3 Essentials Of Meditation: Let Go, Surrender, No Inner Conflict

This meditation session was given on 21st of January 2019 in Basel,

Switzerland.

In this session,

I talk about the three essentials of meditation.

Let go,

Surrender and know inner conflict.

Once there was a man who was walking too close to the edge of the cliff and he slipped.

He fell down the cliff.

On his way tumbling down the cliff,

He caught hold of a branch of a tree.

When he realized what had happened,

He looked down.

There was a hundred meters deep cliff with a canyon,

River water flowing below.

There was no way for him to go back up.

There was no way he could climb all that way back up.

So he shouted for help.

He said,

Help,

Help me,

Help me.

Few minutes of this shouting and this crying for help,

He heard a voice.

The voice said,

Let go.

He heard it and thought about it,

But he couldn't believe.

So he asked,

Who are you?

The voice said,

I am that,

That is everywhere present.

He said,

Are you God?

The voice said,

Yes.

This man said,

God,

I have done a lot of wrong things in my life.

If you help me now,

If you save me now,

I will never do anything wrong again.

I will be a very good man,

So help me.

What should I do?

The voice said,

Let go,

Let go,

Let go.

In life,

We come to situations where our inner voice says,

Let go and we don't listen.

We don't listen to the inner voice.

You know what the man did when he heard this voice?

He ignored that and he again started crying for help.

He said,

Anybody is there to help me out.

He did not listen to even his inner voice.

Let go is something that is very essential to not only life,

But also to meditation.

Today,

What we are going to learn is how to go deep into meditation.

There are three essentials that we are going to touch upon in today's session.

Because how you are in meditation is also how you live your life.

I am not here to tell you how you should live your life,

But I can share my experience of how you can go deeper into meditation.

The first essential of going deeper into meditation is to let go.

Let go of all that comes in the content of your mind,

All that comes in your experience,

All the thoughts,

Emotions,

All what your senses are perceiving,

You have to let go of every little detail that comes to your experience,

That comes to your awareness.

Until you let go of everything that comes in meditation,

It will never be deep.

It will remain superficial and you might,

After doing it for a while,

Say it doesn't work anymore,

I cannot meditate and things like that.

So try to practice today to let go as deep as possible.

Normally,

We let go of things which we don't like.

So it's not a complete let go.

When you in your meditation,

In your realization,

In your life come to this point,

This understanding that you are very small as compared to this big existence,

To this vast existence and the only thing you could do is to flow with life,

To flow with existence without any resistance,

Without any breaking,

You are in a complete let go,

Also known as surrender.

That's something that you can't really do.

That happens to you when you come to this realization that everything in life,

Everything significant in life is happening on its own.

All you could do is to flow with it,

Is to be with it,

Is to be in harmony with it.

When you think about surrender,

It's also not perfect.

It's also not going as deep as it should go because something is still left.

When you surrender,

The word surrender is somewhat coming out of a conflict.

There is somewhere a conflict between the two,

Between A and B,

That's why one has to surrender.

If you have to surrender to the whole,

It means somewhere there was a power struggle,

Somewhere there was a conflict,

Somewhere there was an inner conflict.

So it's also not the deepest.

The deepest is when whatever is left,

Whatever is there in you as an inner conflict left after you have surrendered,

You also let that go.

You also resolve that inner conflict.

Let me tell you a very brief story of once a king had made a room which had 1000 mirrors.

This was a room which was made for amusement of his kingdom of people.

When anybody entered that room,

He could see himself bigger,

Smaller,

Fatter,

Thinner,

All kinds of mirrors were there.

The moment you enter the room,

You could see a thousand different images of yourself.

In this room,

One day from the jungles,

A tiger,

A wild tiger somehow entered the kingdom,

Somehow found himself in the room locked overnight.

When this tiger entered this room,

This room full of mirrors,

He saw everywhere 1000 tigers around him.

He immediately got scared,

He started making noises,

He started showing his claws to other tigers and what he saw was 1000 tigers started showing claws at him.

