Bal Harbour

THERE IS A PHOTO floating around the internet that shows three people sit ting on a couch in 1969. I am inclined to trust the date: "9/27/69 at Helen Wynn's" —writ ten with a ballpoint pen and pushed to the bot tom edge of the black-and-white print . Psychologist Helen Schucman smiles, no teeth, gamely accepting her place in the middle of t he sa ndw ich bet ween A lcoholics A nony mous co -founder Bi l l Wilson, glum in the foreground, and psychiatrist David R . Hawkins, looking like a jolly Ned Flanders in a mustache and vest at the end of the sofa. As the kids might say, this photo is my Roman Empire. In a daily life keyed to professional achievement and consumption, it is almost impossible to imagine success that is not somehow a version of outperforming someone else grinding alongside you. Hawkins is here to dismantle that. Hawkins was the slow cooker of the bunch, a spiritual scientist of sorts who died at the age of 85 in 2012 and left behind a host of books and lec- tures (on his Veritas Publishing site). Hawkins became famous for the Map of Consciousness. In this system, various factors add up to a vibrational score. Pride brings you down but courage is a desired at tribute, and so for th. The book that has had the most interesting afterlife, though, is something softer and sim- pler: a shor t book ca lled "Let ting Go: The Pathway to Surrender," published in 2012, the year he died. This one emerged from the pack by presenting a new take on an ancient prob- lem of the mind, dependent on feelings that ultimately limit what the mind can do. "Each feeling is the cumulative derivative of many thousands of thoughts," Hawkins writes. This becomes a problem of the body, as all the "suppressed energ y" represented by feelings builds up and "seeks expression through psychosomatic distress, bodily disor- ders, emotional illnesses, and disordered behavior in interpersonal relationships." We worry ourselves into the grave, even while running five miles a day. Hawkins begins "Letting Go" seemingly worried that he has scared ož the crowd with his consciousness metrics, describing his own book as "easy, ežortless, and enjoyable." He reassures the reader that there is "nothing to learn or memorize. You will become lighter and happier as you read it." The idea is to isolate emotions and let them run through you, as Hawkins puts it, "employing the basic teaching of the Buddha, which removes the pressure of involuntar y reactivit y." Hawkins is focusing on an ancient pickle here: "It is the accumulated pressure of feel- ings that causes thoughts" (emphasis his). Hawkins focuses on fear and the fact that what "one holds in mind tends to manifest," and more spe- cifically that "fear engenders fearful thoughts." There is little that comes through our screens that puts us at ease or lets us think more clearly. The simple acts of distraction tend to instill fears of things we haven't done, forces we cannot control but still dread. As Hawkins put it , we have become "injustice collectors." He puts this idea beautifully here: "Intellectual pride leads to ignorance, and spiritual pride is the main block to spiritual development and matura- tion in ever yone." Thinking one has the answers "blocks our grow th and development." "Love prolongs life," Hawkins writes. "In fact, research documents that having a dog extends the owner's life by 10 years!" There is some scient i f ic u nder pi n n i n g for t he concept s H awk i n s d i scu s se s: "Unpublished research studies during the 1980s, for which I served as clinical advisor, showed a greater ežectiveness of inner techniques in cont r a s t t o pu rely med ic a l met hod s of stress-reduction." Hawkins goes on to cite tests using k inesiolog y, or tests of muscle responses, that demonstrate meditative tech- niques to be more ežective than pharmaceuti- cal methods in lowering anxiety. What we lea r n is t hat "L et t in g Go" is essentially a slowed-down, slightly more sci- entific version of A A's eleventh step, which suggest s usin g " prayer a nd medit at ion to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him." The continued popular response to the book shows a genuine need to throw ož the yoke of influencers and their monkey mind insecurities. Hawkins writes about the real self in a way that suggests the inner God, the eternal component in each of us that neither needs nor acknowledges ex ternal insecurities: "Feelings are not the real self. Whereas feelings are programs that come and go, the real inner Self always stays the same; therefore, it is necessar y to stop identifying transient feelings as yourself." Dozens of young influencers and YouTubers have posted takes on Hawkins, creating a variety of "Letting Go techniques," which may or may not be what Hawkins intended. There is a theory that when Hawkins promised everyone that they didn't have to memorize or learn anything, he was subtly daring readers to create their own methods—which they did. YouTuber and life coach Julien Blanc calls "Letting Go" his "favorite book of all time" but criticizes Hawkins for not providing a method for letting go. As Blanc says, "Let go and let God? It's not practical." In order to lay the groundwork for letting go, Blanc prioritizes the act of identify- ing "sensations" rather than spending time thinking about emotions. "The way we tend to deal with what we are feeling" is how he describes the process, or rather, the point at which we either let go or don't. "Letting HOW TO CHANGE THE BODY'S SCORE SASHA FRERE-JONES REVISITS DAVID R. HAWKINS'S "LETTING GO," AND DISCOVERS A NEW GENERATION OF DEVOTEES PRACTICING THE ART OF SURRENDER. I N A WORLD DRI V EN BY EN V ISION I NG A N D M A N IFESTI NG, H AW K I NS IS A SK I NG US TO NOT BE A N X IOUS A BOUT OU R A N X IET Y A N D NOT TO JU DGE OU R OW N JU DGI NG. 136 BAL HARBOUR

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