Hold Onto Nothing: The Art of Letting Go in Meditation [Episode 60]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I just wanted to talk a little bit about letting go, or not holding on. There are two ways that we can go about letting go. So we're on a spiritual path, and we realize that letting go is essential for our awakening, and even most of us have probably realized that the art of letting go is something we need to learn in life as a whole.

Very often what makes life difficult is when we hold on to something that we really need to let go of. We keep engaging in a habit that we really should leave behind. We hold on to people that we need to let go. We hold on to career paths that we've outlived and outgrown, but for security, we hold on.

We hold on to so many things in so many ways. And there's a fundamental way that learning how to not grasp on, not try to control, not need to impose our agenda on the world and on life can liberate us to really just be with life as it is and respond freely and fully to whatever life brings. Openly, innocently, wholeheartedly, without agenda, without fighting against the way things are.

Balancing Letting Go With Planning in Everyday Life

Now, of course, in life I want to counterbalance that with the fact that to be effective in the world, we do need to make plans. We do want to be good at anticipating problems before they arrive so we can steer around them.

I'm not advocating for a complete relationship to life where we're just 100 percent responsive in the moment, and we're never thinking about the future, and we're never planning for eventualities, and we're not doing any risk management in our lives because we're just trusting blindly that some cosmic force will take care of us if we don't have an agenda.

I know that sounds maybe kind of attractive to some and scary to others, but that's not really the point here. The point really is, can we do it in meditation completely, in the way I'm inviting you to, which then reveals to us a very natural, open, free, spacious way of being and living where we can really flow with life? Or we can not impose our agendas in unhelpful ways, not try to control when things don't need to be controlled.

Because sometimes some things in life need our control. Sometimes our agenda needs to be brought to something. It's not that any of that is bad in life, but we are radically practicing letting go of it all, to see who and what we are when we've let go completely.

Two Ways to Practice Letting Go

There are a couple of different ways to approach this. One is we can start to notice all the things that we are holding on to and all the ways that we're trying to control and impose. And then we can, one by one, work to let them go, coming to a place of, "Ah, this is what it is to really surrender, to really let go, to really let be. Not making a problem, not needing things to be any particular way, not holding on to concern and worry, not believing in the stories of doubt, not struggling with what is." So we can come at it that way.

The Art of Never Grasping

Another approach is to recognize that the real art of letting go is to never grasp on. It's harder to let go of something that you've got your grip on than it is to not exert any energy to grasp. You're already holding on. Someone might have to pry it out of your fingers. Maybe your meditation teacher has to pry it out of your mental fingers.

But if you never got involved, if you never identified with that thought, if you never believed in that story your mind was telling you, if you never got attached to that emotional state, if you were just always in a posture of non-grasping, of not holding on to anything, it might make this whole practice much easier.

Maybe we could say the more introductory level of it is, let's notice where we're holding on and let's try to let go. And then the subtler version of it is, how can we come to the meditation and, from the very beginning of our practice session, not hold on to anything?

Can we just begin meditating from a place of no grasping, no control, not wanting, not needing anything, no agenda, no problem, no concern, no worry, no fear, no doubt, no struggle? That's the beginning point for the meditation, and then the meditation is everything that unfolds from that moment when we began our meditation in this place of never holding on in the first place.

Guided Meditation: Holding On to Nothing

I want to invite us to meditate for a little bit in the way I just described.

So, beginning in this moment, don't grasp on to anything. No need to know anything. No need to control anything. No idea about anything. No agenda for the practice. No struggle against what is occurring. Hold on to nothing. Let everything be.

[Silence]

When doing this practice, if you find yourself holding on to something, fixating on a feeling, getting involved with your mind, making a problem, trying to control your practice, if you find yourself doing any of those things, you don't need to try to let go of it. Instead, just stop holding on to it. Just discontinue the holding on.

And just allow even that to be part of the flow of your meditation, without labeling it as a problem, without struggling against it. Let it be as it is. And let the next thing be as it is.

[Silence]

You can relax your meditation posture. I'm going to speak a little bit more, so you can move around a little bit while I talk, but you don't really need to formally end the meditation, because I'm just going to build on it.

Why We Hold On: The Belief That We Can Have Things

What could make this practice of not holding on, not grasping, not controlling, what could make it even easier? To some degree, what I described before was a progression where we begin by letting go of the things we're holding on to, and then we realize, well, maybe it's easier if I just don't hold on in the first place. So we're trying that.

What could make even that much easier? What could make it a lot easier to not hold on would be if we realized that we didn't really have control anyway, that so many of the things we try to control are beyond our control.

So much of what we try to have in life, try to own, possess, hold on to—because this movement of holding on is really an outgrowth of the belief that we can really have things. We try to grasp at things so that we can have them, meaning own them, meaning possess them, meaning ultimately have some control over them.

And deeply underlying that is this kind of belief in a permanence of things that is not borne out by reality, if we study reality.

How Spiritual Awakening Reveals Impermanence

Now, this radical insight into the impermanence of things, this insight that I don't really have control anyway, this insight that reality is much more insecure than my ego wants to accept—the ego wants security, wants to know, it wants control, wants to predict—the insight that liberates us from all that is spiritual awakening itself. It's inherent in the awakening process. We discover the things that I just said.

