Take the Ultimate Break
A technique for making the breath seem great, seem all, letting it fill up your attention for a real change.
This meditation is often best done when we have come to be comfortable sitting, or reclining or whatever it is. Our main task here will be to approach a state where we forget ourselves and let the breath fill up our reality.
“Reality” in this sense is what we give our precious attention to. When we don’t hear the voices of others in a coffee shop or a restaurant it’s almost as though they don’t exist, right? It’s like they are not real for us. They may be there, but it’s not our concern and it’s not our lived reality.
The same can be said of how we can relate to restlessness, discomfort, or rampant thoughts in meditation. Sometimes, these things appear to be our “reality,” but other times they will be more or less muted, like they almost don’t exist, and this is the perfect time to surrender to the breath. It will be easier to forget yourself if your body isn’t nagging at you and neither are all the thoughts you have about your life situation.
We hear a lot about using meditation to face right into the unpleasant stuff, as though that’s the point of it all. And that’s usually not right at all.
Of course I have to admit that a heart that is really longing to be free can actually make use emotional or physical discomfort to jump ship. But it doesn’t come from the thinking mind. It’s just something that awakens in the heart. It has enough, and after some teetering will just cross over, spit out, let go, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes our discomfort can drive us to really surrender and embrace something else. When it’s time for that, something in you will know. So there’s no need to force it.
But most of the time the general policy should be to enjoy your meditation. This is the first skill to develop.
So that might mean shifting position when things are uncomfortable, or just waiting it out if there’s lots of thinking. It may mean committing to many meditations, waiting out these energies. And it absolutely, certainly, without a doubt means committing fully to the moments and breaks that happen between storms of thoughts or times of bodily discomfort.
Your only task in meditation is to do it. You can outlast thinking. You will outlast thinking. Thinking comes and goes. You do not. You are always here. You can mute bodily pains by not torturing the body and by turning the attention to pleasant things. This is the first line of action.
It’s no good to follow meditation teachings that don’t acknowledge how uncomfortable sitting down can be and how tough it really is to just sit and be there with things. That’s putting ideals in the mind about facing pain, etc. that are not in accord with things as they are.
Sure there’s a time and place to face straight into things. That inclination comes from the heart, it doesn’t come from the mind, from thoughts, from a philosophy of how meditation is supposed to be.
You first task is to just challenge yourself to enjoy your Self for 15 minutes, 10 minutes, or whatever it is. Longer is only better when the heart naturally wants that.
So use whatever window of opportunity that opens in the meditation, to practice surrender, to let the breath be big and you be small, let the breath be everything and all.
It’s not going to actually be everything and all, but it’s this attitude of surrender that we are practicing here.
If you practice surrender (not perfect surrender, but practice!), you will also pave the way for the heart to jump ship, let go, spit out trouble when those times come too.
