By — Shyamal Sinha
  The Monkey, the Coconut, and Why You Can’t Move ForwardDearest Parmarth family,One of the deepest (and hardest to accept) spiritual truths is that the very thing we’re gripping so tightly — the thing we’re sure we need to be happy – is frequently the exact thing keeping us stuck? There’s a story I love about a town here in India that was once overrun with monkeys. Being a non-violent society, the people didn’t want to harm them, so they came up with an ingenious plan. They hollowed out coconuts and placed a sweet treat inside, with a hole just big enough for an open hand to slip in…..but too small for a closed fist to come out. The monkey would reach in, grab the treat, and then find itself trapped. Not because anything was holding it. But because it would not let go. And here’s the heartbreaking, almost comic truth: the monkey could be free in an instant. Freedom is worth infinitely more than one piece of fruit. All it has to do is open its hand. But it never does. Neither do we. For us it may not be a banana. It may be a grudge. An old anger. A pain we’ve carried for years. A story we tell ourselves about why we are the way we are and why we could never be any different. An expectation about how life should unfold, or a belief that this one thing is what we need for peace or happiness. And we hold on with a kind of death grip, not realizing that the grip itself is the very thing keeping us from running, climbing, loving, living. I know this intimately, because I lived it. When I came to India thirty years ago, I was clutching a story about my own life so tightly that the idea of letting it go felt inconceivable. And what I discovered — standing in the waters of Mother Ganga, finally opening my hand — is one of the greatest paradoxes of the spiritual life: it is often in the very act of letting go that we finally receive what we were reaching for all along. In this video, I share the whole funny (but not….) monkey’s story along with one of my very favorite parables, about a man and a rope, that reveals something about surrender so many of us spend our whole lives missing. Letting go was never about giving up. It’s about discovering the solid ground that’s been beneath you the entire time. Click here to watch! Please share in the comments beneath the video your own journey of letting go and how it feels. As a community let us inspire each other toward freedom! With love and peace from the holy banks of Mother Ganga, In Sacred Service,  |
