Meditation for Thursday 15th August 2024
One of the great challenges for most of us, one of the hardest challenges we face in life is letting go.
Letting go asks a lots of us and yet it offers us freedom. When I tally up the things I don’t want to relinquish there is both a conscious list and I think a sub-conscious list. The conscious are often things that have been associated with my life’s work, status, accomplishments, etc. The sub-conscious is more subtle. They might be self-concepts and images, opinions, beliefs and stories I tell myself. Many of these things regulate my life usually without me realizing their power to control. My egoism stops me from letting go as it constantly reminds me of my self-importance. I know that ego-clinging is the major challenge to my growth as a human being, to my advancement in the spiritual life yet time and time again it acts as a stumbling block.
At this point you might well ask what has this to do with meditation.
The practice of meditation helps us to be centred, to come to a place where illusion and negative emotions melt away. This process of detachment where I stop clinging to those things that trigger a self-important view is the supreme spiritual discipline as it releases me to love others. After all true happiness comes from thinking less about me and more about the well-being of others: unhappiness comes from when I am occupied with myself.
This is the power of meditation when I persevere both formally and informally with my practice.
Meditation helps me concentrate the mind so that I can focus on letting go. Not that I think about this during meditation but rather this is the intention of my meditation process. Mindfully I breathe in, and mindfully I breathe out and learn simply to be. Every moment is a new moment as I dwell in the present.
So let’s begin our meditation as we make way for starting anew, as we let go and become centred……
Meditation
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