The Art of Letting Go

For years now I've had the kind of experiences in meditation that make people either want to smack me or study me. Violent shaking, loud guttural noises and orgasmic energy movement are all par for the course these days, and I've stopped trying to diminish my experience for the sake of making other people feel better. What happens to me isn't normal.

It's supernatural. 

When I drop in it isn't just about quieting the mind anymore, I feel myself leave my body and travel somewhere else completely. Usually I'm nearby, maybe just swimming in the delicious energy encompassing my physical form.

But sometimes I'm rocketed out into a space and time that feels more familiar than the sound of my own voice. It's a refuge from what often feels like a confusing and superficial world we live in, and what happens with my eyes closed feels more real than what happens when they're open. 

I've wrestled over the last few years with feeling compelled to share my experiences with others and then feeling intensely private about what I've seen and where I've been. My reflex is to want to teach, but something undeniably powerful has always thwarted those desires. The visions have been clear and resolute about my role in sharing, but each time I have taken inspired action, something eventually pulled me back. 

I was ahead of the energy. 

My older sister and I talk about this concept often. And it's been brought to me again and again in readings I have both conducted and received - staying with the energy and not ahead of it. 

There is a current of energy in our lives that resides squarely in the present moment. I describe it as a current because it has a palpable vitality that naturally propels it forward. It is kinetic in nature and ever-expanding, and although its inherent life force implores it to move, it can only ever be harnessed squarely in the now. 

Those who are more attuned to using our psychic gifts can see and feel its bright shining bliss in a vertical stack of time. We can sense its vibrant potency in the future (all futures), and we naturally reflex into longing for a more direct connection with the energy of those yet-realized times. We squirm in our humanity, and thus we experience a sense of disconnection from the force that is actually within us right here, right now. It's an excitement that turns into longing, and it robs us of the magic unfolding in this very moment. 

The key is surrender. 

What I am learning firsthand about this force and the ability to connect with its steady blips of future realities is that most of the cliches learned in formal meditation training are frustratingly spot on.

Relax. Let go. Sink in. Breathe. Focus. Surrender. 

We cannot engage with what is right in front of us if we do not give it our full, undivided attention. And yet when it comes to attention, ironically, less is more. The less we struggle and force, the more we engage. Diffused, relaxed attention spells maximum energetic connection, and a loose, surrendered body allows for an easy exit of the spirit into the delicious sensation of now. 

And so I have been painstakingly and yet effortlessly experimenting with this art of letting go. I have ambled a path far from my meditation roots and have abandoned most of the guided meditations that formed the bedrock of my original practice, and I have been sitting with myself in relaxed, diffused attention allowing my imagination and my intuition to guide me sweetly and subtly out of my physical body. And what I've been shown is this...

Stress makes us grab.

And when we grab, we constrict the flow of our life-giving breath, and we contract any and all room for space to flourish within us. Think about it. We white-knuckle our opinions, our to-do lists, our fears. We clutch and we struggle and we flail.  And when we do this, we pinch ourselves off from the effortless flow of our life force.

A clenched fist will never succeed at grabbing a handful of the ocean. It's only in open, relaxed hands that water pools. And so we must remain relaxed and open for the wisdom to pool within us. 

The art of letting go is in our willingness to surrender. To let go of everything we so tightly grasp onto and just float. To sink while at the same time expanding. 

For me it happens in subtleties. When I meditate these days, I actively relax my body throughout the time that I am sitting. I truly observe my breath instead of controlling it, and I watch where it goes in my body with wondrous awe. I allow my cells to fall heavier and heavier into the spaces all around them until I can no longer feel my edges. 

I melt into now. 

And right now is a wondrous place to be.

This month I'll be guiding a meditation to this end in The Wand. I am also heart-deep in penning a meditation course that finally feels with the energy, rather than ahead of it, and I am eager to share this nourishing practice of relaxing into the beauty of now.

The truth is that all we ever need is sitting right within us in this moment. Simply look outside at the vast spaces in between, and you will know what I mean. The infinite space that flows from the heavens through your windows and into your lungs is the very kiss of the divine. Relax into its sweetness and receive. 

There is bounty in this moment. We must simply allow our spirit to fall backwards and float in its sweet, supportive embrace.