Why We Meditate - Letting Go

I wanted to talk a little bit about why we meditate.

And I think everybody has different ideas of why they meditate.

You know,

They might want to de-stress,

Maybe.

Maybe they want to slow the thinking mind down a little bit.

Perhaps they have some problems that they're working through,

And maybe meditation can help.

Perhaps they're just interested in meditation.

They've seen what it does for other people,

And they want to maybe experience that for themselves.

Maybe traditionally people have always meditated in your life.

I grew up in the middle of a cow town,

Up in the Midwest.

Nobody understood what meditation was,

And they still don't.

Because I did a book signing up there,

And the people that showed up.

It was interesting.

It was really interesting.

Mediation?

Mediation,

Yeah.

How long have you been teaching yoga?

No,

No,

No.

For some reason,

Well I know the reason,

But I always had an interest in meditation.

Ever since I heard about people doing it.

I was always interested in what it was about.

So eventually I got the courage to try it.

I had an interest in it for years before I even tried meditation.

As a young boy.

Then eventually I started doing the practice.

I looked at it like playing a musical instrument.

I thought if you really want to play an instrument or learn a language or something,

You do it a little bit every day.

You just do it,

Do it,

Do it,

Do it,

Do it.

Then pretty soon you can call yourself a meditator or a musician or fluid in French or whatever it might be.

That was my approach to meditation.

The first time I meditated I lasted about two and a half minutes.

This is ridiculous.

I've got things to do.

Then the next day at the same time I sat down and sat for five minutes and then eventually sitting for hours when necessary.

All of us have our own little stories about meditation.

How we got started and why we do it and our interest in it.

Primarily I'm putting out the invitation for us to take a look at meditation from the standpoint of renunciation.

Or what we could call letting go.

To me I use those two terms interchangeably.

Letting go of when we think of letting go of something it's just like letting it go like that.

When we talk about renunciation some people think of renunciation like giving up all their possessions in spiritual pursuit.

Again that's letting go.

It's a practice of letting go.

The thing about practicing letting go,

Particularly in meditation,

Is for us to take little sips of it and get a taste of it as we do it.

And give ourselves permission to completely let go of whatever comes up for us within our meditation period.

And to get a feeling of what it actually feels like to be able to let go of these things that come up.

And what might these things be?

It could be our attitude towards something to be a certain way in order for it to be right.

Which could be a lot of different things.

Relationships,

Material things.

Maybe there's a problematic car that you have that you should probably be letting go of or at least not worrying about it.

Some chore at your home or some relationship.

Letting go of the need for things to be a certain way.

And to be able to sit in meditation for 45 minutes or half hour or whatever.

Completely free of all of that stuff that we're trying to hang on to.

Whatever it might be.

And it's different for everybody.

And usually when we get good at renouncing and letting go in our meditation practice.

We understand,

We have this feeling and we know when we're absolutely free in that moment.

And when something comes up we can catch it and go,

Oh,

There's something I should let go of.

At least temporarily.

We can be really,

Really friendly with ourselves and say,

Okay,

This is a hard one to let go of.

But I'm going to do it just during the meditation.

I'm going to see how it feels to be able to free myself from this.

No matter what it is.

There really isn't anything that is worth not letting go of.

At least temporarily.

Anything.

Especially,

This is the third time I've said it,

But our idea of things to be a particular way in order for us to be happy.

Or to be complete in some way.

Usually we find that it's not necessary.

I mean we can be complete and we can be happy in the moment.

Right now.

We don't have to change anything.

The only thing we have to do is be able to go from this to this.

And besides,

This is a lot of struggle.

Hanging onto stuff.

And we do that all the time.

It's so easy to just let go.

We can look at it as renunciation.

We can look at it as letting go.

Sometimes when we look at the practice of meditation,

Sometimes we're using the breath to kind of connect with.

And we can actually use the breath like a little mantra that we can have.

When we breathe in,

Just say let and then go on the exhalation.

Let go.

That way we're still using the breath.

A lot of us use the breath and want to use the breath.

And that's fine.

So we can focus on the breath and still have that feeling of renunciation or letting go.

Just make sure the goal is on the going,

Which is the exhalation.

Let go.

And when we examine the things that come up in our meditation and see them for what they are,

And actually there's some cognition happening there.

You know,

Something will come up like a thought or an idea of how things should be,

Why we can't let go of it.

You know,

There's some thinking going on,

Some cognition.

And for many of us,

It puts us in a place of contemplation in our practice.

