Freedom From The Pressures of the World

Transcript

I’d like to talk to you today about having freedom from the pressures of the world. When you sit down to meditate you might sit for an hour, a half an hour.

You might sit for one single minute. Now you don’t have to think about this directly but perhaps this is something which can give a context to your experience when you are meditating.

One of the beautiful things about mediation is you set aside this short time and in that time you do not need to worry about the world. You don’t need to worry about how attractive you are or who you need or what you need.

The money that isn’t in your bank account or the money that is in your bank account that you might stand to lose one day….

You don’t need to worry about any of that stuff, this is your time just to relax. You can put your problems aside and just focus on the mantra, on your breath, on letting your thoughts drift away.

This is a vacation for your mind and its your gift, you can give it to yourself every single day. Focusing on sensations in your body, feeling through your legs a subtle joy, electric energy that is moving through you.

There’s nothing to be concerned about here, there’s every reason to be relaxed, to let things go, to be empty, vacant, free.

This is a time for you and its right there.

Now what you might find when you practice meditation is that you stop worrying so much and thinking so much while you’re in meditation.

It becomes a practice, it becomes a habit and then even when you’re not sitting in meditation you have that relaxed state of mind. You found some base.

Some people compare meditation or the mind to a deep ocean. On the top of the ocean there are always ripples and waves and tides, deep beneath the ocean there is the floor. It never moves. Always stable, always solid.

Cast your anchors and you might find the bottom.

There’s nothing to worry about, there’s no pressure. You’re free from the pressures of the world.

I remember once I went to a religious retreat. At the beginning of the weekend they said to us “Put away your problems, put them in another place. For this week you are free of your worldly problems.”

This is like stepping into another world. At the end of the week they told us “Those problems that you put aside are still waiting for you.”

And I thought “Why did he say that?” and I heard a groan from the audience. He never needed to say that, we could have put them aside and not picked them back up in the same way.

Pick them back up in a practical sense. Use them, change them with our hands and minds. But not pick them up to carry them with us all the time.

We can let things go.

As Darwin Grajales wrote “Suéltalo, suéltalo… Déjalo que se vaya” Let it go, let it go, so it goes.”

Thank you for listening, thank you for thinking beautifully.

Thank you for letting go of your problems even if its just for one minute a day.

Thank you for finding a bit of peace in those times. I’ll talk to you soon.