Letting Go & Laughing To Enlightenment

In this pre-recorded live session, David guides you through acknowledging and releasing the overly serious approach we tend to take in meditation. When we breathe, and begin to relax, we might just find that enlightenment lies on the other side of our laughter.

Transcript

Close your eyes.

Take a few relaxing breaths.

Maybe breathe into your belly.

Expand it.

You might even have a bit of a giggle of just how hard maybe you've tried in meditation before.

You close your eyes and you're like,

Today I'm gonna get it.

I'm gonna heal.

I'm gonna get that answer.

I'm gonna find inner peace if it kills me.

And you can have a giggle at how serious you've taken your own meditations before.

Or if you track your meditations,

21 minutes every day,

42 days in a row.

I am now calm.

Why is everyone running away when I walk into a room?

So if you've taken yourself and your meditation practice too seriously,

Yeah,

You're guilty.

Give me a little,

Even though I can't physically hear all of you,

Give me a little giggle,

Just an external giggle.

Yeah,

Just a,

Yeah,

I've done it.

And when we do that,

Perhaps you can release kind of a shed,

A layer of criticism,

Guilt,

Seriousness around some of the pain that you've been trying to figure out or let go of.

So a little crusty top,

Icing on the cake of criticism,

Seriousness,

Pain.

Where you've maybe made your pain hardened by trying to pull it out too hard or get rid of it or override it.

A teacher of mine used to say,

Nothing gets suppressed successfully forever.

So if you are a professional overrider,

That is a term now,

You're a professional overrider,

See if you can relax that energy and notice there's just probably some pain under it.

Underneath that pain,

There's something deeper.

So as you start to relax with your eyes closed here in meditation with me,

You might also notice any resistance that you have,

Or as the French would say,

La resistance,

To discomfort.

As we start meditating,

The first thing that usually happens is there's a discomfort in relationship to our noisy mind or our intense fluctuating feelings and the pain underneath all of that.

So notice if there is some resistance to just being still and being with the noise,

The uncomfortability,

The unpredictability,

If you like to be in control.

If you do like to be in control,

You might notice that that can be a form of suppressing pain or of managing it.

So let your breath slow down,

Maybe another 10,

20%.

Let your shoulders drop away from your ears.

Let your stomach relax.

There is kind of a layer usually of just the energy of the world when we go to close our eyes.

All of the kind of residue of our conversations and our to-do lists and all our interactions.

It takes a few minutes or more for that to start to settle.

So what you can do is notice the stillness inside you even when there is some noise orbiting around your consciousness.

There's a stillness even inside the noise that is orbiting around your awareness.

As you say hello to that stillness,

See if you can allow yourself to be in the energy of,

I don't need to solve anything right now.

Can you surrender the control to need to solve and or figure out anything at the moment?

Do you know what the one math book said to the other?

The one math book said to the other,

Oh,

You think you have problems?

Close the book,

Put it down,

No problems need to be solved at the moment.

What does that feel like in your body?

Does that relax your body that you can surrender having to solve anything right now?

And let's go a bit deeper here.

As you start to settle into this moment with me,

We're going to take a look at some pain.

If you flip the word pain around and you read it,

You can read it as nap.

So if you,

Some of us,

When we start to look at pain,

We go unconscious.

We get distracted or we literally will fall asleep.

So I want you to,

If you can keep your back straight and stay conscious,

Stay awake.

Notice if there is a theme of pain or discomfort that's coming up for you,

Something you've been resisting in your life,

Having a hard time with.

Obviously something you haven't been able to heal or let go around.

Something a bit stubborn in your consciousness.

I like that,

Something stubborn.

Just bring it up into your awareness in front of your mind's eye.

You can kind of look at it with your mind's eye.

This one,

Hmm,

It's been orbiting me like an asteroid getting closer and closer.

Just notice it for a moment.

And I want you to get a sense from zero to a hundred,

If you had a gauge,

How serious have you been taking this thing?

And I mean the unhealthy kind of serious that we described in the beginning,

The kind that's not useful,

That makes you controlling,

Stressed,

Stiff.

It's an additive,

It's an additive,

It's an additive.

Controlling,

Stressed,

Stiff.

It's an attitude.

How much of an attitude have you had towards this?

Zero to a hundred,

A hundred being a lot of attitude.

Get a sense of what that number is.

And when you find that number,

And if it feels,

Seems,

Looks a bit too high,

Just give it like a yuck,

Yuck.

So you can have a little bit of playfulness with it.

If your gauge was a temperature gauge,

How hot would it be today?

So now that you know how much seriousness there is around this topic,

How stiff it's been making you or stuck,

There's a word that rhymes with stuck.

It is yuck.

What did you think I was going to say?

Let some of this seriousness start to melt off before we even touch the topic.

Just let some of the seriousness start to melt off.

