Letting Go of Letting Go with Peter Russell (4K Reboot)

Summary

Meditation teacher Peter Russell, who has taught for about 50 years, argues that letting go is not about getting rid of uncomfortable feelings but about letting them in and letting them be. In conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove, he explains how the 'ego mind' keeps us trapped in insistent thinking, and how simply asking 'could there be another way of seeing this?' can shift our perception. He also describes his blend of effortless Transcendental Meditation and Vipassana mindfulness, which he jokingly calls 'Transcendental Vipassana', as a path back to the unchanging 'I am' sense of self.

Key takeaways

• 1Peter Russell is the author of From Science to God, The Global Brain, The Brain Book, Waking Up in Time, The Awakening Earth, The Global Brain Awakens, and most recently Letting Go of Nothing
• 2Russell began teaching Transcendental Meditation around 1971 and has taught meditation for roughly 50 years
• 3He reframes 'letting go' as 'letting in and letting be', describing a kind of metabolism in which emotions unwind on their own once fully experienced
• 4He distinguishes the changing personal self from an unchanging 'I am' or capital-S Self that mystical traditions point toward
• 5The 'what we resist persists' principle is attributed to Carl Jung; Mishlove links it to the psychological concept of the 'return of the repressed'
• 6Mishlove cites researchers studying 'meditation-induced near-death experiences', in which advanced Buddhist meditators appear to enter the Tibetan bardo planes; Russell says he has not explored this

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

often think of letting go as, I've got to get rid of this, whether it's a feeling or something or an idea we're having or some judgment or some grievance. We think of letting go as trying to get rid of it. And maybe that is the goal in the end, is to be without this particular uncomfortable emotion or whatever it is. But I see letting go as, well, I treat it as the opposite. I'm not trying to get rid of something, but doing the opposite. And that's why I call it letting in and letting be. And so the first step, many, many different ways of letting go is, first of all, to let in the actual experience. So if you're having some uncomfortable feeling that keeps coming up, instead of pushing it to the back of the mind, hoping it'll go away or doing something else, is to pause and just say, okay, what's actually happening here? What's going on in my body? And sort of tuning into the actual sensations, the feelings. And when we do that, firstly, we could actually begin to relax, because usually we're resisting things so much that puts tension into it, we can begin to relax. But often, you know, we've been to see what's actually going on there. And this is sort of what I call it a metabolism that happens, things begin to unwind of their own accord. Keep watching to learn more. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website at C-I-H-S dot E-D-U. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Oct 20, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.