The Art Of True Release

Hi,

This is Ron Levine from Mindfulness in Blue Jeans,

And I am really looking forward to this one.

This is called The Art of True Release,

And I'd like to take a second to explain what I mean by it being an art.

Several months ago,

I gave a talk discussing the difficulties that humans face,

Largely arising from how we interact with the world today,

Given that our subconscious minds and bodies still expect the world that we inhabited tens of thousands of years ago.

We still naturally react to certain situations in ways that would have been appropriate back when we were on the African savanna threatened by saber-toothed tigers,

But maybe aren't so appropriate today when we're talking to our boss at work.

One of the things that it's easy to forget when we're frustrated by the way that we react to things is that our entire survival as a species depended upon it at one time.

There was a time when these sorts of reactions were absolutely appropriate and necessary.

I find it helpful to remember that context when I start to have negative feelings about my own natural reactions.

For our current discussion,

It might be helpful to think about what happens when something touches the palm of a baby's hand.

The baby immediately latches onto it.

They grasp it with a strength that we wouldn't even think that they had,

And that is exactly what they should be doing.

That is one of the very first ways that we learn to interact with the world,

And it's necessary for us to get the things that we need to survive.

As we go through life,

We continue grasping.

Now we do learn very early on that it's inappropriate to grasp certain things,

Like a hot potato,

But we have a much harder time learning that lesson when it comes to not grasping thoughts and feelings.

The frustration that arises from that can make us hate all grasping,

But it's important to recognize and remember where that came from.

Grasping was here to help.

Sometimes it still does help.

For example,

If we're going downstairs and we lose our balance,

We naturally reach out and grab onto the railing.

This is good.

Where we can run into trouble is when this starts to translate into mental or emotional grasping.

For example,

There's the classic story about how to trap a monkey,

Where they hollow out a coconut and insert some rice,

And there's a hole just large enough for the monkey to be able to reach their hand in and grab the rice inside.

But then they're unable to extract their clenched fist,

And they will not release the rice.

The monkey then literally is trapped by its own grasping.

Ironically enough,

Now by a grasping that is making it such that they will never actually be able to eat the object that they are grasping.

We often hear the phrase monkey mind to refer to scattered thinking,

But I almost wonder if this isn't an even more appropriate reason to call our method of thinking monkey mind.

The art of true release comes from developing the techniques that allow us to identify and work with unskillful grasping.

The kind of grasping that keeps us from exploring opportunities or changes in our lives that might make us happy instead of just keeping us comfortable.

We can work on releasing unskillful grasping,

But we don't have to hate grasping to do it.

Hating all grasping is in itself a form of grasping onto this ideal of never grasping.

If we're going to stop inappropriate grasping,

How do we do that without more grasping?

We can't forcibly stop grasping,

But we can do something else.

I had a dream one night six or eight years after I had started my practice,

And in this dream I was going up a roller coaster.

I was way up in the sky.

I couldn't see anything behind me.

There was nothing to the sides of me.

I was that high up in the air.

There was nothing in front of me.

All I could see was the track.

It was incredibly steep,

And I could see that it was nearing the top.

I knew that once it crossed over the top,

It was a freefall.

I was freaking out,

And I was panicking,

And I was looking all around trying to figure out how to stop it.

Suddenly I remembered my practice.

This was not a lucid dream.

I did not know I was dreaming.

I had just been practicing long enough at that point that my practice actually seeped into a dream.

I realized I cannot stop what is about to happen,

But I can observe it,

And I can breathe as I observe it.

And right in my dream,

I closed my eyes,

Focused on my breath and what I was feeling without judgment,

And the dream ended.

The dream ended because I wasn't feeding it anymore.

The dream was coming from me.

It was coming from my fear.

It was coming from my anticipation.

Once I watched that process,

Instead of feeding that process,

It had nowhere left to go.

It ran out of fuel,

And it stopped.

And that's what we can do.

We cannot watch this process and perpetuate this process at the same time.

We can go back and forth between the two very,

Very quickly,

But we cannot do both of them at the same time.

Now if we think back to our monkey trapped in the coconut from earlier,

With a bit of reflection and insight,

The monkey could realize that it could release its grip,

Remove its hand,

Turn the coconut upside down,

And shake the rice out.

It's that kind of skillful reflection and action that we'll practice now.

With that in mind,

Let's begin.

If you're new to meditation,

It's recommended to do this in a quiet place where you won't be disturbed,

But as you continue your practice,

You'll become better at taking this off of the cushion and into your daily life.

If you are seated in a quiet area,

It's perfectly fine to sit in a normal chair,

A meditation cushion,

Whatever's comfortable.

