Allow Yourself to Let Go

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about allowing yourself to let go. So in meditation, we want to practice letting go of being caught up in the mind and learn to rest in awareness. Now while they sounds really simple, it's not always that easy. And that's because we tend to have a very strong tendency to keep replaying over and over again, in our mind, our problems, our resentments, our worries, our cravings, our to-do list.

And we kind of keep the mind chewing on all of this stuff like a dog chewing a bone. And it actually takes quite a bit of mental effort and energy to keep replaying these thinking patterns over and over. It actually is a very tiring and draining experience. Sometimes a very stressful experience, when you really pay attention. So how do we really unwind this habit of being caught up in all of that thinking so that we can tap into peace of mind? Ultimately, it's actually very simple.

There are really only two steps here. The first is to notice that you're chewing on something in the mind. So you, you want to recognize that you're caught up. Now, the mind will always try to convince you that you really need to solve this problem, or think about this concern right now. It has a bit of a gravitational pull to it, allure to it.

But if you can remind yourself in that moment that whatever it is that the mind is chewing on, it really can wait. Then you can move to step two, which is a simply allow yourself to let go. And letting go is really not that complicated. How do you go have a piece of coal in your hand? You simply open your hand and let it go. So in this case, you simply open your attention so you unhook from the thought and bring it back to your meditation.

So if you were doing a breath meditation, you simply bring your attention back to feeling your breath. Sometimes when it's really tricky, it can be kind of helpful to mentally say to yourself, it's, it's safe to let go. Because sometimes the mind is really trying to, you have to remind the mind that it doesn't have to work so hard to look out for you. It doesn't have to keep chewing on this thing. You just remind the mind it's safe to let go, invite the mind to let go, and bring it back to the focus of attention.

So in today's meditation, we'll practice this some more so that you can really get a feel for this ability to let go. So let's begin to settle in for that. And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here in this community.