Bob & Pri @ IntimacyWorks

“Letting Go” - and Trusting

Priyatama and I are “letting go” of something that has been very big in our lives, (in fact it brought us together) and it isn’t easy.

For the past four years, we have been the UK “producers” of a series of USA-based workshops from the “Human Awareness Institute” (”HAI”) called the “Love, Intimacy and Sexuality” workshops. Priya has actually been producing them for almost nine years (before I joined her in England) and I have been deeply involved with them for almost 20 years, mostly in the USA. (I am an American, she is British.)

While we continue to love and support them, we have made a decision to step down from the role of “producing” them. (The workshops will continue in the UK, but produced by others.) Both the decision and the process of stepping down have been quite difficult, and in the “letting go” both of us are learning and growing. I would like to share with you my experience of “letting go”, the “trust” that has taken, and the learning I am gaining from it.

The workshops were created by Dr. Stan Dale almost 40 years ago, and have had more than 70,000 participants. They are mostly weekend residential workshops, and we have been doing about eight annually in the UK.

We really believe in what the workshops offer people, and although we are no longer going to “produce” then, we will still remain very involved with them in the UK.

But this post isn’t about the workshops. It is about what I have been going through “letting go” of running them and how my experiences with this are reflections of other situations in my life.

While I don’t see it :>) , occasionally people have told me that I have a need to control things. (Does that sound familiar to anyone?) Well, Priya and I have been running the HAI workshops for years “our way”. We have refined how we advertise and market them, how we handle all of the logistics of getting a venue and 60 people together, how we support the participants during and after the workshop, and we think we have done it really well. We feel we “know” how to do it.

We are now handing over the workshops to a group of people, all of whom believe in them as we do, and want to see them continue and flourish here in the UK. But….their ideas of “how” that can best be accomplished appears not to be the same way as we have been doing it. Boy, do I find that a struggle to accept! I mean, “We have been doing alright. Why would they want to change things? We knew what we were doing and we were good at it! ….. Don’t they know our way of doing things is the right way?” (Again, does this sound or feel familiar to anyone?)

But what Priya and I truly want is to see HAI-UK grow and be even more successful than it was with us running it - not necessarily in terms of money, but in terms of touching people’s hearts; bringing more love to them; and helping to make the world a better place as a result.

So, I am telling myself: “Take a deep breath, Bob.” (In fact, take several.) Let the new people find their own way. Let them try new things. And trust that out of their love, caring and new, excited energy will grow a HAI-UK that will have a new life and vitality that will enable it to surpass even what we have done for it. “Let go” of having things be done “the way we have always done them”. TRUST!

I need to remind myself something I tend to forget: “The universe supports positive thoughts and actions with vast amounts of positive energy.” I need to remind myself that virtually everytime I have “trusted” that something will work out right, it far exceeded my expectations.

Remember, Bob (I say to myself), it’s simple:

It is OK to let go. You don’t have to do everything yourself.

It is OK to trust. Others can do it too. (Maybe even better.)

It is OK for things to be other than how you think they should be.

Remember these things and you will have less stress and more happiness in your life.

(PS: Words of wisdom: “Saying something is “simple is not the same as saying it is “easy”.)”

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