It is recommended to have your hips elevated higher than your knees with a straight back,

And you might imagine that you're suspended by a string attached to the very top of your head,

Which is holding you up from the ceiling.

Allow your eyes to gently close,

Or keep your gaze downward towards the floor.

You may be feeling a lot of tension right now,

And that's okay.

We don't need to do anything about that at the moment.

Let's come to the breath first.

Without trying to change anything,

Just notice the length and the depth of the breath as it's coming in and going out.

It may be short,

It may be long,

Anything is fine.

We're just seeing how it is at this particular moment.

Now take a moment to consider your intention for this practice.

What brought you to this right now?

Now as we're letting the breath go in and out at its own pace,

Take note of any tension you might be feeling.

There may be a little,

There may be a lot,

You might not even be aware of some of it yet.

Are your eyebrows tense?

Are you clenching your eyes shut?

Do you feel any tension in the face or the jaw?

Do you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?

We don't need to do anything with this just yet.

We don't have to try to make things soften or relax.

We'll get there.

For now we're just noticing.

We can't force things to soften or relax.

It's like when there's a pool with sediment in it,

And it's all stirred up and moving around.

We can't force the sediment to settle to the bottom.

All we can really do is watch with patience and it will take care of itself.

So we're not trying to make any changes here.

Now try focusing your eyes,

Even if they're closed.

Even with our eyes closed we can still bring focus.

It's very helpful to do this because you cannot focus your eyes and be picturing something else at the same time.

Observing our breath and focusing our eyes will help us remain rooted in the present moment.

Now let's move on to this feeling of grasping.

Maybe you have something that you feel grasping for right now that you can work with.

It could be anything from a desire for some kind of material satisfaction or a physical satisfaction,

Something related to a career,

A relationship.

It could even be what it is that you hope to get out of this practice,

Something that you are reaching for or clinging to,

Something that you consider necessary to have or to keep in order to be happy.

Let's take one thing that's coming up for you,

That's coming up at the moment,

Maybe something that's come up recently.

And let's not focus on that object.

Let's focus on the grasping itself,

That feeling.

How does it express for you?

Is there a mental picture that goes with it?

Perhaps a sound?

A taste?

Where do you feel it in the body?

It could be a stirring in the stomach,

A tightness in the chest,

Maybe a clenching of the hands.

Maybe you tighten your face.

Bring attention to that area and breathe into that area.

There's no need to control or direct,

We don't have to judge or change.

We're inquiring.

This is a part of us communicating with us.

It's telling us something and it's okay to listen.

Oftentimes we'll find that the object of our grasping has very little to do with what we actually want.

It may be a symbol of what we want,

We may think it will bring us something else that we actually want,

But the object itself usually isn't something that is inherently going to make us happy or keep us happy.

We have a much better chance of learning what that is when we pay attention to what our own grasping process is trying to communicate to us.

For example,

It's very common to feel a grasping for money.

Now of course we need money to live,

But what are we really grasping?

Money inherently can't make us happy.

Technically,

Money is just a bunch of pieces of paper or numbers on a computer screen,

But money can represent or translate into different things,

Security,

Power,

Pride.

Now we're getting closer to the roots of our grasping,

What we're really trying to get.

Let's take a moment to look at that layer of grasping.

Let's breathe into those areas.

Bring the focus back to your eyes if you've lost it.

Observe the breathing process just as it is and open to the sensations and the feelings that come with the grasping.

Very often there's movement.

It is a process,

So you may find that it changes very quickly,

It may move very slowly,

It may not even be perceptible right now.

It may feel completely stagnant.

As we continue to practice,

We get better at noticing more and more subtle changes within these processes,

Which make them that much easier to work with.

We're allowing them to move.

Let's take a moment with that to see if we feel any movement.

Most of our tension doesn't come from the grasping.

It comes from trying to change or control this process.

Usually what we end up doing is perpetuating the grasping process,

Fixating on the object of grasping,

And in continuing to focus on it,

We keep that cycle of grasping alive.

If we simply watch the process and let it move on its own,

We can come back to a more natural state of release.

We can't force release,

But it is our natural state and we will gravitate back to it when we let things move.

Releasing and relaxing aren't our goal,

But they are a very common byproduct of this practice.

They can arise very quickly for those who have been practicing for a long time.

They may take longer for new practitioners,

But it does happen.

As we conclude,

Let's reflect on the relationship that we've just had with our own grasping.

Was it different than usual?

If it didn't feel different yet,

Do you think it might feel different at some point with more practice?

And let's think back to the intent that we had at the very beginning.

Based on the last 10 minutes or so,

How might your intent be different for your next practice?

This is Ron from Mindfulness in Blue Jeans,

And thank you for sitting with me.