We discover, "Oh, so much of the control I thought I had was an illusion. So much of the way I thought I could own things and possess things and have some solidity to life, it's also an illusion."

This all flows from awakening, but we don't have to wait for a profound experience of awakening to reflect on these things and to come to terms with some fundamental truths that can then empower our meditation by enabling us to not hold on, because we know we can't really hold, control, or have it anyway.

Do We Really Own Anything? Possessions and the People We Love

I just want to invite you to reflect on this with me for a moment before we practice some more. What do we really ever have in the way that we imagine we do?

Think about possessions. You might be one of the fortunate people on planet Earth who owns a home. You might be one of the extremely rare who owns two or three homes. Or you might not own any of those, but you have certain possessions that you treasure in your life and hold on to.

But of course, ultimately you don't own them. Ultimately, your ownership of anything in this world will come to pass. And if it comes to pass, was it ever yours, or are you just a custodian of that thing? That home, that possession, that piece of clothing, that musical instrument that you cherish, that place that you spend time. You were a visitor to it, a custodian of it. It's not yours in the way our ego likes to imagine it has things.

And what about people? If we're fortunate, we have people whom we love and who love us, and we are bonded and we can rely on each other. And there seems like something there that we have. We have love, we have friendship, we have intimacy, we have connection, and all the wonderful things that brings.

But as many of us, if not most of us, if not all of us have experienced, that can change in a moment. We can lose someone we love, someone who was the whole center of our universe. And did we have them? I had the precious opportunity to partake in something that is ultimately ephemeral. Or at least the form changes. I know many of us who've lost someone feel they're still with us, and that means they are, but not in the way they once were.

Life as an Unfolding Process

We might feel we have this body and this mind, this life. I have this. It's my greatest possession: my life, my mind, my passion, my mission. But isn't all of that really just a process that's moving through time and unfolding and changing?

And whatever we were and whatever this life was twenty, thirty, forty years ago is very different from what it is now and what it's becoming. And ultimately it too will pass into the great mystery. We don't know. But certainly not this form, and not that which we take to be so solid and feel like we have it.

And all the other things we feel like we have, let's all just realize that this is a process. It's a moment. It's a movement. It's an unfolding. It's changing. And the solidity of kind of possessiveness and ownership and having that we imagine exists doesn't really exist.

We're just part of a process. We're an observational part of it. We're part of a process that's able to observe the process, or the consciousness that's able to notice and observe this mysterious flow of life. We're a viewpoint in a mystery. What do we really have with any permanence or continuity?

What Can We Really Control?

The other thing that compels us to hold on is the belief that we can control things. But what can we really control? We can certainly influence parts of how life goes. Our choices have influence over events and others. It's not that we're powerless in any way.

But we've all seen in life that even the best intentions and good, hard work and clear focus and so many things can be poured into a project or a mission, a business or organization or relationship, and then life circumstances come in and shake it all up, and it doesn't go at all the way we had intended and thought we had control over.

So we can't control our circumstances. We certainly can't control our mind. To bring this to meditation, you sit down to meditate. You can't tell your mind what to do. It might be quiet. It might be noisy. It might start drumming up painful images from the past. It might start fixating on hopeful images of the future or fearful images of the future. That's the mind. You can't control your mind.

Your emotions can't be controlled. We might suddenly feel all kinds of things we haven't felt in a long time when we're meditating, or we might feel wonderful, blissful, ecstatic things. And then they might switch back to terror because the ecstasy was so big it felt like it was going to overwhelm us, and now we're afraid of it, and on and on. Trying to control the emotional content, our feelings, is a fool's errand. Something we can't achieve.

Guided Meditation: Non-Ownership and No Control

So I think maybe I'll just stop the contemplation and the reflection there and invite you to just sit for a moment with your own recognition of non-ownership and non-control. What we think we have, we don't really have in the way we think we do. And the control we imagine we have, we don't really have in the way we imagine.

It doesn't mean there's nothing to those concepts of ownership and control. It just means it's not at all the way we imagine it to be. And so, what if we let that in and let that be the foundation for our meditation on holding on to nothing?

And with that, I want to invite you to re-establish your meditation posture.

I want to invite you into an inner posture of having nothing. Non-possessiveness, non-ownership of anything. Of your life, your body, your mind, your loved ones, your possessions, this world. You're just a participant in an unfolding mystery, and you don't own any of it. You don't have any of it.

[Silence]

It would be futile to try to hold on to it. So you just don't hold on. You don't grasp on. You let life unfold and happen, holding on to nothing. Letting everything be.

[Silence]

As we continue to rest in this inner posture of non-ownership, non-possession, having nothing, I also want to invite us to step into a posture of no control, realizing that we don't have control over our thoughts and feelings and meditation experience.

The wisest posture we can take is to just let everything happen without trying to control any of it. Without trying to change any of it. Just letting life be.

[Silence]

As you're doing this practice, notice if you're trying to control or steer your meditation. Maybe you're trying to steer toward peaceful, joyful inner feelings, or steer away from agitating thoughts. If you notice this, you don't need to struggle to try to let go of that. You just don't continue with that control. You just don't continue with that steering.

You just continue on with your meditation of holding on to nothing. Letting go of control. You just gently release your grip and let even that be as it is, without struggle, without problem, without agenda. Making room for everything.

[Silence]

[Meditation Bell]

Allow yourself to gently begin to let go of the meditation now.