Letting Go Like Alyssa Liu

If you haven't seen her gold-medal performance you should check it out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCrFaRsezGo.

If you watch with your whole body and not just your eyes, you'll see someone skate with imperturbability, with a light "whatever" quality that can't be manufactured with the will or with any familiar mind-ticks like affirmations or positive thinking. It's the kind of "hootlessness" that Lester Levinson, the man who inspired the Sedona Method, used to talk about.

Once you let go, with whole-bodied letting go, of any feelings or attachment to what happens, you're free to let energy flow as it is. And that energy, born of the One energy, will work on your behalf and make art of Itself.

I watched the other competitors, whose stories of overcoming and perseverance were applauded for their tenacity and courage. It's the American way after all - pushing through obstacles to achieve hard-won success. 

But maybe like Alyssa we're growing tired of this approach. I know I am. And what about a deeper courage? What about the courage it takes to feel your real feelings and tell yourself the truth about them?

I think about Ilia Malinin, the quad God, who disappointed himself and everyone else, when his shoe-in consistency and reliable perfection, broke under pressure. And I imagine him asking Alyssa, "How do I let go like you did? How do I achieve the peace that you have?" And her answering, "You can't. You can't achieve it. Because it's not something you can get: it's just something that happens when you're tired and you stand on the ice at practice and sob, uncontrollable, unstoppable sobs because you just can't pretend anymore. You can't fight the resistance to being there and the secret dread. You're done with the pressure, constraints, and the expectations. And you walk away for what seems like for good. And you let it go. You just let go.

And then maybe, from that letting go place, a seed will sprout - the one that was originally planted as your unique brilliance, your unique expression. And this time, when it grows, it does so without interference and blooms as the one joy, the one life, born as you."

Maybe that's not Ilia's path. Maybe it's not yours. But it has certainly been mine - standing on the ice and sobbing in near-nervous-breakdown fashion, saying "I can't do it anymore," "I won't,"  "I'm done with trying - trying to be different, better, more appropriate, more enlightened."

And in the life-giving relief that follows, there is a joy and a freedom as Life does what Life does, through me, as me.

I've noticed that since the Olympics, interviewers still want her to bottle this hootlessness. They want a shortcut, a quick how-to explanation. But they won't understand, can't understand that it's not cheaply bought. 

Please don't cave Alyssa. Don't give them what they want. Because you and I both know that dying to our programming is hard and dying to the resistance to dying is hellsih. But once dying happens, we are born anew and when that happens, it's just like you've said: we're just happy to be here and share our art.

Now, "That's what I'm fucking talking about."

Thanks Alyssa!