Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
Releasing
Let an unwanted feeling be fully present, then choose to drop it — the moment-to-moment ‘letting go’ from which the Sedona Method and Hawkins’ surrender both descend.
Notice the feeling. Let it fully show up — welcome it, don’t act on it. Drop the story; stay with the raw feeling. Ask: could I let this go? would I? Then drop it and let the charge run out. Repeat in layers, all day. If stuck, let go of wanting to control the stuckness.
What it is
This is Lester Levenson’s own, originating form of “releasing” — the practice he arrived at during his 1952 self-inquiry and taught for the rest of his life, before his student Hale Dwoskin packaged it as the Sedona Method and the psychiatrist David R.
Hawkins described a kindred mechanism as “Letting Go.” Levenson’s core conviction: a feeling is not a fact about you or about the world — it is energy you are holding onto, and you can drop it the way you’d drop a hot coal once you notice your hand is closed around it.
His instruction has two halves that look opposite but are one move: let the feeling be there completely (welcome it, let it fully show up, don’t act on it), and then let it go — release the grip.
Levenson framed all suffering as something we are actively, if unconsciously, holding; releasing is simply the choice to stop holding. It operationalizes releasing the grip to receive (The Inner Creates the Outer), the stillness beneath thought (The Inner Creates the Outer), and the primacy of felt emotion over intellect (The Inner Creates the Outer).
This file documents the source form. For the fixed published drills that grew out of it, see the descendant practices cross-linked below — they are not duplicated here.
The Method
Distilled faithfully from Levenson’s talks and Keys to the Ultimate Freedom (described, not reproduced):
- Notice the feeling and turn toward it. Catch that you are carrying an emotion — apathy, grief, fear, anger, craving, pride. Levenson treated this noticing as already a step toward freedom.
- Let it fully show up. “Accept that emotion which is coming in. Let it really show up in full — don’t act on it, just let it be.” You cannot release a feeling you won’t let yourself have; welcoming comes first, suppression is the opposite of the method.
- Stay with the feeling, not the story. Levenson, like Hawkins after him, taught that the mind spins endless thoughts to justify and feed a feeling. Drop the justifying story and stay with the raw felt energy itself.
- Ask whether you could let it go — and choose to. Levenson posed releasing as a simple, repeated choice: could you let this go? would you? The point was never to win a “yes” by force but to discover that letting go is available and to take it. (Dwoskin later fixed this into the three-question drill — see cross-links.)
- Drop it — and let the energy run out. Release the grip and let whatever remains discharge and lighten on its own. Levenson described feelings as having a finite charge that empties when you stop resisting it.
- Repeat, in layers, continuously. “Make it constant.” Feelings release in layers; go around again as another surfaces. Levenson intended releasing not as an occasional exercise but as an all-day habit. He added a practical rule: “If you are stuck, let go of wanting to control the stuckness” — the resistance to a feeling is itself a feeling you can release. (Sourcing note: “accept that emotion. let it really show up,” “make it constant,” and “let go of wanting to control the stuckness” reflect Levenson’s published teaching, attributed; faithfully described, not reproduced.)
Source & Lineage
Lester Levenson (1909–1994), a New Jersey-born physicist-trained businessman, developed releasing after a severe health crisis in 1952 and taught it informally for decades as the “Release Technique.” He set out the method and its philosophy in books including Keys to the Ultimate Freedom.
Two major streams flow from him: Hale Dwoskin, who co-founded Sedona Training Associates and systematized the teaching as the Sedona Method (bestselling book, 2003), and the separate Release Technique taught by Larry Crane.
David R. Hawkins’ “Letting Go” is a kindred, independently-framed surrender practice in the same family.
Common refinements
Skipping “let it fully show up.” Trying to jump straight to letting go turns releasing into suppression. Feel it first.
- Treating “no” as failure. Levenson accepted any honest answer; fighting for a “yes” is more resistance. If stuck, release the wanting-to-control the stuckness.
- Feeding the story. Staying in the justifying thoughts (“here’s why I’m right to be angry”) keeps the charge alive. Return to the raw feeling.
- Forcing the drop. Letting go is a gentle release of grip, not a willful shove.
- Using it to bypass. Releasing is not a license to skip needed action, or to “release away” grief or trauma that should be processed.