Laughing To Enlightenment

In this short meditation, David Gandelman will guide you in letting go of the heaviness and seriousness that stiffen your meditation practice and block you to relax in your presence.

Transcript

Your eyes,

Take a deep breath,

Let's meditate together.

And like I mentioned earlier,

Maybe you've missed that part if you just got here.

But when we go to meditate,

We don't have to hold our bodies hostage.

I want you to actually move,

Why don't you move your shoulders a little bit.

Like if you open your eyes for a moment,

Just kind of maybe a little dance,

A little shoulder movement,

Both sides.

See how much,

I want you to see how much of the world you're holding up.

Okay,

How much responsibility you got on them shoulders,

Maybe like forward to back and then back to forward.

It's just like lightly,

Very gently stretch the neck.

Maybe we stretch our arms out for a moment.

You need to you can massage your temples.

It's like we're like before we go to meditate,

It's like a boxing match.

The reigning world champion,

Me versus myself.

Let's see who's gonna win.

Maybe I'll knock myself out mid meditation and just start snoring.

You ever do that?

I love that.

Oh,

I'm gonna meditate on a really deep intense top.

You wake up 30 minutes,

Oh that was a good meditation time to go to work.

We've all done that.

Some of that is just energy we're releasing.

If you fall asleep during meditation a lot,

Keep meditating more and more because that's just unconsciousness you're releasing.

If the point of meditation is to wake up,

Then the challenge is to not fall asleep.

Go ahead,

Close your eyes again.

As you close your,

Yeah let's just,

I know you can't all hear me.

I mean hear each other.

I wish you could.

When I teach on zoom we could hear each other.

Why don't you just go,

Whoa.

We're gonna build a bridge from our laughing to our enlightenment in this class.

When we laugh,

We open our hearts,

Maybe our shoulders pull back,

We ease up tension,

We stop taking everything so seriously.

It's like how many meditations like,

Hello,

Welcome to meditation.

This is going to be the most boring 10 minutes of your life.

Take a deep breath.

I saw this meme that said never in the history of telling somebody to calm down has anyone ever actually calmed down.

He usually makes them mad,

Doesn't he?

So I'm not going to tell you to calm down.

I'm going to tell you to just relax your shoulders,

Be in your body,

Be present with me for a few minutes.

I know you probably have a busy day or night wherever,

Whenever you are.

We're all very important people with a very busy schedules and calendars and all of that jazz.

But right now you're just a human being.

I want you to imagine you couldn't remember your name or your history for a moment or the future.

Nothing in the past,

Nothing in the future.

You just hear for a moment as a human being.

No one in this room is better than anyone else.

Nobody's worse than anyone else.

We're all just human beings spinning on a rock in the middle of the solar system.

We have no idea why.

That's not funny in and of itself.

I really don't know what is.

We're being held down by an invisible quote unquote invisible force.

That's pretty.

I'm not even on mushrooms,

I promise.

Just a lot of apple juice.

On that note,

Take a deep breath.

You made it into this moment.

And someone wrote not on mushrooms today.

I don't condone them on insight timer.

Okay,

Can't do that here.

Anyway,

I'm more of a Skittles M&Ms guy.

And what I want you to do is as you close your eyes,

I want you to open your inner eye.

So we have two eyes to see the world and one eye to see inwards,

To see and experience our subjective life.

Subjective life.

Open that.

Find the light in the room inside of your head and flick it,

Switch it on.

Turn the lights on on the inside.

It's probably too dark in there.

Take a seat on a cushion in the center of your head.

And I'd like you to get a sense just for a moment from zero to a hundred,

How much of the world's heaviness and seriousness do you absorb and carry?

So a hundred is like you're totally full of the heaviness and seriousness of the human race of the world.

Zero is you don't take any of it on.

You might even see your own body as like a like a fuel tank.

Like how full are you of the seriousness and excessive,

Let's call it responsibility and heaviness of the world.

You may feel it and you may see it.

There we go.

From zero to a hundred,

Even if you just came in to this meditation,

From zero to a hundred,

How much of the world's heaviness and seriousness do you carry around?

And if you see that number and it's let's say anywhere above 50%,

I know we can't all hear each other.

I just want you to give it like a like a cow.

If you were to make the sound of a cow out in the middle of the field,

Just mmm.

I used to have cows when I lived in Hawaii.

We would have conversations.

I would take that as a stock tip.

Didn't work out.

So if you're holding on to too much heaviness,

Too much seriousness of the world,

Which is very possible,

If it affects you and brings your energy down,

If it stops you from enjoying life and knowing your true nature,

Your true self,

Then this is going to be a great moment to release some.

So what I want you to do is imagine a tree trunk just growing right out of the base of your spine all the way down into the earth.

Yeah,

Some of you are empaths and you absorb a lot,

Absolutely.

