How to Let Go of the Past (The Willingness Practice That Helps You Set It Down)

Is there something in your past you can't seem to put down? An old mistake you keep replaying, or a person who hurt you in a way you can't quite forgive?

Most people try to think their way out of it. They analyse it and promise themselves they'll move on. And the past stays exactly where it is. After teaching this work for over twenty years, here's what I've come to believe: letting go isn't really a thinking problem. It's a willingness problem. And once you understand that, the door finally opens.

Let me show you what I mean. One of our students put it simply after she started this practice:

"I began to feel lighter and happier when I started to do my daily meditation and letting go of the past." — Kara M., Awakened Academy student

That lightness is available to you too. Here's how it works.

Why is it so hard to let go of the past?

Because somewhere underneath, a part of you isn't yet willing to release it, even when your head desperately wants to. That's the real block. Not weakness, not a lack of trying. A quiet "no" running below your awareness.

I learned this the hard way. For years I noticed something strange in myself:

"It's really not that you can't do it. It's actually often that we won't do it. When we wake up to realizing that transformation is a matter of willingness, everything changes. It's never really a matter of can't. It's always a matter of won't."

When I say willingness, I mean a genuine yes from the heart, not a yes from the head. Your head can list ten reasons to let the past go and still nothing shifts, because down deep some part of you is holding on. I know that part well, because I found it in myself.

Interestingly, modern psychology landed on the same word. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by psychologist Steven Hayes, the opposite of "experiential avoidance," our habit of pushing painful feelings away, is also called willingness: the choice to stop fighting an experience and let it be there. Spiritual teachers and clinical researchers, coming from completely different directions, arrived at the same doorway. That's usually a sign you're near something true.

What does it mean that part of us "won't" let go?

It means a hidden part of us is getting something out of holding on. This is uncomfortable to admit, so stay with me. I noticed it first in my own life, on an ordinary day:

"I remember one time I was in the car going to a music festival, and we were driving off, and there's beautiful trees and all this stuff going on. And I remember feeling strangely unhappy for no reason at all, 'cause everything was fine. And I remember noticing, this is really weird. There's no reason for me to be unhappy at all right now."

Another time I was walking back to my room through a forest after a long meditation retreat, in deep joy, and I watched myself do something to kill it:

"I remember noticing it happening, and there's another part of me watching the fact that I was uncomfortable with my level of happiness, so I went out of my way to kill it."

After years of seeing this in myself and in thousands of students, I came to a blunt conclusion: there's an irrational part of us that is, in a strange way, addicted to suffering. It gets a quiet payoff from the old story or the grudge. As long as that part runs the show, the past comes with us everywhere.

One student named it in herself right away:

"I have been addicted to suffering in the past, and I am aware of that now. It's all about my willingness." — Lelia O., Awakened Academy student

A gentle but important note here. This is not about blame, and it's not about deep trauma. If what you're carrying is genuinely heavy, the wound of abuse or the loss of someone you love, please don't read this as "it's your fault you can't move on." It isn't. Some pain needs time, real care, and often the support of a good therapist or counsellor, and reaching for that is a sign of strength, not failure. The willingness practice in this article is for the everyday stuckness most of us live with: the old grudges and small regrets, the thoughts that keep looping about things already over. Use it where it fits, and be kind to yourself about the rest.

How do you actually let the past go?

You stop trying to force it, and you make it a willingness question instead. Here are the three steps I teach.

Step one: when you feel trapped, name it as willingness. Every time the past has you in its grip, stop and realise it is not a circumstance problem. It's a willingness issue. That one shift takes you out of victim mode and back into your own power.

Step two: ask the question. Gently, hand on your heart, ask yourself: "Am I willing to let this go?" If you feel a "no," don't fight it. Go softer:

"You can even start by just asking, am I willing to be willing to let this go? Am I willing to be willing to let this go? And then breathe, relax, and watch the magic happen."

The question is the seed. As I put it: "contained within the seed of the question is the answer." You don't have to manufacture the release. You just have to become willing, and ask.

Step three: hand it over. In the meditation I guide students through, we use a simple physical image. You take everything from the past, and you literally let it go:

"Imagine taking it into your hands, into your arms, and letting it go. And you can literally just bring your hands open and allow all of that stuff from the past to be released, to be let go of, so that you, the soul, are completely free."

It sounds almost too simple. Try it once with something small and you'll feel why it works.