He looked at one of the mirrors,

He saw even a bigger tiger than him.

In this terrified state,

He started fighting with all these tigers because all he knew was conflict,

All he knew was to fight.

He was a brave tiger,

He could not have let go,

He could not have surrendered,

So he started fighting.

The tiger started fighting all night long with these images,

With these mirrors and in the morning the tiger was found dead.

Because how can you fight with your own image and win?

In life,

We also fight with our own images,

With our own inner conflicts.

In meditation,

When you are sitting in silence,

You are fighting with your own body,

You are fighting with your own mind,

You are fighting with your own inner energies,

You are always in somewhat of a conflict and if you can resolve that conflict,

If you can let go of that conflict,

Even if it is for a few minutes,

If you can let go of all inner conflicts,

The first thing to let go is your thoughts,

Is your emotions,

Is whatever you are perceiving.

Then a sense of surrender,

Which is to realize how small you are as compared to this vastness,

To this whole.

And third,

If there is anything left as an inner conflict,

You let that go,

You let go of all which is inner conflicting in you.

These three essentials,

When you practice them in meditation,

They take you very deep in yourself,

In your own being.

And as you do that,

As you become deeper in your meditation,

In your life you start reflecting that peace,

That harmony,

That bliss,

That sense of centeredness which arises out of meditation.

How we are going to practice these three different essentials of meditation today?

We are going to chant OM.

So we are going to do this in four steps.

First three steps are chanting OM and the fourth step is silence.

In the first step of chanting OM,

You will chant OM together with me,

Follow my rhythm.

And while you chant OM,

Let go of all your thoughts,

All what is going on in your mind,

All the contents of your mind,

All that you have been carrying for years and years of repression in your psychology,

In your energies.

Let that out,

Let that go,

Let your past go.

Let anything that is worth throwing out of your system,

Let it out with every OM and let this become a catharsis for you.

And that is the first step when we do OM.

We will do this for five minutes,

Roughly four or five minutes.

Then we will do the second step,

Which is another three to four minutes of OM chanting.

And in this chanting,

You will focus on surrender.

And you will let yourself completely go,

Not just your thoughts,

Not just your emotions,

Not just the contents of your mind,

But yourself as well.

Don't hold anything back.

Let everything go in these chantings,

In this OM,

In this sound,

In this vibration.

And when all of us as a group chant OM together,

The energy that is created is worth riding upon,

Is worth letting go of all what you can to surrender completely to this moment,

To this energy without thinking what is happening,

What is happening to me and just be with this moment,

Be with the flow of this energy of the OM of this chanting.

Third,

Three to five minutes,

We will again chant OM.

But this time,

If there is anything left in you still as a conflict,

Let that go.

Focus on in these moments to see that you're not fighting with your body.

If there is pain of sitting still here,

You're not fighting with your body.

You're not fighting with your mind.

When your energies are reorganizing while you're chanting OM,

You don't fight with it.

You let your energies reorganize.

You let the harmony in you reestablish during these chantings.

After this chanting in three different phases,

In three different steps,

For roughly twelve minutes,

We will sit in silence for another ten to twelve minutes,

Fifteen minutes,

Depending upon how long can you sit.

If you like,

You can again affirm these three essentials.

Let go,

Surrender,

No fighting with yourself.

If you've done that as well,

Leave everything,

All actions,

All activities,

All effort from your side.

Sit in silence,

Sit in awareness,

Sit in peace.

Close your eyes.

Take a nice deep breath.

Inhale from the nose and exhale from the nose.

Let your body relax.

Shoulders down,

Back straight.

Another deep breath in from the nose and out from the nose.

For the next minutes,

While we'll be chanting OM,

Focus on letting go of all the contents of your mind.

All that is bothering you,

All that is negative,

Everything that you want to throw out of your system.

Chant OM together with me.

Inhale.

OM OM OM Let go in every vibration of OM.

OM OM OM OM OM OM Let all your thoughts dissolve in the vibration of OM.

OM OM OM OM OM OM As we chant OM,

Surrender to the vibrations.

