Read an Excerpt
YOU CAN LET GO NOW
IT'S OKAY TO BE WHO YOU ARE
By Mark J. Chironna Nelson Books
Copyright © 2007 Mark J. Chironna
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7852-6233-6
Chapter One
When will it be okay for you to be you?
It was Emerson who said that most individuals lead "quiet lives of desperation." How often we settle for less in life while our hearts cry out for more. We arrive here by mystery and miracle from a watery womb, and when we break forth out of our safe, specific environments the first thing that emerges from the depths of our spirits is a cry. It is our primal expression of being, a first demonstration of our awareness that something traumatic has taken place and that there is no longer room for us in the individual worlds in which we were formed.
We haven't got a clue about what life is supposed to be, yet we exhibit patterns and behaviors long before we ever say our first words. These patterns and behaviors seem to have a mind of their own, a script they are following, with or without our permission.
We learn that our primary sound, that intense cry, gets all our needs met-milk, a change from wet clothing, and whatever else our little hearts demand. It works really well, at least for a little while. There does come a moment, though, when our parents shut our bedroom doors and ignore our cries. So we cry even louder, and it doesn't work. This is very frustrating.
We soon discover we have hands and fingers, and they are quite effective at grabbing things. As a matter of fact, we take all that energy that we used for crying and invest it in each of our five fingers.
Then one morning we are invited to drink our milk out of a cup. Growing up and making the journey isn't comfortable to begin with, and now it seems to be getting worse. In anger, we each may grab that plastic cup and throw it back. We may even grab hold of those high-chair trays hemming us in and shake them in hopes of freeing ourselves from their clutches. We are grasping and grabbing with everything we've got, because we aren't allowed to do what is most comfortable for us, or be who we have been up to that point. It is no wonder that Peter Pan preferred the Island of Lost Boys to a life of growing up and becoming all that he was supposed to become.
No one else can make our journeys in life for us. We have to find our own way through the maze of life, seizing what is most important and essential by the choices we make. No one else can achieve those levels of mastery for us.
At times we fail miserably. Yet at other times we seem to momentarily grasp a sublime realm of possibility that far exceeds our wildest imaginations and dreams. Those deep yearnings, those urges that demand fulfillment and expression for your uniqueness ... where are they living in you? They come from a place deeper than your understanding, deeper than your words can describe. They don't even ask permission to invade your waking hours or your sleeping seasons. They just show up, from the time you are little, like an uninvited guest at dinnertime.
Somewhere on the journey from childhood to adolescence, you either seek a way to make those dreams and yearnings fit into the real world that seems so contradictory to the one you envision, or you bury your flights of fancy and chalk them up to childhood foolishness. Instead of capturing what those dreams really were pointing to, you may grab on to shoddy substitutes that keep your hands full and your heart empty.
You reach a rite of passage when you buy your first car. Now you really have something that proves you have "made it." Then you get a flat tire or have your first fender bender. Later you finally buy your dream home and get a zip code that says you are some kind of somebody, and then your roof leaks, and your maintenance costs increase every year.
While your hands have finally encircled the things you thought would make you feel great about who you are, your heart is still aching for something deeper and more enduring. You live experiencing the gap between your expectations of your reality, and the reality of your expectations. No matter how hard you try, the gap is too far for you to bridge with your grasp, your grip, your fingers-because what you want is out of reach.
You want to stake out your unique dreams, while at the same time you may fall back on your fears of failure and success, which amount to the fear of being all alone. You may want what you don't have, have what you don't want, and become torn between which option provides the greatest rewards. One is the reward of comfort and safety; the other is the reward of risk and opportunity.
You also want to know that you are significant, and that your life is essential to some greater purpose. Some people become holograms, or more literally, "hollow-grams." They look real, touchable, approachable, and three-dimensional, yet they are empty and hollow and in need of substance-the substance of true identity.
Your real primal cry is the cry to know who you are. You and I believe that security, accomplishments, and things will give us identity, yet the more we struggle for identity, the more it eludes us. It isn't until we are free to let go of the grasping and the grabbing that we find out who we truly are.
So where do we go to find the answer to our dilemma? When is it safe to stop snatching and clinging? Where do we solve the problem of being who we truly are? Do we know who we truly are? When is it okay to let go and be who you are?
Within the pages of an ancient manuscript, there lies the story of a grappler, a grabber, a clinger, whose life becomes a model of the pathway to well-being, wholeness, true-to-God self-worth, and authentic identity that indeed is destiny. The grasper's name is Jacob, and his name actually means "heel grabber."
Even as early as Jacob's development within his mother's womb, it was never okay for him to let go. He gripped, clenched, and kept on clinging-until the day he discovered it really was okay to let go of the hollow, needs-driven life he was living. When he found out it was okay to let go, his nobility and princely character emerged, and a prince who prevailed with God and men became a model of uniqueness, authenticity, and greatness for generations to come.
There is a genuine, spontaneous, and fully alive you deep inside that has been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to show up and live life to the fullest. The God of Jacob is still available to form you into that noble, authentic, true-to-God self, that person who has been crying out to be free since the day you arrived on the planet.
As we look at Jacob's story, you, too, will discover that there will come a defining moment when you can let go, because it will finally be safe for you to be who you were meant to be, and who you truly are!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from YOU CAN LET GO NOW by Mark J. Chironna Copyright © 2007 by Mark J. Chironna. Excerpted by permission.
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