And you do that by having some compassion for yourself.

You took it seriously because you care.

That's human.

Maybe you learned to try to over-control things or manage them from someone in your family.

And that's how you feel safe.

There might be a feeling of uncomfortability,

Of resistance,

As I even say it.

You can let some of it melt off of your body just by being present and not resisting it.

You don't have to resist resistance.

You can actually have compassion for resistance.

And seriousness,

The kind we're talking about,

Is a form of resistance.

I'll even tell you a joke as you release this resistance.

I put my grandma on speed dial the other day.

I call it Instagram.

Oh,

I like that one.

Let some of that resistance start to melt off.

Maybe the gauge goes down just as we're sitting here.

Maybe the gauge starts to go down as you can accept whatever this issue is and this present moment as it is,

As it is.

Even in a painful moment,

When you learn to be present and accept it,

There is a miracle in it.

There's almost an existential quality to it that you can start to notice,

Where life isn't working against you.

Notice how that feels.

And so before we solve anything,

We allow ourselves to be present and accept reality as it is.

The paradox is that's when things change.

You might even notice a deeper level of compassion and love just arise in you when you stop trying to fight this.

You're just a human being navigating your way through life.

As you sit still,

An energy might melt off or release or pop.

You might fall asleep and then wake up and have a shift.

You might have a good cry.

And now you can gently approach the actual topic.

You might even notice it might not matter as much.

Just lightly say hello to it in your awareness.

And you might notice it,

Hey,

There's some confusion around it.

There's some pain.

Uncertainty.

Again,

Just noticing the energy.

That's it.

Just noticing the energy.

Sometimes what we need is just to find some clarity.

And we do that by just noticing the energy.

And my next joke is two Wi-Fi engineers got married.

I heard the reception was great.

You can even put a light smile on your face.

Just notice the topic.

Maybe some confusion melts off.

Maybe some pain.

Maybe some confusion melts off.

Maybe some pain melts off.

Every person here in this meditation,

Every person on Insight Timer,

Every person on earth has gone and will go through pain.

But how we approach it is what matters.

Just notice any more insight,

Any clarity you might have.

And it might not come in the form of an answer like,

Oh,

I need to do this.

It might come in the form of an awareness of energy.

For example,

Oh,

I need to be more honest.

I need to be more vulnerable.

I need to allow myself to have a painful experience.

Be compassionate.

So the answer might actually come in the form of an insight versus I need to do this.

And that insight very well may have to do with a shift in your energy.

So what is that shift in your energy in relationship to whatever this topic is?

That's what I'd like you to be aware of.

Just one more minute here.

Noticing that shift in your own energy.

There's an insight that comes with that.

For me,

Sometimes it's just sitting still and meditating more until some energy clears.

Do you give yourself the space and permission to do that?

There's a saying in meditation,

Don't just do something,

Sit there.

There we go.

Good work,

Everyone.

And then I want you to take this topic,

Whatever it is.

I want you to create a golden orb of light above it,

Just full of compassion.

The energy,

If you had almost like a balloon or a sun orb of light,

Just full of compassion.

And you just pour it onto this topic.

And naturally,

It'll also pour onto you.

Because this topic is an aspect of you manifesting into form,

Into events,

Into situations,

Into energy.

It's just an expression of you.

Just fill all the way in with compassion.

Put a light smile on your face and take a nice,

Big,

Deep breath.

And breathe out.

You can take whatever this topic is for now.

You can let it go.

And when you're ready,

You can slowly stretch and open your eyes.

That was part one of this four-part meditation that's going to be four hours.

And no one's allowed to leave.

Stretch,

Move,

Wiggle,

Open your eyes when you're ready.

Good job,

Everyone.

Reviews

Again a wonderful encounter with accepting life & myself as it is… thank you!

Thank you. 🙏🏽 you’re so goofy. 🙃 this helps so much!! 💕✌️🙏🏽💙

Ready to lol with David

He really resonates with me. Seems to enjoy life and share that joy with the world

David, you are a treasure. Thanks for making me laugh and cry in the same meditation!

David you always do great meditations. i like that they aren’t conventional. you have me think about an troublesome area and then you help me lighten up. thanks 🙏 🩵🦋💙🦋🩵🦋💙🦋🩵🦋💙🦋🩵🦋💙

Ha ha. As always. You are awesome. Thank you

Loved this one… always your humor takes away some of the pain! Thank you!! 🍃

😁😂🤣 I listened in bed and happily fell asleep 😴💤😴💤Thanks David!

That was fabulous, David. A huge release and cutting of ties - and I love the ease and laughter. Thank you so much.

Lovely - however it put me to sleep - will listen again and continue with your course on this topic 🙏☺️

Perfect, thank you 🙏🏽

As always, incredibly helpful. Thank you David!