Let everything go.

Put all your energy in this chanting,

In this letting everything out of your system,

Throw out all the contents of your mind.

And go as deep as possible in this surrender,

In this flow of life,

In these vibrations of OM.

OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM Become aware of the sensations in your body,

In your inner space.

OM Feel the vibrations of OM in every cell of your body.

OM OM If there is any thought,

Any inner conflict,

Any movement left in your stillness in this moment,

When we will chant OM again,

Let that go.

In the next round of OM,

Let all inner conflicts go.

No conflict with the body,

No conflict with the mind,

No conflict with your inner energies.

Immerse yourself in the chanting,

Bring all your energy in,

And let everything dissolve,

Everything go into these chantings.

In this round,

Put all your energies from your navel to your heart,

To your throat,

And to your head.

Put everything into the vibrations of OM,

Into the chanting of OM.

Inhale.

OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM Remain absolutely still,

In this total let go.

OM Just remain aware and silent for the next minutes.

Allow your energies to reorganize,

To settle,

While you simply remain aware,

Silent and still.

OM OM Your body is still,

Your mind is silent.

Don't touch your body,

Don't touch your mind,

And simply remain aware.

OM OM OM OM OM Let this inner silence grow.

OM OM No more movement.

OM OM Remain silent and aware.

OM OM Allow yourself to fall deep in this silence,

In this awareness.

OM OM OM Now gently bring your awareness back to your body,

And feel the sensations in your body.

The tingling sensations in your fingers,

Sensations on your face,

At your forehead.

Observe your breath.

And very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes.

OM OM Did anyone of you see the full moon last night or this morning?

There was supposed to be full moon,

Eclipse and bloody moon at the same time.

Quite a phenomena.

This part of the session,

I open the session for questions,

If you have any questions,

Or anything to share from your experience of the meditation.

Something that you could not follow,

Something that you liked,

Anything that is worth sharing with the group.

Anybody?

Yes.

Thanks for saying that.

Yes,

When we chant OM as a group,

The energy that builds up is tremendous,

It's amazing.

But my feeling,

We could do even more.

Like some of you were still holding back,

You were still waiting for something to happen or not to happen.

So when we do this kind of a meditation,

Which we don't do very often,

We don't do OM chanting in these sessions very often.

But when we do,

We should put all our energy into it because that becomes first of all a process of catharsis,

Where you can let everything that is there in you out,

That is holding you back and you feel that that process becomes very much healing and cleansing and cathartic all at the same time.

And the second aspect is obviously these vibrations when they are all together created,

In that you can let go of almost anything.

And yeah,

We try once again at some point in time in these sessions to do another round of OM chanting.

But thanks for saying that,

That you felt the group vibration of OM.

Anybody else?

Yes.

So regarding the chanting,

I had to think in the first round,

The chanting was not so balanced in my impression.

And then with the second chanting,

The vibration became more like harmonious.

And maybe it's because I am an instructor,

Maybe it seemed out more in the second round.

Yes,

I think it's very true that when we did these three rounds of OM chanting,

The first round was less harmonious and the second round was a bit more harmonious,

Third round was even more harmonious.

Again,

It depends on the group.

If everybody is feeling in harmony and wanting to contribute and create one tone,

One harmonious tone of OM that is building over different steps or different times that we do.

Also,

It depends on sometimes who is leading it.

And for me,

When I chant OM,

I am usually having a very long breath and a very long chant.

That might not be the case with everyone.

So I also have to,

While doing these groups,

Sometimes reduce the chant length,

So to say.

But the point is,

The more we together do this,

First of all,

There is less resistance from everyone to participate.

And then there is more and more harmony created the more we do it.

So we can even dedicate one more session at some point in time to go deeper into that.

Anything else?

Well,

Then if there's no more questions,

If there's no more things to share,

I would like to thank you for joining me in this session.

I'm not very well today,

But still we managed to have a session together.

I'm thankful to all of you for joining and hopefully see you next Monday.

Namaste.