So we're actually contemplating these things that come up and why we should let them go,

Why we should renounce what comes up.

And again,

I'm just talking about for this duration of the meditation and really asking you to free yourself and just let everything set aside.

And when we do contemplation,

What we want to do is make sure that we keep the topic centered and so that our thoughts don't go beyond that.

Just imagine if you're sitting in meditation and for a moment you feel as if there's no problems,

Nothing's bothering you.

You're very,

Very present.

You're not trying to hang on to anything at all.

It's like everything is just flowing right through you.

And then let's say something gets kind of sticky,

You know,

Like our attachments or our ideas,

Our thoughts.

Then we can notice that and feel that.

But we want to keep in the realm,

I guess you could say,

Of contemplation and stay with that topic of contemplation,

Which is letting go.

Anytime we contemplate,

We don't want the mind to just wander around because then we're not meditating.

We're not doing what we came here to do.

And so I think people that get very,

Very good at this type of meditation,

It leaks and follows them into their everyday life.

And then they start spotting these attachments and these sticky things that are causing them problems in life.

And they see them and then they,

Mindfully,

Are able to let go of them.

And I think in many cases this is what divides the happy,

Complete people with the not so happy and not so complete people,

Is that idea of being able to let go of what we feel we should let go of.

It could be something very,

Very minor,

Like a taste for certain food,

All the way up to something as stubborn as an addiction,

Addiction to drugs or alcohol or something like that.

And anything in between and everything in between.

But usually what we have trouble letting go of is our ideas and our beliefs.

So for this meditation,

Just imagine that there is no one to do,

Be,

Or have in this moment.

There's no one for us to prove anything to anybody or to ourselves.

Just letting everything just settle,

Flow right through us.

Nothing sticky at all.

Just to allow the eyes to close.

For a moment just bring your attention to the body and see how the body feels.

And this is one of the first areas that we bring our attention to,

Generally,

When we close the eyes and we get comfortable.

And when we become concentrated,

It's also one of the first areas to,

That we notice that kind of leaves the picture as well.

So in other words,

We start concentrating on something like the breath.

Comes a time when the pain,

If there is pain in the body,

Or even pleasure in the body becomes secondary and just kind of takes a back seat.

We notice that we are holding tension within the body.

And in many cases this is the first thing that we can let go of.

Unnecessary stress and tension within the structure of the body.

And in many cases it's brought on by everyday stress and strains.

In other words,

The thinking mind.

But if there is any kind of injury within the body or discomfort from physical stress,

That can be relaxed with the mind.

And if we have difficulty doing that,

We can just breathe through these areas that we might be holding onto as far as tension and stress.

We can give it a color,

Perhaps breathe a nice blue cool or a teal color through any kind of discomfort.

So when we give ourselves permission to relax,

A great portion of that is to set aside the unnecessary thoughts.

And that generally involves things involving the past and the future.

Sometimes when we do that we realize that we've been spending our entire days thinking about the past and the future and things that could happen or might happen or did happen.

And then when we learn to let these things go,

This practice of renunciation,

We become freer and freer.

It's just like imagining that the mind is like a brand new Teflon frying pan.

Nothing can stick to it.

It's like the old saying,

Like water off a duck's back,

Because the water does not stick to those kind of feathers.

And so allowing the mind to be like Teflon or like the duck's feathers,

Things can come upon it,

But it doesn't stay.

It just slides right off.

And that's the kind of permission we should allow ourselves to have in our meditation,

Where it's a little bit different than just our everyday consciousness.

We're sitting with our eyes closed and giving ourselves permission to be as free as we want to be.

So many of us might come back to the breath if we're used to using the breath in our meditation.

But then any time that the mind wants to correct something or change something or disagree with something or want things to be different in any way,

We should catch that.

And notice that this is not only a part of our meditation,

But it's also not a part of who we truly are.

Because we'll find that the more we hang onto and the more we want things to be a certain way,

We're allowing the ego to have its way.

And so in essence what we're asking is the ego to step as far back as it possibly can,

At least during this meditation,

So that we can get an idea and a feel for what it's like to experience our true nature.

And so anything that arises that doesn't feel right,

Just allow yourself to set it aside.

Artistic thoughts of what use it is,

What use it has in that which is what it is.

It becomes more and more Factual.

In the last couple of minutes of meditation,

Just ask yourself if there's anything else that you can possibly let go of that can help you go maybe a little bit deeper in your practice.

See what comes up for you.

Thank you.