Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
Casting the Burden
Release an anxiety, fixed idea, or over-effort by repeating a single short statement — ‘I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free’ — over and over until the conscious, worrying mind hands the problem off to the ‘superconscious’ and a felt lightening (the release) occurs.
Name the thing weighing on you. Repeat, over and over, with quiet determination: “I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free.” (Add the specific: “.this burden of lack. and I go free to have plenty.”) Keep going — silently or aloud, past boredom — until you feel it actually lift. Then leave it handed over; if it returns, cast it again. “Go free” = free of the worry, not of the work.
What it is
Casting the burden is Florence Scovel Shinn’s signature release move. When the conscious mind is locked onto a fear, a “fixed idea,” or an over-effortful trying, she has you transfer it with a single repeated statement: “I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free.” (For a specific lack: “I cast this burden of lack on the Christ within, and I go free to have plenty.”) In her model the superconscious mind — the “Christ within” — is “the department which fights man’s battle” and, relieved of the burden, restores the person to balance so the good can come through.
The mechanism she gives is repetition to the point of release: say it “over and over, sometimes for hours at a time, silently or audibly, with quietness but determination,” like “winding up a victrola,” until momentum builds and the burden suddenly lifts.
It is a surrender practice, not an affirmation of a wanted outcome: you are not picturing the result, you are putting the weight down. The marker of success is the felt shift — a lightening, a “click,” a sudden calm — not a count of repetitions.
The Method
- Name the burden. Identify the specific thing pressing on you — a worry, a resentment, a fixed idea, an over-effort to force something. Shinn often pairs it with the felt lack underneath (“burden of lack,” “burden of resentment”).
- Speak the casting statement. “I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free.” (Insert the specific: “.this burden of lack. and I go free to have plenty.”)
- Repeat it, over and over, with quiet determination. Silently or aloud — “sometimes for hours at a time.” Not frantic; “with quietness but determination,” like building the momentum of a wound spring.
- Continue until the release comes. Keep going past the point of boredom until you feel the burden actually lift — the sudden lightness or calm that tells you the hand-off has happened.
- Then leave it handed over. Having cast it, stop re-picking it up. Returning to anxious analysis is taking the burden back; if it returns, simply cast it again. (Sourcing note: the casting statement and “the superconscious. fights man’s battle,” “over and over. with quietness but determination,” and the “winding up a victrola” image are Shinn’s, from “Casting the Burden” in The Game of Life; numbered structure is an attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), chapter “Casting the Burden”; the affirmation recurs throughout Your Word Is Your Wand (1928) and The Secret Door to Success (1940).
The phrase draws on Psalm 55:22 (“Cast thy burden upon the Lord”) read through New Thought psychology, with the “superconscious / Christ within” as the higher mind. → Distinct from neighbours: unlike the Sedona Method or Letting Go / Hawkins, which release the feeling by allowing/welcoming it, Shinn releases by repeating a fixed verbal formula until momentum breaks the grip — a decree-style surrender.
Unlike Behrend’s “impress then release”, which lets go of a picture after impressing it, Shinn casts off a present burden of worry. Unlike Ho’oponopono / Zero Limits cleaning, it has no four-phrase repentance structure — it is one statement, one direction: off and away.
Common refinements
Saying it once and quitting. Shinn’s whole point is sustained repetition until the release; one recitation rarely breaks a strong grip.
- Casting frantically. “Quietness but determination” — desperation is itself holding the burden. Slow the pace.
- Taking the burden straight back. After the release, resist re-analysing the problem. If worry returns, cast again rather than ruminating.
- Using it to dodge real action. “Going free” is freedom from anxiety, not from doing the necessary thing. Cast the burden, then take the sensible next step calmly.