Have you ever felt that your meditation practice has become stale or monotonous? It’s not the meditation itself that’s at fault but rather the mind’s discomfort with the process of detoxing and rediscovering the true self.
Don’t give up on meditation! Sometimes, all you need is a fresh perspective or a different approach to reignite your practice. Below, I’ve outlined several meditations designed to bring you back to the present moment – to “be in the moment,” “let it be,” “let go,” and “go with the flow.”
Understanding “Let It Be” and “Be in the Moment”
We often come across these phrases on social media, but what do they truly mean? Can we genuinely “let it be,” “be in the moment,” “let go,” or “go with the flow”? The answer lies in our meditation practice.
How to Practice?
Broadly speaking, we practice by letting go of the need to know. We can relinquish our certainties, seeing them for what they are: just attempts to hold onto a sense of control. Embrace the state of not knowing and rest in the innocence of unknowing.
We practice by not getting entangled in the conceptual mind, allowing it to perform its “monkey dance” without our engagement. This involves observing without interpreting or evaluating every experience, as our minds are constantly doing.
Present Moment Meditation Practices
- Resting In the Unknown Meditation (#1)
Allow yourself to come to rest in the freedom of not knowing anything at all. For the entire duration of your meditation practice, simply don’t hold onto any idea about anything. This means having no idea what anything is, no idea what anything means, and no idea why anything is the way it is. Notice the impulse to want to interpret or make meaning about your experience and simply don’t engage with this movement. Allow yourself to be free of all knowing. Come to rest in the Unknown.
- No Interest in Your Mind Meditation (#2)
For this practice session, explore what it is to have no interest in the contents of the mind, no interest in the thoughts that pass through your awareness. Treat all thoughts as equally uninteresting or equally meaningless. Relate to all thoughts as though they were incomprehensible symbols beyond your ability to decipher. Let go of the mind completely. Take the radical leap to relinquish all fascination and engagement with thought.
- Let Go of Every Idea About You Reaching Enlightenment Meditation (#3)
One of the greatest obstacles to spiritual awakening is holding on to fixed ideas and beliefs about what awakening is, how it should feel, what the experience of awakening should be like. The same is true for meditation. Every idea we have about meditation and awakening becomes an obstacle to deeper meditation and more profound awakening. For this practice session, take the risk to let go of every idea you have about what the experience of meditation, and of awakening should be. Allow yourself to have no idea about meditation and no idea about awakening. Experience the freedom of having no need to know where your practice is leading you. Just allow your practice to unfold freely and naturally without trying to know anything about it.
- Innocence: The Freedom of Not Needing to Know Meditation (#4)
This is a practice of resting in innocence, which means “not knowing.” For this practice, give yourself the space and freedom to not grasp onto knowledge in any way. Allow yourself to not know anything at all. When you’re sitting in meditation, you don’t need to know anything. So allow yourself to relinquish any involvement with the conceptual mind. Thoughts will come and go of their own accord. But you aren’t interested in the content of these thoughts. They are like distant background noise that you aren’t paying attention to. You simply rest in the freedom of not needing to know, not trying to understand or figure anything out. Allow yourself to experience the freedom of being unencumbered by concepts and certainties. You don’t need to know anything to be Free, to be as you are.
A New Approach to Meditation
Unlike other meditation practices, I’m not suggesting that you practice these techniques all the time. These are contemplative practices, allowing you to explore the edges of your consciousness during meditation sessions. The beauty of this approach is that during meditation, you have no other responsibilities but to practice, enabling you to fully immerse in these extreme practices and see what emerges.
Spend half an hour on each practice and observe how it impacts you throughout the day. Outside of meditation, experiment with these practices in your daily life. While not going to the same extremes, these explorations can bring additional clarity and parallel insights.
Present Moment Practice for Daily Life: Living in the Unknown
As you go through your daily life, notice the tendency to assert a level of certainty that exceeds your actual level of certainty. Notice yourself saying or acting as though you know something to be true that is really just a hypothesis or theory. Notice the tendency to “rush to judgment” or prematurely conclude that you’ve found the answer to a question or the solution to a problem—when in fact your certainty is only relative or inconclusive. Anytime you observe yourself grasping after “knowing” in any of these ways, ask yourself:
- Am I really sure about that?
- Do I really know that to be true?
Then go a step further and ask yourself:
- Do I really need to know that?
- Can I be okay operating amidst this uncertainty?
Explore what it’s like to live, make choices and act without holding on to “already knowing.”
Final thoughts
Meditation is an internal laboratory where we can experientially learn the art of letting go. It guides us in balancing action and inaction, helping us to focus on what we can control and release what we cannot.
Over time, the practice of letting go becomes second nature, allowing us to navigate life’s complexities with ease, without the need to cling to any specific processes or methodologies. Ultimately, the true mastery of meditation lies in the paradox of letting go of the very act of letting go.
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For a personal recording of any of these guided present moment meditations, contact me at: [email protected]
Let’s continue this journey of mindfulness together, embracing new perspectives and deeper connections to the present moment.
Namaste
