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.

Welcome into your mind the following images and insights. Taken all together they help to illustrate and illuminate a grand design in which we first see the wholeness of Life -- and then, as our awareness grows about this unfolding story, we enter into its native freedom. We are about to discover that more than being just a part of Life's plan, letting go solves the mystery of it. We are about to see how the act of letting go completes the cycle of life itself. Now let's "witness" the truth of this beautiful idea in action.

Imagine: cold stormy skies break open, and great dark clouds shed their coat of winter snow or let loose their soaking rains.

Soon after come the bright days of spring; the earth lets go its frosty grip on countless seeds buried within her -- giving birth to new grasses, flowers, and trees.

Time passes bringing warm summer days and nights; sweet fruits fall from the trees that can no longer hold onto them.

Now, carried along by gusting fall winds, helpless leaves rush in no direction until released by a stillness as sudden as their flight; and there they rest until driven on again into the shelter of some unknown refuge.

Each of the four seasons, their countless stages, all the "actors" appearing there: clouds, rain, earth, grasses, sunlight, trees, fruit, seeds, winds, and dancing leaves -- all serve to reveal a great silent and unseen story called "Letting Go." And this story is a mysterious one; for it is played out upon a stage that is itself contained within a greater stage hidden just behind it -- much in the same way as a single sound stage operates within the larger motion picture studio that oversees its shooting schedule. And, to help complete the picture, this studio complex is, itself, but one part of a still larger entertainment corporations. Each of these stages upon which we see life unfolding holds another stage and is, in turn, held by a still greater stage, infinitely.

The only thing that changes on these stages of life -- from sub-atomic levels all the way up to and through the expansive cosmos itself -- is the size of and character of the "actors" moving upon and through them; the endless cast of creatures playing out the act of letting go.

As summer trees must cast off their ripened fruits, so the whole summer season must submit itself to the coming cooler days of fall. And, accordingly, as the earth turns, each season must let go and allow the coming season its time and place -- even as the earth itself must yield to the sun's influence over the whole of her body. But neither has the sun any choice when it comes to releasing the fruit of its abundant radiant energy. And for its letting go the sun not only provides life-giving forces for all created to receive them, but also lights up all the stages upon which life has been made possible because of it.

Now we have come to the most important question of all: where is our place in this extraordinary life; what is our role in a reality that unfolds as it does because the continual act of letting go makes all things possible? Let's take a moment to see what is right before our eyes.

Do we not each go through what we can call the personal "seasons of life" during our lifetime on earth? We have all known, according to our years and their experiences, the sweet springtime of youth, the deep summer of fulfillment, the bittersweet fall of letting others do for us what we can no longer do, and the chill of winter: coming to the close of one's life that is itself but a passing season in an unseen greater one.

Is any one of us less than a rose, or the single raindrop that -- in falling to feed and refresh the flowers -- makes it possible for them to open and reveal their rainbow of colors and fragrance for us?

We are more than the rose, greater than the solar radiance that stirs her essence to bloom. For neither rose, nor sun's radiance, is conscious of the great story they serve as they let go and give themselves up to Life.

In truth, we human beings are created unique among all things that take life and then give it back on the stage of Life; for we are made to witness this eternal story . . . and more.

We are not made to have only a relative role in this Great Story, to be -- as are all other creatures -- just a minor, passing actor upon its stage. No, the promise of our potential far outweighs even our ability to imagine it, for we have been created to consciously participate in its timeless telling.

When Abraham Lincoln looked at his country so torn apart by the conflict of racial hatred -- born of individuals clinging to ways of life that sorely compromised the soul's longing for an inclusive love -- he said of this world of troubles: "This too shall pass."

Of what world was he referring to in that moment? Did he speak of a nation at war within and upon itself that it would pass? Or did he address the state of his weary heart, so heavy with despair over the condition of man, so filled with doubt as to the course he must choose to help change the consciousness of the United States?

Clearly he was referring to all of these conditions, and more. He was saying that these trials, along with their attending troubles, will pass. But how could he know this when darkness had spread itself out both before and within him at once?

Lincoln knew, as can we in our "battles" with unwanted moments, that the events he faced represented only a single page in a far larger story. His eyes could see the truth behind what the world remains blind to: this unending and ever-unfolding Life in which we dwell requires the passage of all the pages that have gone before it.

Letting go, at its heart, is an act of agreement with Life. It is an accord on our part with what the present moment tells us about ourselves as it unfolds before us, asking of us what it does. And what is it that Life is asking of us moment to moment? It's simple, really:

Life is asking each of us: will you be a witness to my Story? Will you let go of your short-lived moment in the sun of passing circumstances -- in order to realize that just behind all such shadows dwells a Life whose Light never fades?

Will you choose in favor of entering into a Life whose story never ends, and in which fear and failure simply do not exist? And what must we choose so that we can participate in this Greater Story?

We must choose to let go.

Excerpted from 365 Days to Let Go: Daily Insights to Change Your Life. Guy Finley is the acclaimed author of more than 35 books and audio programs on the subject of self-realization, several of which have become international bestsellers. For more information www.guyfinley.org