I'm more of an expat.

I just give it out.

If someone's got to give it,

Someone's got to receive it,

Right?

Just kidding.

Yeah,

Let's laugh,

Let's smile.

Whenever I'm meditating and I'm working on releasing something too heavy,

My cat might like brush up against my leg and give me like a meow,

Meow.

So as you're sitting here,

I want you to see a nice big tree trunk grow right from the base of your spine into the earth.

Let it root in deeply.

And I want you to start to drain,

Almost like pulling the plug in the bathtub.

Let the water drain,

Find the plug,

Pull it,

And let the heaviness and the seriousness of the world that you've been holding on to,

The excessiveness of it.

Start to let gravity take it down out of your body,

Down that tree trunk into the earth.

See the color.

See the,

Maybe the density,

The form that that heaviness,

Seriousness takes.

And allow yourself to start to let it go.

Let the earth take it and recycle it.

Start to let it go.

Let the earth take it and recycle it.

If I pulled up a newspaper from today,

From five years ago,

Ten years ago,

Fifty years ago,

And a hundred years ago,

Every single one would have some form of breaking news.

This horrible thing is happening.

Pay attention.

The world will always try to seduce us into seriousness,

Into heaviness.

That doesn't mean we don't take responsibility to make impact,

But we want to get to choose what our energy is like.

And we all know that all the greats in history,

The Martin Luther Kings and Mother Teresa's and Buddha's,

They all decided they were going to have their energy and change the world instead of letting the world change them.

So right now,

As you're releasing energy down this tree trunk into the earth,

Releasing the heaviness,

The seriousness,

Can you make a decision if you want to,

That you're going to decide what your energy is like and not let the expectations and demands of the world decide for you.

That's what real inner freedom is about.

So any heaviness,

Any tension,

See the color of the tension,

See the color of the heaviness,

The seriousness.

And then just with a very gentle compassion,

Just watch it.

If you've been fighting it or trying to control it,

If you've been taking the seriousness too seriously,

You may have to give it like a little meow,

Like a little cat,

Like meow,

Meow.

There you go.

Let it start to drain out of your body into the earth.

Let yourself lose some psychic tension,

Some mental energetic tension,

Let it drain into the earth.

Someone wrote my dogs confused while I'm making cow and cat sounds.

I have a dog sleeping right next to me right now too.

There we go.

As I said in the beginning of this meditation,

We're not here to hold our physical,

Emotional,

Mental bodies hostage.

We're here to be with them in a very human way.

So what would your most human enlightened self,

How would your most human enlightened self interact with any of the seriousness and heaviness?

Allow yourself to have that right now.

Would it be with enormous compassion,

With neutrality,

With playfulness,

With love,

With acceptance?

How would your most enlightened highest self interact with any of this heaviness or seriousness that you're ready to let go of?

Now how should I do it based on what David says or what I think one of my spiritual teachers says to do?

We're not here to follow instructions like we're in school,

Like we're like there's some homework.

What would my highest most awake self do and how would it respond to this excessive heaviness and seriousness that I'm ready to release?

That maybe I've been carrying around as an empath or a caring loving person for too long and it may be from my family,

It may be from a partner,

It may just be from society as a whole.

There's very likely someone or some people whose heaviness and seriousness you've been holding on to that's not really helping you or them.

Nice big tree trunk right from the base of your spine into the earth and it just starts to drain that heaviness and seriousness.

Like when you pull the plug from a drain and you watch the water just start to go down.

And you're not solving quote-unquote solving or fixing any problems.

You don't have to figure it out.

Often in meditation we want to figure everything out.

You're just watching the energy release.

Part of the path of living an enlightened human life is moving through these kinds of energies of resistance and pain with awareness and compassion and acceptance and maybe even some amusement.

Because the universe is a pretty weird funny place.

You may have been holding on to excessive responsibility and seriousness for days,

Weeks,

Months or years and this may be a great moment to let it go out of your stomach,

Out of your chest,

Out of your head.

Notice if there's any tension in your body you can start to loosen it up.

It's very easy for us folks who are very caring and responsible to take on too many burdens of the world,

Absorb too much pain and then we start feeling down,

Stuck,

Heavy,

Annoyed,

Frustrated.

All the fun energies,

Right?

We'll be the fun person at the party.

We've been here 10 minutes,

When are we leaving?

What's the exit strategy?

I need enough sleep.

I might talk to a stranger.

Ah,

Put a light smile on your face.

As we release enough noise,

Enough energy,

That's when we start to feel a sense of inner peace.

We don't need to be perfect to feel inner peace.

You don't need to be perfect to feel inner peace.

Those two have nothing to do with each other.

That's just an illusion that we have to shed off of ourselves as we deepen in our meditation practice.

Enlightenment is not perfection,

It's the acceptance of imperfection.

