- Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go.
- Watch the heat of day pass into the cool night. Let go.
- When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.
- When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest
of your life. With great joy.
For the first few minutes, I couldn’t stop laughing. I could see over the whole valley, over
the umbrella of the mango trees, and the wind was blowing my hair around like a flag. I
watched the sun go down, and then I lay down on my back and watched the stars come out. I
sang a small little prayer in Sanskrit, and repeated it every time I saw a new star emerge in
the darkening sky, almost like I was calling forth the stars, but then they started popping out
too fast and I couldn’t keep up with them. Soon the whole sky was a glitzy show of stars. The
only thing between me and God was... nothing.
Then I shut my eyes and I said, “Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to under-
stand about forgiveness and surrender.”
What I had wanted for so long was to have an actual conversation with my ex-husband,
but this was obviously never going to happen. What I had been craving was a resolution, a
peace summit, from which we could emerge with a united understanding of what had oc-
curred in our marriage, and a mutual forgiveness for the ugliness of our divorce. But months
of counseling and mediation had only made us more divided and locked our positions solid,
turning us into two people who were absolutely incapable of giving each other any release.
Yet it’s what we both needed, I was sure of it. And I was sure of this, too—that the rules of
transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you
cling to even one last seductive thread of blame. As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment
to the soul; even one puff of it is bad for you. I mean, what kind of prayer is this to im-
bibe—“Give us this day our daily grudge”? You might just as well hang it up and kiss God
good-bye if you really need to keep blaming somebody else for your own life’s limitations. So
what I asked of God that night on the Ashram roof was—given the reality that I would prob-