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Letting go often feels like a shift that is somehow given to me rather than achieved, yet all the same it feels like something I am required to partake in. In that way, it often feels like a gift, a grace that was there all along but needed to be revealed to me to access it. Letting go is described here as a purely mental decision, it seems. My experience of letting go seems to happen also, and even primarily, in and through my body - an act of truth speaking I feel invited to make, a personal ritual of sorts in nature, a release of tears, etc. There seems to be something about letting go that happens in my body that goes along with the mental, emotional and spiritual shifts. After all, it is in the body that we first and foremost show up in life, so it seems important that way.

 Thank you so much for bringing to our attention the importance of listening. It reminds me of the value of listening not only with our ears, but also with our body language, our facial expressions, our minds, our hearts, and our overall attentive yet noninvasive presence. To be and do this feels like a practice and artform whose ultimate gift is to create a safe space for another to speak and to be heard, which is to be seen and known. I'm not sure we can give or receive much greater a gift than that. To listen so wholeheartedly requires the discipline to withold one's own opinions, solutions and answers, to consider those of another, and to dwell in the space of uknowning inbetween where the two meet and often begin a new and much needed conversation - with or without words. New dialogues born out of listening! Count me in! Thank you again for the great post and inspiration for the New Year!