By MARY BETH MAASSEN
Los Alamos

A few months ago I received an email from the UNM Mindful Center offering a day course entitled: Letting Go: A Mindfulness Meditation Retreat. It was to be led by Michelle DuVal, a remarkable and gifted meditation teacher.

I have a few issues (SURPRISE)—some of which are decades old—that continue to drag on my soul and dampen my spirit. These are issues that I think I have let go, and I think they are gone for good, and then one day… poof… they re-appear seemingly from nowhere and I am once again struggling to let go and move forward.

I envisioned Michelle waving a magic wand during the meditation and all the dark thoughts that hide in the recesses of my mind would simply evaporate, for good. My soul now eternally bathed in golden light, I would release the negativity instantly and forever. The rest of my life would be perpetual bliss. Done. And done. I immediately signed up for the retreat.

So when retreat day finally arrived you can imagine my disappointment when during Michelle’s opening remarks she specifically said she does not have a magic wand, and while we can all let go temporarily of the issues that weigh us down, the letting go leaves a hole and if we don’t fill it with gratitude, that hole will refill right back up with the very thing we let go of.

ARGH! Darn it.

So then my mind started riffing on how you can’t be whole with a hole and how weird that is that whole and hole are the same word with contrary meanings and I wonder how that happen to come about, and where does holy fit in with all that?

Then my mind took another leap and I started thinking about how I learned from sci-fi movies involving time travel that if you go back in time and change even one seemingly small action, it would cascade and alter the future, and everything would be different. For better, or worse.

Maybe, just maybe, even though I look at the dark side of all that has happened because of a long-ago injustice, perhaps, just perhaps, what IS right now could possibly, just possibly, be better than what could have been, should that long-ago injustice not have happened. Hmmmm.

AND, if that is so, don’t I have an amazing amount to be grateful for? I know I do.  Using the knowledge and wisdom I have acquired from reflective meditation, mindful meditation, and sci-fi movies,

I have decided to fill my hole left empty from my letting go with gratitude, every day. My heart already feels fuller.