'Let Go Now'- Detachment Means Giving Up Outcomes

Have you ever felt like you're clinging too tightly to the outcomes of your actions, only to end up disappointed or stressed? Join me as I guide you through the transformative practice of detachment, a journey inspired by Karen Casey's "Let Go Now" teachings. When we use the tools and principles of spirituality and Soul Recovery, we can show up as our whole and authentic self in action- and at the same time let go of trying to control the outcome for ourselves and others.  This is not an easy process, but we are learning to use loving detachment one step and one day at a time to be in the positive flow of the universe and move closer to healing and inner peace.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:47

If you've ever been attached to an outcome, then you're often going to be frustrated and disappointed. I know I was, and I'm coming back to Karen Casey's book Let Go Now Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom, and her meditation on detachment means giving up outcomes. This isn't easy when we want certainty, when we want to know what's going to happen so that we can feel comfortable. But in soul recovery, what we're learning is we're learning how to let go, how to trust, how to move away from the need to be in control, and this is a great example of how to be in your healthiest, fullest space, able to let things be exactly as they are. Trusting. That part of it is growth and learning and expansion for everybody, but especially for you. How do you show up in action from a healthy place and let go of the outcome? That's what we're going to talk about. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:50

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives, as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow and our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover your Soul. I'm Rev Rachel and I am so excited to be sitting here again with you today, getting to share more on soul recovery, more on being our full, healthiest, happiest self through spirituality, taking the tools and principles of detachment, of Al-Anon, of codependency, of people pleasing as doors to walk through to get us to this place where we're learning how to be whole. We're learning how to let go of the need to control or fix or get approval of anything on the outside and come back to our center of who we are standing in, our most healed, healthy, full self. And last week I read from Let Go Now Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom by Karen Casey, and I am just so enjoying this book that I just think I'm going to keep going this week with another meditation and affirmation from this incredible teachings of how to let go and what I love about this next one, which is number six. We did four last time. This time we're doing.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:43

Detachment means giving up outcomes, and I think this has been one of the most profound parts of my spiritual journey, which is to be present in exactly who I am, in this new, healthier way, and to just open to what is the outcome? I can't possibly know. I'm going to read what this says and then we will do what I usually do, which is just to riff off of it and see what comes in terms of soul recovery. So this is Detachment, means Giving Up Outcomes by Karen Casey on her meditations in Let Go Now, and she says perhaps you've heard of this wise phrase our job is the effort, not the outcome. But how often do we embrace it fully?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:40

Generally, we want to secure the result that we have imagined is the perfect one. To do this, we assume that we have to shepherd the project or the situation or the person down the path that leads to the definition of the quote, unquote, natural conclusion. But the correct conclusion God's will, spirit's will, higher powers will might not even resemble our will. That's not an easy adjustment to make in our thinking. Hindsight is so revealing. Just for a moment, recall a situation in your past that you were determined to control, but the outcome was simply not what you'd envisioned. Can you see how much better God's outcome was, spirit's outcome was, she says, in my life? If I had managed to make happen many of my quote, educated, unquote choices, I'd not have been alive to write this book. Thank goodness my higher power had a far better outcome for me than my own. Now I know, even though I'm still inclined to forget, that doing my part and then letting go of the rest will ensure, at the very least, my peace of mind. I like that feeling. And then the affirmation is detaching from outcomes, those that apply to us, those that apply to the actions of others, is the surest way to a peaceful day.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:01

Trying is believing, and what I really love about this is that it also talks about the concept that it isn't about just sitting back and watching a car crash happen, it isn't about just throwing it to the wind, and I think that part of what has really been so insightful and powerful, me and my soul recovery journey, is this concept around how do I show up in each situation in my fullest, healthiest, purest, clearest, cleanest of emotional, mental, spiritual self to take the action? The quote that she says in the beginning is our job is the effort, not the outcome. It doesn't say our job is just to throw it away and let go of what happens next, to be able to make an effort and this is the part that I really wanted to concentrate in this because when we think about how are we supposed to be in any situation and you know, we come here. A lot of us come here because we are caught in relationships that aren't satisfactory, or we have somebody who has addiction issues, or we personally have addiction issues, and these have brought to light for us a impact that is changing our world. There's enough discomfort from something to make us be interested in looking inside of ourselves for some sort of solution. Now I know when I started this journey, my solution was if you could be different, then I'll be better. If I could make this better, if you would quit being like this, or if my kids would be like this, or if my marriage looked and felt like this, if my job was like this, if the world was like this, I could relax and be better. That. The beauty of soul recovery and soul journey, experience healing is that we begin to realize the absolute truth that we are powerless over everything else. But it isn't about letting go of being in your life, being present in who you are and how you relate to the people and the world and the situations around you. It's about learning how to be of the action, to do the work and let go of what we think is going to come from it. And again I come back to this story that is, my own life and career.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:32