I'll say that again but in the language of a cat.

Meow,

Meow,

Meow,

Meow,

Meow,

Meow,

Meow.

That's right,

I hope you understood that one.

Whoa,

Great work.

Any last heaviness?

Let it drain out of your body before we come out of meditation.

Give yourself another moment here if you've been struggling or fighting something,

Especially if you've been having a mental argument.

Some of you may have been meditating with me this whole time here arguing with somebody or dialoguing,

Crocheting one end,

Sewing and sweater on the other,

Solving world problems in the back of your head.

You may be great multitaskers,

I get it.

You might be great doers.

Meditation is about crossing the bridge from doing to being.

Can you let yourself just be,

Have the being and put down the doing?

When we find that stillness,

That being,

There's a lot of miracles that get born out of it.

The being turns into loving,

The being turns into accepting,

The being turns into creativity.

Maybe the being turns into an energy of freedom.

So as you find your inner stillness,

As you let go of the seriousness,

What is your,

How does your being want to express itself?

Someone wrote,

How did you know I was,

I've been crocheting?

Oh,

You know.

Let the energy that your being actually wants to express into the world start to come out of the center of your chest and fill the energy field around your body.

Maybe there's a color,

A vibration.

So when you release the heaviness and seriousness,

What actually wants to be expressed out of your being?

I want you to find that real deep authentic energy.

So for me,

One of that energies is I love making people happy and making people laugh.

It makes me happy.

I love connecting to people,

To other people.

I love to see connections being made.

I love showing people new places.

I love helping people heal,

Wake up to who they really are.

Maybe allow them to have their inner child more and be playful.

What about you?

What about you?

Let that energy start to come out.

Let that energy really start to open up out of your heart and vibrate around you.

Maybe even extends out to the people you love.

Don't let it go to the people you don't love.

They don't get any of this.

Just kidding.

Extend it out.

Extend it out to everyone.

If you can find this real genuine deep vibration in yourself and start to live it more and more,

The doing that you do,

The work that you do in the world will have so much more impact in a very subtle deep way.

It's not just about what we do or how much money we donate or how high profile of a job we have.

It's the energy that we bring to what we do.

And the energy we bring to what we do is a reflection of our awareness and our essence of who we are.

But when we have awareness and we truly heal ourselves and know ourselves,

That's when our real energy starts to flower.

So let yourself flower.

Open up.

Open up.

You've probably waited long enough.

Take a nice big deep breath in.

Great work.

Nice easy sigh out.

Ah.

When you're ready,

Let go of any of that last level of seriousness.

Goodbye.

See you later.

Sayonara.

Hasta luego.

Arrivederci.

Dasvidanya.

Go ahead.

Open your eyes.

Reviews

Lol...I love this one 😅 thank you

I was laughing and crying. I have become definitely too serious over the last years chasing enlightenment, thank you for reminding me to have some fun 🙏🌷

Oh David, thank you again. This meditation is fantastic. I laughed so loud! And I’m not even that much of a serious person, in how I perceive myself, but this struck a lot of chords. 🤩🥳💫

I love hearing your voice talk me through these meditations, it is so healing. During this one my scared 8 year old self showed up. I reassured her the whole time that I let the heavy negative energy go. Your energy is wonderful. Thanks for being yourself so well. It’s helping me be myself. 💛

❤️😂❤️🤣❤️ Unlike any other meditation I’ve ever done… I think I’m in love!

What a great way to drop a heavy emotional load! David is one of my favorites teachers.

Love it! Who says meditation needs to be so serious all the time? Meow ❤️

A gem of a teacher. Thank you, David xxoo

That was a FANTASTIC giggle meditation. Thanks so much!!🙏🏼
Let me repeat that in dog language: rufff, ruf-ruff, rrruuff ruf ruff. 😃❤️
Let us rejoice! We are dis-identified and free.

David, you completely ruined my goal of a very serious morning meditation! I laughed, made cat sounds and felt very much as if I were doing this live, with you! Excellent work… your humor is Ana ing and I continue to enjoy and learn and grow! As much as you love making people laugh, I love laughing 😄🫶🙏🏻

How was that? ( it’s written up there). Well-
Absolutely to every word (almost every word😊); essential, effective.
Thank you David.

David always puts a smile on my face! Thank you David, your meditations never disappoint 😊

I spent the dream night struggling with a co-worker so this was a perfect way to shake that negativity off and start my day from joy

“It’s not about perfection. It’s about being okay with imperfection.” Sublime.
Deep gratitude, David. 🙏

I feel so much happier, after listening to this. 😊 Thank you, David!!!

🥅 goal!
I came across an old belief - always be responsible! So yes, David, I was walking around with 98% heaviness in my system. 🥱🥱🥱
Thanks - as ever.
Btw I like your cat