By Carl-Richard
in Spirituality, Consciousness, Awakening, Mysticism, Meditation, God,
One time during a college lecture, I sat trying to focus on what the teacher was saying, and I noticed a kind of tension related to this, that I was trying really hard to hold my attention on every word, every word on the slide, every moment of the lecture. And when I noticed this tension, I chose to let it go, to let the tension dissolve.
Then for a while, nothing much was different, only I felt a little lighter, more fluid. But then suddenly, it hit me. There is literally no time. Things are happening, but it's perfectly still, not moving, just being. It's a singularity morphing onto itself, but nothing moving it in time. And there is literally no me. All of me is plastered on the walls of the room.
And this felt like ultimate groundlessness, like reality had disappeared beneath my feet. All that was left was a surging energy that was at the same time completely silent. I felt like my heart had sunk beneath my chest. I grasped my hands to my desk and clenched my leg muscles, trying not to die of terror. And then when the lecture ended, I exited the lecture with my friend, levitating, spending no effort in moving, and the singularity feeling was back as I was talking and making sounds, walking down the stairs, entering the bathroom stall, closing the door and telling myself to get it together.
This was the result of more than 1000 hours of seated meditation practice, and more than 16000 hours of complete obsession to awaken. And it was then I decided to stop seeking, because enlightenment, at that stage, was too much for me. Being dead but alive, being in terror but in bliss, was the biggest Catch-22 situation I could have ever imagined. And I wanted out. Turns out that wasn't so easy, but that's another story.
Anyways, I've been talking about "deconstruction" before and I felt that it didn't land for many people, maybe that it was too "mental" in its connotation, that it's something intellectual you do. But it's simpler than that. It's just about letting go of whatever thing or process that might be holding you back from experiencing reality as it is. It can be as subtle as a tension associated with focusing on what somebody is saying, or it can be as gross as the sensation of sitting in a room right now and that there is a house surrounding it and that there is a world outside the house and that there is a universe outside the world. Every tension, every feeling of solidity, every ground, every roof, every level, every notion of reality, must be let go of.
- Jan Esmann
While you can distinguish letting go from the concept of "technique", it can also be thought of as a technique, if you practice it. And practicing letting go in meditation can be quite explosive. It's not necessarily as light and non-confrontational as "ah I'll just let go and sit here and just be still". It can be a quite visceral and energetic process. It can cause all kinds of movements and releases, both physically in the body and emotionally.
And using other techniques are in a sense tools for helping you getting to the place of letting go, where letting go gets you to the place you want to go. Because training your focus through focused meditation, or elevating your energy through psychedelics, matters, but they will do nothing if you do not let go. You can take psychedelics and flail around, trying your best to hold on without dissolving into nothingness, and you may be successful in doing so, if not for some intense suffering, but it will not lead you to an expanded state unless you let go.
And that's what suffering is about. It's when you can't for the life of you let go. And you keep holding on despite what reality wants you to do, to just accept it.
Anyways, even people who are big proponents of psychedelics and who also are big proponents of the non-dual perspective, emphasize the importance of letting go:
- Martin Ball
And of course, other non-dual proponents say the same thing:
- Ramana Maharshi
- Rupert Spira
And letting go and seeing reality for what it is is synonymous with truth. Just like how Leo says truth is the highest value, letting go is the ultimate meditation, because letting go reveals what is true.