"I hadn't understood the nature of letting go": A Metaphor of Acceptance and Letting Go

I hadn't understood the nature of letting go until this week, after the DBT training in Houston had ended.  

When I think of letting go, I picture this: hands with fingertips extended and palms facing the sky.

It has been so easy to switch from having these open hands, only to clench my hands again in tight fists, grasping the very things I thought I had released.  This is so easy to say, "Yes, I will let this go and surrender," as the possibility of grabbing it again.  

My friend said that letting go means having open hands with your palms facing the ground.  Whatever you were holding onto so tightly has fallen to the ground.  Albert Einstein wrote, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science."

Letting go is a form of acceptance.  It is also a process.  Letting go with your palms facing the ground is radical acceptance.  Here, radical means complete and total.  It does not mean that the issue is gone forever or that this will always be a struggle.  Radical acceptance is a decision, a choice that is made moment by moment.