Many people tell you to ‘let go’ of your thoughts and emotions when you have psychological difficulties. These days, this concept of ‘letting go’ is pretty popular and is adopted by both religious and not so religious people. ‘Letting go’ may look and sound appealing, but actually it is a problematic concept from the perspective of the Theory of Mimind and Xesmind, which is postulated to explain the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology.
When you suffer from certain thoughts and emotions including sorrow, rage, frustration, and pain due to stress and wounds, many psychology experts or spiritual leaders tell you to let go of those thoughts and emotions. However, the problem is that they tell you let go of them without dealing with the sources of them, which are stress and wounds. Then, you may feel as if stress and wounds did not exist since you have decided and worked somehow not to sense them by not recognizing them. Then, you may actually feel comfortable since you do not sense stress and wounds.
To be able to do so, you must also understand exactly what it is to let go of your thoughts and emotions, and understand what thoughts and emotions are in the first place. According to the Theory of Mimind and Xesmind, human mind necessarily detects stress and wounds, and sends signals to the consciousness so that stress and wounds are recognized and processed to restore and maintain balance in mind and psychology. Human mind never stops operating this way from birth to death. Then, would it be ever possible to ‘let go’ of the operation of mind? The answer is a definite ‘no’.
Our mind may not be seen but obviously exists and cannot stop operating as far as we are alive. Human mind operates as a form of energy to affect our psychology and consciousness. It is simply impossible and nonsensical to stop the operation of the life energy of human mind by just ‘letting go’.
Another way to understand the concept of ‘letting go’ of thoughts and emotions is to look at it as an idea that it is better to live without feeling stress and wounds. All human beings live to achieve happiness from their own perspective. People live for both happiness of individuals and happiness in relationships with other people. People pursue values and meanings for self-actualization by living in relationships with other people trying to be happy together. Wanting to be happy together with people in relationships is only a natural desire all humans have. This desire for being happpy together is essential and necessary in pursuing meanings and values for self-actualization. Human desire is the life energy and the driving force for human happiness. Many people tell you to ‘let go’ of your desires along with your thoughts and emotions. However, letting go of your thoughts, emotions and desires is equivalent to giving up on the driving force for self-actualization and giving up on happiness of a person in relationships.
Now, you may be able to see how misleading and even dangerous to guide anyone to just ‘let go’ of thoughts, emotions and desires, whether they are positive or negative. At prersent, we are in a situation where many people preach for ‘letting go’ and many people follow the preaching and try so hard to ‘let go’ of happiness and self-actualization along with their thoughts, emotions and desires, mostly to no avail or with adverse side effects.
Human beings need desires as the life energy and the driving force to pursue happiness in relationships and self-actualization. If you intend to exist only as an individual only with self-happiness without forming any human relationship, you may do so by living all by yourself in a deep forest and sustaining your life by eating and sleeping all by yourself. You may not need to activate much desire and not need to pursue self-actualization in relationships with other people. You may feel no need for considering happiness in human relationships.
Instead, if you live with desires for happiness as a person in relationships, as most of us do, stress and wounds are necessarily to occur in the process when your desires are not satisfied or things do not go the way you want them to. The greater your desires are for happiness, the greater stress and wounds are to be generated inside you.
Then, would there be a way to pursue happiness as a person in relationships with healthy and happy mind, and not to be swept or overwhelmed by stress and wounds? The answer is a definite ‘yes’. You can find the way when you accurately understand the true nature and the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology. Then, based on the understanding of human mind and psychology, you can build the ability to heal stress and treat wounds as you pursue self-actualization with desires as the driving force for happiness.
Instead of ‘letting go’ of thoughts, emotions, and desires to stop yourself from recognizing stress and wounds, you must build the ability to heal stress and treat wounds by accurately understanding the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology.
Human mind operates to let us recognize not only stress and wounds, but also joy and pleasure. When you ‘let go’ of negative emotions, you also ‘let go’ of positive emotions, which is not only unnecessary but also highly undesirable since happiness results from experiencing the combinations of all the emotions of both positive and negative. Trying to keep only positive emotions will result in even more serious psychological conditions. These days, the concept of ‘letting go’ of thoughts, emotions, and desires is accepted and approved by so many people leading to many other people to feel inadequate and even blame themselves for suffering from negative emotions and having desires for happiness. To blame people for not being able to ‘let go’ of emotions and desires is to blame them for living with human mind and psychology. To preach ‘letting go’ is to preach living only as an individual who pursues only self-comfort and self-happiness.
You must be wise enough to distinguish truth from falsehood regardless of the source of the saying or argument. The famous and the learned do not always lead you to truth. The conventional wisdom may not necessarily be the universal truth that transcends time and space. You yourself can and must accurately understand the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology.
Living as a person in relationships pursuing self-actualization is necessarily accompanied by stress and wounds and efforts. It is natural that you sometimes want to give up on everything including the most precious things in your life since it is so hard to go on with such pain and suffering in mind. You may feel that it would be nice and comfortable to 'let go' of thoughts, emotions, and desires and live only as an individual. So, you may be tempted to follow the preachings of famous spiritual leaders who will guide you to 'let go'.
Unfortunately, we are not designed to work that way. Human beings are designed to pursue happiness in relationships experiencing both positive and negative thoughts and emotions. 'Letting go' is impossible and undesirable with respect to the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology. You may find it extremely difficult to practice 'letting go' since it must counteract human nature of desiring happiness.
Korea Institute of Psycho-education provides educational programs for promoting understanding the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology and treatment programs for diverse psychological problems. You yourself can and must learn and determine what is irght for you in order to live happily maintaining balance in mind and psychology.
