How to Be Loving: Letting Go vs. "Cutting Cords"

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

How we can let go, leave, break up, cut cords, erect boundaries, dissolve attachments and heal without aggression and anger — and instead do so with love

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Best Selfers! To let go? To dissolve attachments? To cut cords or pray for healing? These are all the right questions in terms of how we heal and move on.

[Excerpted from How to Be Loving: As Your Heart Is Breaking Open and Our World Is Waking Up, by Danielle LaPorte]

If you’ve done some metaphysical homework (of course you have—you’re here), you’ve probably come across the idea of “cutting energy cords” with people and places. We “send all that energy back to its source and cut-cut-cut those cords!” That practice can be a powerful remedy to imbalances and protecting ourselves. But . . . sometimes . . .

If you’re in an emotionally volatile space, it can be difficult to dissolve energetic ties with people you’re angry at or a situation that felt wounding or hurtful. The “cutting ties” gesture itself can have an underlying aggression. And that will just generate more angst—which is just another energy hook, more of the same story.

You can’t let go of something that you’re aggressively trying to let go of.

We want to gently and thoroughly let go of all of the residual scars of a painful connection or event. Your part in the pain, their part in it, the pain in the middle. The pain over the pain. And then we offer it all up to be transformed into a higher vibration—which is how we create Wisdom.

We don’t want to approach this as a “cutting away” or separating from our sorrow. It’s about turning to the Divine with our pain and being healed through that connection.

Ultimately this is about identifying with our expansive nature––our Loving Nature, instead of feeling constricted. Constriction grips. Expansion lets things flow. And when we’re expanded, we open ourselves to receive more healing and blessings.

Nothing leaves us until we thoroughly Love it.

We can’t curse it to release it. We can’t attack it to release it. That only creates more clinging and pushback.

Bless it: Thank you for what you taught me. May you be free. Then whatever it is—a relationship or a painful thoughtform—gets what it’s always wanted: some Love. And then it will go on its way. Finally.

Micro Practice: How to Let Go of the Past

Identify the wound.

Where do you feel restricted, weak, or incapacitated?

Identify the impacts of the wounding.

How does the woundedness affect your thoughts, words, actions?

Apply the medicine of Forgiving and Loving Kindness—for yourself and for others.

Leave the past in the past.

See people and events of today with a Loving gaze. Which is to say, let Love dissolve your doubts.

About How To Be Loving

When you turn to the heart, you uncondition your mind of all kinds of social programming. The intelligence of Love dissolves eons of dogma that tells us to prove our “worth” and sort who’s superior or inferior. Being Loving doesn’t necessarily mean feeling more. It means feeling everything with more Love. It’s the ultimate inclusiveness. Because in your heart, it’s ALL IN—your light and your shadows—and everyone else’s. This is the non-dual place where complete Self acceptance has room to grow.

How To Be Loving is a nuanced perspective on the life changing power of Self Compassion, shadow work, and being more receptive to Higher Guidance. This is a guide on how to use the genius of your heart to create conditions for healing.