For example, I went to the University of Colorado thinking that I was going to get an early childhood education degree because I had enjoyed working in preschools and that seemed like a qualified, good thing to do. And I started taking those classes and they did not resonate with me. I definitely wasn't feeling the pull and the need to do that. So I moved to psychology, because psychology had always inspired me, and through that I took art classes, thinking that they were a reward for doing the hard work and that if I was going to be in college then I wanted to at least be doing something that filled me up a little bit. And so I ended up with both a major in art and a major in psychology, which is kind of funny because I kind of got the basics of both but never dove really deep into either one of them, which is actually kind of interesting, but never dove really deep into either one of them, which is actually kind of interesting.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:40

If I had known then, if I was attached to the outcome then about who I demanded that my life would be, I think that I would be in a completely different place than I am now. Because when I was younger I had more opening to that beauty that we have in life which is believing that it's just going to unfold, that everything will work out. There was some part of me that was in that beautiful state of trusting that I could just be myself and it would work out. And I watched how each step led me to the next step. That led me to the next step because I was in that space of trusting the will of the universe that was co-creating for my greatest good. I hadn't been beaten down yet. I was still optimistic and through that I ended up buying a house in Louisville, where I still currently live, and opening an in-home daycare center, because it met that criteria of loving little kids and wanting to teach little kids. But it also gave me the peace that I knew that I wanted to be my own boss, that I wanted to be independent and I wanted to be artistic. It allowed me to have that artsy side of myself.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:49

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the Soul Recovery Path once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the soul recovery I am.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:39

Today. I can see that spirit, higher power and my higher being. My higher knowing of who I was was in every step of the way. I wasn't attached to the outcomes until I got to a place where I felt like I was responsible for all the people in my life Now. I had a husband and two kids and it got more and more like I knew that I needed to grasp onto something tighter and tighter and tighter to make our lives function, to make us be okay, to live up to the standard that, in my mind, I had created was the proper way to live as a mom and as a wife, and how we were going to survive and what we were going to do, and all of that's fear. When we are determined to make an outcome, it's because we're afraid, because we want certainty, we want to know what to expect, because it feels better if we can know what to expect. And I recognize that my drinking got worse and worse and worse and actually, as I often say, the wheels started falling off the bus, worse and worse and worse. And actually, as I often say, the wheels started falling off the bus worse and worse and worse, as I tried to grip more and more tightly to some specific outcome that I wanted my kids to turn out some specific way, because society dictates that children should have some sort of successes or do this well in school or behave certain ways, and I wanted my marriage to look a certain way. And I'm getting more and more and more attached to an outcome and my life is getting harder and more painful and definitely more suffering, so much more suffering from attaching to an outcome.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:50

Now being present in your life from a place where you're empowered to understand your feelings, being in a place in your life where you're empowered to see it the way you choose to see it, from love and compassion and gentleness and grace. These are the places where you can step into releasing the outcome and move into faith and trust, moving into a knowing that when you are connected to your whole self and not reacting from old wounds or old patterns or old pains, from old wounds or old patterns or old pains, but truly standing up for yourself in this, knowing that you are whole, this knowing that you are enough, that you don't need anybody else to justify your value, then you can start to relax and know that you're being guided to relax and know that you're being guided, that you're being offered the next step, the next step, the next step to your best self and letting go of that need to be attached to make happen anybody else's stuff to determine that you think you know what the outcome should be. Now, if I look at my own life to where I'm sitting here today recording in my little backyard. She shed speaking to the soul recovery community.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:20

I couldn't have possibly believed or known that this was what was going to be coming to me when I was graduating for college, or even known even six years ago when I finally took the step to stop drinking and to finally heal what was underneath, to look at my pain, to look at my wounds, to take responsibility for my own happiness. I couldn't have imagined what that was going to be. But instead of having an attachment to a deep outcome, I started having a desire to be happy. Instead of being attached to some situation of how it's supposed to look, I started claiming that I knew for myself that I deserve to be well, that I wanted to be well, that I wanted to let go of the past, that I wanted to let go of resentments and anger and being constantly disappointed. I didn't want to live that way anymore.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:24

