Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1516204
go happens through feeling, not thinking," Blanc summarizes. "Just exist," he suggests, possibly like a dog (not the same as owning a dog, but the recurring presence of dogs is notable). Di•erent disciples, most of them men in their 20s and 30s, take dif- ferent tacks. YouTuber Andrew Vanhof f combines the Hawkins of "Letting Go" with Hawkins of the "Map of Consciousness" and adds a little color-coded emotion scale, from least to most desirable. An "emo- tional fitness coach" named Oscar Nygren puts the emphasis on focus, and "sensing where the emotion is in our body" with a body scan. Nygren endorses the "Sedona method," which involves using breath exercises with questions: "Can I let this emotion go?" What everyone is looking for is a way to think of not thinking, to feel not feeling. A nd this is the slightly trick y a spect of the Hawk ins approach, that the idea of "letting go" is perhaps not exactly as accurate as you would expect a title to be. Why wasn't the book called Acceptance? Because this is where Hawkins lands: on the idea that nothing really needs to be fought or changed as much as it needs to be accepted. When he summarizes the elements of the technique, in his own words, he writes that "in order to surrender a feeling, sometimes it is necessary to start by relinquishing the feeling that is there about the particular emo- tion (e.g., guilt that 'I shouldn't have this feeling')." In a world driven by envisioning and manifesting and hoping and dreaming—especially in the self-help space—Hawkins is asking us to not be anxious about our anxiet y and not to judge our own judging. The idea that ever y thing might be OK and that everything could be OK right now is something perhaps only a dog understands. I L L U S T R AT I O N : H AT I C E E M I R M A H M U TO G L U/G E T T Y I M AG E S BAL HARBOUR 137