It was already dark, about half past nine on a beautiful day of early autumn. I had just come home after a long pass of driving my taxi. I was tired, waiting for a moment’s rest before going to bed.

My young friend Daniel called and said that he had been sailing with his father. He was thoroughly cold, freezing as he did not have enough clothes with him on the boat.
I would like to bathe in your sauna, he said. Would it be possible?
Well, it’s late, and I am tired. I’ll think about it, and call you back in a minute, I said.

I was not so keen on the idea, but anyhow decided to go down to our sauna by the seaside. When I was approaching it I saw that the lights where still on, there was somebody in there. Must be our landlord Chris who has his cottage by the sea.

The lights where turned off, and a figure walked out. That was Chris, who had just bathed. The sauna was still warm, and it would be OK for us to bathe after him.

Good timing, I thought. There must be something to this plan of Daniel’s. I put some more wood in the sauna stove and called Daniel to tell him that sauna was warm already. He said that he would just pick up his girl-friend Amira and come.

It took over an hour for them to come. I was slightly impatient and irritated by the long wait.  When they came they even sat for a while in his car on the driveway before entering. Why all this waiting, I thought.

When they finally came in I saw immediately that Amira was not well. This lovely girl looked like a dead ghost, her usually shining eyes were dim and hazy. Something was wrong. When we had a moment together with Daniel he said that Amira was totally devastated, way out in her dark mood.
Yes, I saw it, I said. Is it because you are leaving tomorrow?
I don’t know. After our lovely summer together I am not quite sure whether she can take all these changes in her life, said this compassionate young man.

Amira came back from the bathroom and we had a moment’s discussion about going to the sauna. It was really late and we all had an early morning waiting for us. Finally I just said that I am going to bathe anyhow. You may come if you want to, I said to my friends. They decided to come with me.

The sauna was very warm and there was just room for us three on the upper sauna bench. We spoke a couple of words about Daniel’s day out sailing with his dad. Of how they have only just recently started to get acquainted with each other. It had been a beautiful day of communion for those two.

All the while sat Amira, this most beautiful of young maidens, between us shrouded in a dark cloud of death. She was obviously way out in her black hole of feeling.

I touched her shoulder and asked how was it with you, my friend. She started telling how she cannot trust anybody, not her mother nor her teachers, not her boyfriend nor me either. Nobody understands how she feels. The whole world was black, there was not a glint of hope anywhere to be seen. Life was over.

Her face clearly showed all this, the whole of her young and vital body was closing down in desperation. She saw no way out from this emotional dead-end.

Daniel and I said what we needed to say of how we all have been in the same place of desperation, where the whole world seems to be dark and unloving around us. We have all been there, and we have all come through there. Life goes on, forever.

I also said that you can follow that emotion and it surely leads you to death, and after death you come back carrying the same unresolved emotion in a new body and in a new world around it. You are here to meet this emotion, this residue of your past. You are here to face it, to accept it and then leave it behind.

Amira said that she could not accept it, it felt so bad. She felt like her body would shut down, like her breathing would stop. No, she can’t accept it, she said. It’s impossible!

Amira was desperate as she felt that nobody could help her. And I agreed with her for all the help that we get from others when we are in our victim-mode just makes us all the more dependent on those others who do not really help us, they just enslave us and help us to sink deeper in our own black hole of victimhood.

So there is no way out through anybody else, not even your loving boyfriend Daniel,
I said to Amira and went out of the sauna as I was getting too hot.

I sat on the veranda listening to the waves slowly splashing on the beach and staring over the bay towards the string of city lights in the darkness. I heard also Daniel and Amira talking in the sauna.

Then and there I remembered that I had just the other day watched the Letting Go movie on my computer. I had ordered the DVD and had the three day period to watch it after it. That film was all about release, about just that which seemed to be so difficult for our dear Amira. How was it the questions went, I wondered in my mind.

My dear young friends came also out for a while, we all needed the fresh air. When we stepped back into the sauna Amira wanted to stay standing by the slightly open door and Daniel and I climbed up to the sauna benches. Looking at this lovely being totally shrouded in black emotions I hesitantly asked her whether I could ask a couple of questions that I had just learned from a film.
You only need answer them with yes or no, or just feel them within your being.
– OK, she said.

I felt slightly awkward, I was not comfortable in following a method, repeating a set formula of questions. My line of work was more the intuitive inquiry, the way of following the flow of the moment. But finally I found a way to present these questions.

Can you accept the feeling you are feeling just now? Can you just let it be without trying to do anything about it, I asked Amira.
Yes, Amira said after a while of obviously painful contemplation.
Can you accept all that you have tried to do about that feeling? Can you accept all your efforts to supress it or to get rid of it?
Yes, said Amira through the cloud of darkness within which she existed right now.
Do you want to let go of that feeling?
Yes, came the answer.
When?

Amira took her time with the last question. The chaos of her mind whirled on her face for us to see. And then she finally said ”Now” and through her face burst the loveliest of lovely lights. The Sun shone through her and she laughed out her release with the two of us who love her so dearly. Amira’s countenance, her whole being was totally transformed the moment she said ”Now”. She had let go of her burdensome emotions, the black hole of her past, she was back in life.

The Sedona Method worked right in front of my eyes. Amira’s transformation was right out of the film, the same surprised moment of release that so many expressed so exquisitely in the Letting Go Movie. The same forever simplicity uncovered from behind a cloud of temporal confusion.

Daniel said that the moment when Amira’s light broke through the clouds of her past was worth all the money he is ever going to earn. He saw the miracle and he surely could appreciate it. He also said to Amira that now she has got a tool she herself can use whenever the black hole of dark feelings attracts her again. She can use the same questions again and again until she has built a new strong path in the neuron-fields of her brain.

Daniel also said that she should not get disheartened by those feelings sometime dropping in and asking whether you want to follow them again. They will surely come back and you get stronger in your own wisdom every time you choose to let them go, again and again until there is no more room for them in your mind.

When I asked Daniel whether he wanted to see the Letting Go Movie he said
No thanks. I’ve already got the gist of it.
He also said that those questions were so good as they all took place within his dear Amira, within the person involved. The emotions just needed to be felt within, accepted just as they are, and were then given the long awaited freedom by consciously deciding to let them go.

It was surely worth all our while to take this cleansing sauna bath late at night. So beautiful, so truly wonder-ful to share such a miraculous moment with these agile young minds ready for the challenges of life. Thank you Amira and Daniel! And thank you Hale Dwoskin and Lester Levenson for sharing Letting Go with us!