So I started showing up with myself by practicing the 12 steps of AA first and then moving into the 12 steps of Al-Anon, and then opening my spiritual toolbox and just soaking up everything that appealed to me, that aligned with me, and again, your spiritual journey is yours? What appeals and aligns with you? When you listen to something, what is it that makes you just go? Yeah, you're speaking to me. You're telling me exactly what I know already. All of this is within you already. When somebody speaks it to you, it's only encouraging you to know and to be affirmed of what is already within you. So I started soaking those things up and through that I got clarity on the nine steps of soul recovery that encompass the basic principles that came from 12 step but really open up to a more metaphysical spiritual container, that have gentleness and kindness yes, that have compassion and deep, deep forgiveness.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:41

This idea that we can completely release, that we can let go of the past, that we can visit the little spaces that hold energy, that need to be reconciled and then let it go, truly letting it go. And that's letting go of the outcome too that when we are in our spiritual path, when we're in our journey, whatever this healing modality is for you, that's yours. There's lots of healing modalities out there. There's lots of different psychology styles, therapy styles. When you are aligned and ready to call to yourself what is right for you, it will come. It will absolutely come, because no one is giving it to you anyway. It's really you remembering who you are, remembering how you want to show up in the world, because this journey of being present with other people is not easy. It's not easy in the slightest.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:49

So this meditation that Karen is talking about, detachment means giving up the outcomes. What she's looking at is that when we not only for ourselves but for other people hold on so tightly to this rigid belief system that's really trying to protect us, we aren't opening up to the flow and the unlimited, abundant nature of the universe. And I think it's so interesting that if you look at your life and you look at the moments where there was maybe a moment of grace, where somebody said something or suggested something to you or you were moved in a particular way, maybe by a song or in a service or at a concert and you notice that those are the moments when you connect within yourself, within knowing, and you let go of this rigid outcome. Maybe you're on a trip and you thought that you had some plan in mind and you just let go of this outcome plan of what you wanted it to look like, and you just were more in the flow and you got to do something really amazing, or you met some really amazing people and made friends or had some experience that was unique and new and different. This allowing people to be where they need to be in their experience, letting go of the outcome and then for yourself to open to this place of connecting to your higher power in a way where you're trusting this breadcrumb flow, one step to the next, one step to the next, and I love that.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:39

She actually says she wouldn't be there to write this book if she had done what her educated best guess would be how often do we look at something that seemed so incredibly painful or something that you really didn't think was going to work out, and you think, thank God I didn't get that job, thank goodness that relationship didn't work out, thank goodness that person had that DUI or had that really bad situation that made them uncomfortable enough to make the changes in their life that they needed to make? I think of that for myself. If I hadn't hit the wall so hard, then I couldn't have been in a place where I was willing to do whatever it took to make myself better. We can be in mediocre for a long time. We can be in unhappy for a long time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:36

Sometimes it takes ourselves being deeply unhappy, or other people being deeply unhappy, for change to actually happen. Situation in a way that is as helpful without enabling, that is as truthful without being harmful, that is as real without being too much of where other people are, but never diminishing ourselves. We're learning how to balance all of these aspects letting go of outcomes, letting go of the need for it to look or feel or be how we think it is for us to be okay, from a place of fear, if I truly trust that everything is indeed conspiring for my happiness and my greatness, if I truly know that every interaction, every phone call, everything that I think or connect with is part of my experience in the world that I'm choosing. What am I going to choose? My experience in the world that I'm choosing, what am I going to choose?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:03

But not choosing to make it be a certain way, but to be even more present right here, right now, in this moment, in this moment, right here, and there's things happening in the world and there's things happening in my life, but, having just gone through a little bit of a, of a dip and coming back out of it and feeling this, knowing that I needed. Those experiences that I just had, some of those sadnesses, some of those growth pushes to get me to this next side, helped me to be in this place where I'm releasing this part that oh so much wanted certainty, wanted to know, wanted it to look and feel a certain way, and this releasing is incredibly powerful. So her affirmation again at the end, was detaching from outcomes, those that apply to us and those that apply to the actions of others, is the surest way to a peaceful day. Trying is believing A peaceful day. This is about our own peace. This is about us choosing a happy life, a spiritual life, a healthy life. This is us choosing peace, even when it's crazy, even when it feels overwhelming outside of us. This is us choosing to let go of the outcome for our well-being. That's the beauty of detachment. Until next time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:43

Namaste, thank you for listening to the Recover your Soul podcast and if you loved what you heard here, every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple Podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member, and on this platform, you can choose $5, $15, or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey. I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month, support group. This is on zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the soul recovery message with even more people.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:38

We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to guided meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on Insight Timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about soul recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.