Sometimes the greatest truths are laid right before our eyes, in the simplest of things, and yet we just can't see them. Take for instance our own hands: what a miracle they are. If we consider for even a moment all they are capable of doing, it's evident that a great wisdom sits hidden behind their incomparable design. But, with this thought in mind, permit me to add one other to help us see another part of their special purpose that lies "hidden" in plain sight.

What good would our hands be to us or, for that matter, to the world they are made to help shape, if all they could do was close down around something and cling to it? How stale and old everything would soon be for us if the act of "holding on" to things were all our hands had the power to do? Just imagine what life would be like if we were unable to touch anything new.

To be able to touch and appreciate what is new, our hands are also created to open up -- and, as needed -- to let go of whatever is in them that is no longer useful.

This same basic truth applies, even more so, when it comes to our need to release those old feelings and worn out thoughts that first clog up, and then compromise our heart and mind. These tiresome states of ourselves have become "stuck" within us because we haven't learned how to release them.

Once we understand that letting go is the missing half of the whole happiness our heart longs for -- that it is a necessary and full partner in the power to discover and complete our True Self -- everything about our life grows easier. Old regrets dry up and blow away. We awaken to a quiet kind of faith that fears nothing. New possibilities for us appear almost moment to moment because we've hung an "open for business" sign on the door of our life. And, as our contentment grows with who we are -- within ourselves -- we stop compromising ourselves in order to win the approval of the world around us.

And best of all, as a result of our growing discoveries about the secret of letting go, we find ourselves on the threshold of solving the greatest mystery on earth: who are we? Why are we here? And what is our true role in this world? For as we start to see reality -- as it is -- in its timeless expression of creating life, perfecting it, and then letting it go, only to start all over again, we realize that we ourselves are an integral part of this Great Endless Story. And if the whole of Life is being made new in each and every moment -- and we ourselves are a part of its never-ending process of perfection -- then letting go isn't some distant and difficult faculty to be acquired. To the contrary: letting go is an effortless state of our own consciousness; it is a natural power of ours needing only to be actualized in order for us to realize the freedom that it alone can grant.