Clara’s Verdict
I will admit that I came to Letting Go with some resistance. The subtitle, « The Pathway of Surrender, » and the author’s broader reputation, David Hawkins is most widely known for his Power vs. Force framework and his use of consciousness calibration through applied kinesiology, put me firmly in the territory of New Age spirituality that I approach with caution. I stayed because the review describing this book as « more useful and personally transformative » than Eckhart Tolle, over four decades of reading, came from someone who clearly knows the difference between genuine insight and fashionable mysticism. And then the review describing how the book found its reader « at a difficult time in my life » stayed with me across several days of thinking about this.
Letting Go is, at its core, a practical guide to emotional processing. The central technique that Hawkins calls « the mechanism of surrender » involves allowing difficult emotions to be fully present without resisting, suppressing, or over-identifying with them. This is not an original idea: it draws on contemplative traditions from Buddhist mindfulness through Christian apophatic theology, and it shares significant territory with contemporary therapeutic frameworks including EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The question of whether Hawkins’s metaphysical superstructure, his calibrated consciousness levels from shame through to enlightenment, is persuasive is a separate question from whether the core emotional processing technique works. These can be evaluated independently.
About the Audiobook
This is listed as Book 9 in the Power vs. Force series, but it functions effectively as a standalone work. The technique described does not require familiarity with Hawkins’s earlier books, and many readers encounter Letting Go before engaging with the rest of the catalogue, finding their way to the earlier theoretical framework later if at all. The audiobook runs to 12 hours and 23 minutes, published by Hay House LLC in June 2015, with a 4.6-star average from 11 Audible ratings. The rating count is modest, but the reviews themselves are unusually substantive: listeners who engage with this book tend to do so seriously, and their responses reflect extended engagement with the material rather than casual impressions.
Importantly, the listing notes that this audio product contains a PDF with supporting material available for download. This almost certainly includes Hawkins’s emotional scale, his map of consciousness levels from shame and guilt through to acceptance, love, and eventually enlightenment, which provides the structural framework for the surrender technique. Downloading the PDF before or during listening is advisable if you want the full context for the method being described.
The Narration
Peter Lownds PhD narrates. He holds a doctorate, the listing specifies the credential without identifying the field, and his performance has the measured, authoritative quality appropriate for material that is simultaneously devotional and quasi-clinical. He does not dramatise the content: he reads with a consistent, calm delivery that suits both the reflective passages and the more didactic instructional sections. For a book that explicitly asks its listener to slow down and attend to their inner state, a narrator who does not draw attention to himself and does not impose emotional performance on the material is the right choice. Lownds provides exactly that. At twelve hours, his evenness of tone is a feature rather than a limitation.
What Readers Say
Clear, Powerful and transformative (5 stars, Marc B.): « A rare gem. This author has been the most useful and personally transformative beyond all the others, even Tolle. »
Aligned with modern spirituality, ancient teachings and current neuroscience (5 stars, Amazon Customer): « This book takes a science-based approach on essentially the same teaching as Eckhart Tolle. It is in alignment with the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, and current research on neuroscience. »
Reading this book is probably the best thing you will ever do in your life (5 stars, Thomas W.): « Before discovering this book, my life was the complete opposite. I was chained down by deep negative emotions. I would feel ‘off’ without understanding why. »
thank you (4 stars, Claudio Perugini): « Made me understand my long, hurtful existence. The words are very lovely and made me question the way I have been managing my thoughts. »
Who Should Listen?
This audiobook is worth considering if you are dealing with persistent negative emotional patterns that feel resistant to conventional approaches, feel drawn to spiritually-inflected approaches to psychological wellbeing, or have found Eckhart Tolle’s work valuable but want something with more practical structure and a clearer technique. Be aware that Hawkins’s broader metaphysical claims about consciousness calibration through applied kinesiology are not scientifically validated and are regarded by most researchers as pseudoscience. The emotional processing technique in Letting Go can and should be evaluated on its own merits independently of those claims. Many readers find the practical method genuinely useful while holding the metaphysical framework lightly. Download the PDF companion before listening to get the full benefit of the structural framework.
