required that coin just for its monetary value. And at first I didn’t want to use that coin, and preserve it once more as I had done in the past.

But to leave the appropriate amount of tip otherwise would have taken a lot of energy - going to the server or cashier to change a bill, etc.

And in that moment, I realized it was time to let this coin go. I did not care to hold it “forever” as some kind of totem. Soon, it would have more (energetic) *weight* than would truly serve me.

So basically, I recognized, pretty quickly, that the lifetime of this coin being with me was already over. And I gave it as part of my tip with a lot of gratitude and benediction.

Letting go is literally the most important aspect of healing, in my opinion. Most people screw themselves over bad by not letting go and doing the inverse - clinging on.

I don’t think I have to tell you that this is ego. And had I not recognized “the moment” to let go of this coin, it would have become a weird kind of fuel source for my ego, reinforcing my ego in an unhealthy way.

And its original purpose, which you could say was a positive and light-filled message, would have become hijacked, essentially, by my ego making it into a thing, “important,” etc.

The word I like to use is “weight.” Some of the dearest things, relationships, places, etc. to your ego hold the greatest weight. The prom dress still hanging in your closet is extremely weighty, compared to whatever you just bought last week.

When people want to truly practice - like, have a practice. And be “on the path,” now - that might mean different things to different people. But to me, conscientiously letting go is a big part of my practice.

And this practice keeps my ego from gaining power from trash. This practice allows me to evade psychic attack and being triggered. It’s much easier to be an immovable observer - if you like that term - than to be a reactive, collapsed masculine, freaking out kind of person.

Which, let’s face it - is pretty much everyone.

So today, when I let go of the coin, and recognized that holding onto it any longer would have given it “weight,” is a kind of practice that I do that keeps me extraordinarily centered when a lot of sh-t is thrown at my face.

Doing the opposite - clinging on, fetishizing trash, being a collapsed masculine, being in your ego and freaking out, etc. Well, that’s ugly. So, you could say letting go is a beauty practice.