CHANGE::SOMETHING NEW: THE AGE OLD MEDITATION ON IMPERMANENCE

I love sharing information, it’s a large part of my passion for the mysteries in life, for research and writing. It’s a way of giving that lends to my innate form of karma yoga; selfless service providing insight and answers to my internal questions. The more I give the more I feel alive and apart of community. “EVERYTHING PASSES; NOTHING REMAINS. UNDERSTAND THIS, LOOSEN YOUR GRIP, AND FIND SERENITY” LAMA SURYA DAS (LETTING GO OF THE PERSON YOU USED TO BE)–LOVE YOU! RIA

Change is all about us especially as we await the political decision of the century; The buzz is in the ears, anticipation, anxiety, and acceptance that change in all forms is coming if not already present in our lives in a major way. Change is a constant wave of movement we can not prevent. Our resistance is often our unwilling embrace of the necessary transformation we need to move us further on our path of evolution.

Often we need to not only look closely at our lives but our habits that create our current condition. The circumstances we have created seem to define us but do they really define who we are? I say no. I say at this very moment you are what you have thought you were but the power you posses is far greater than you have learned to self realize and accept as an age old or newage “truth”.

I am passionate believer in transformation, change, and divine movement. Most of what I write about is my own experience that seems to be self-scientific, spiritual tests I exercise to prove my belief or theory. I live the experience first, for myself and then share what I have learned through trial and error. I am authentic unto myself and the universe having stumbled many times along my path out of my resistance to change on many levels. Whether that resistance came in the form of letting go of relationships, emotional pain, forms of addiction to foods and the types of men I choose as partners, to career and educational development. The resistance seemed to be felt on so many levels and so powerful to my emotions wedged in my set of beliefs.

For a long while, I was so resistant to the ’success’ I was due purely out of fear of change. The very thing I wanted or rather needed the most I resisted the most with self-defeating thoughts, behavior, and actions. The contradiction I lived was enormous and I realized for the most part that I was creating a negative flow of energy which worked against my Positive Flow, my Greater Good, my Higher Self, and my Destiny. Until one rainy day, I realized and believed that all of that negativity I created could be transformed into a positive flow of energy, health, wealth and well being to forward my personal evolution and create a nurturing garden for my destiny.

In our collective quests for change I hope you too will begin your conscious journey to intentional positive flow of change in your own lives. But then that seed is already planted on the outside perhaps you’ve already affirmed this change in your prayers for a better planet and the necessary change needed in our communities and country. Meditation is a perfect tool for creating the mental relaxation, discipline, and fertile ground for change in your life. Loss is something we must not hide in our embarrassment but confront, embrace and eventually celebrate.

The Buddhists say that “letting go and achieving detachment requires some level of self-mastery” that “requires the cultivation of self-awareness and a healthy discipline”. Traveling ‘inward’ within the mind center is an age- old art form practiced through meditation, breath work or pranayama, and deep relaxation. It is a way to put the ‘monkey’ of the mind to rest and let go of anxieties, stresses of daily survival, and include the inward mind, organs, muscles, heart, and nature of the universe found within to beat on the same transcendent earthy rhythm.

“Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
in the very here and now,
the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. –BUDDHA

MEDITATION ON IMPERMANENCE:

• Take a deep breath in through your nostrils.
  Follow the out breath. Ride it, ride the breath all the way out, out, out.
  Dissolve with it into the thin air. As the breath dissolves into open space, our concepts, attachments, and clinging all release into infinite spacious awareness.
  Breath after breath, drop your attachments.
• Practice a little more letting go with each outbreath. Let go of a little more physical and mental tension with each delightful exhilation. In this way, ride the waves of breath, letting these sealike waves wash through you and carry everything away.
• If physical sensations arise, keep the attention on the breath. Ride the breath and let them slip away. If thoughts arise, as they will, simply breathe out and ride the breath all the way out, letting the thoughts also dissolve and pass away, as they will. Stay with bare awareness. Keep starting again with each breath, starting anew and afresh. Every moment is a new moment, like the dawn of creation. This moment is the only moment. Each breath is a fresh breath.
• Let go of the old. Make a way for starting anew and you will be continuously renewed.
• Breathing in, breathing out –rhythmic, like the waves of the sea. WE are releasing, settling down and learning how to just be. Let thing settle on their own, in their own time, their own way, their own place.
• Wherever things fall and land, let them fall into place as they will, without intervention or artifice. Learn to let things come and go; learn to just be. This is a huge step, an incandescent lesson. This is the art and practice of Freedom, the practice of letting go” (Surya Das)

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SOURCE:

Surya Das, Lama. Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation. 2003. Random House Inc.