Master Class: Using an Ancient Mantra to Heal

Hello dear one,

This is davidji and welcome to today's practice.

Let's begin gently,

Arriving here wherever you are,

However you are.

Welcome,

Welcome.

Just allow yourself to land right here in the sweet spot of the universe.

Let me share with you a powerful teaching.

Throughout your day,

Your awareness is constantly being invited in different directions.

A sound draws your attention,

A thought captures your focus,

A sensation calls for your awareness.

And you might notice how quickly your mind orients itself to the object of attention when something begins.

A phone buzzes,

A voice rises,

Your nose itches,

You feel some sensation in your body,

An unexpected sound comes from nearby or far away,

A car alarm goes off,

A plane soars overhead,

A feeling stirs inside of you,

An emotion washes through you,

And immediately part of you turns toward it.

This is not something that we need to fix or change.

This is your mind body's inner intelligence,

The magnificent intelligence of your nervous system.

That's right,

Your nervous system is beautifully designed to notice when something starts to happen.

Whatever it is,

And most of the time it happens so quickly,

So effortlessly,

We don't even realize it's occurring.

Right?

Your awareness moves,

Responds,

Engages almost instantly.

But right now,

Right here,

I'd like to share something pretty cool with you.

I'd like to offer you something to feel into.

And that something is not when something starts happening,

It's when something stops happening.

It's the ending of an experience.

It's closing,

It's quieting,

It's dissolving.

Because things arise and they are so obvious,

But when those same exact experiences soften,

When they fade,

When they complete,

We're often unaware.

And when we don't notice endings,

Our nervous system,

Our magnificent nervous system,

Can remain in that elevated state that it leaped into the moment it acknowledged the arising.

And suddenly,

This low hum of unfinished experience starts moving through us,

A subtle holding onto,

Almost like a song that never fully resolves its final note.

And over time,

All those incomplete moments gather as a quiet background tension,

A sense that something's still happening,

Even when it isn't.

And what's so fascinating about this is that this doesn't come from doing anything wrong or weird.

It comes from something your brain does so beautifully well.

Because when we don't notice endings,

Our nervous system can remain just a little bit more elevated,

Waiting to remind you,

There's that thing again.

And what's so fascinating is that this has been hardwired into our DNA,

Into our nervous system,

As a self-preservation mechanism over thousands of years of evolution,

To keep us alert,

To keep us vigilant,

To keep one eye open every moment,

Protecting us,

Scanning for threat after threat after threat,

Even when there are none.

And your brain was created and trained to do this magnificently in order to keep you alive.

It's been part of man and womankind for tens of thousands of years,

Preserving us through the most scary,

Tenuous,

And threatening times.

And yet there's another half of that experience that often goes unnoticed when the experience slows or ends.

The ending,

The completion,

The moment when the sound fades,

When the sensation softens,

When the wind stops,

When the ache in our body disappears,

When the thought dissolves,

When the body returns to ease.

That moment is just as real,

Just as important,

Just as alive.

But our brain isn't designed to notice the completion,

Just the arising.

It's still out there looking for any sign of threat.

And when the thought or sound or physical sensation dissipates,

It's crickets out there.

No alert goes off.

No signal is sent.

The brain doesn't send or receive a concluding message.

And when the ending is not consciously registered,

The body will continue to carry the echo of what has already passed.

It came into us.

It left us.

We're still stuck at the coming into us.

Think about that concept.

It keeps bracing us for the next visitation of the arising,

Not because it needs to,

But because it was never given the signal.

You can relax now.

That moment is complete.

The threat has passed.

So today,

Together,

We begin to restore something very,

Very powerful,

And yet so simple.

The full arc of experience from the arising to the dissipation.

Every arising has a natural completion.

Every sound ultimately fades into the distance.

Every activation has an organic conclusion.

Every rising wave ultimately returns to stillness.

And when you begin to notice that completion,

Then something shifts forever.

But in that moment,

Your fear center calms down.

Your body softens.

Your breath deepens.

The nervous system actually receives the message that has passed.

And in that recognition,

There is a space.

There is a release.

There's actually a return to ease.

And to support this awareness,

I'd like to share with you a technique that I've shared with thousands of my students and teachers and training.

As easy as we notice the arising,

When we notice its passing,

We introduce a gentle,

Sacred whisper.

Gatte gatte.

Gatte gatte,

Which is a Sanskrit mantra that means gone,

Gone.

Gatte gatte,

A quiet acknowledgment that something has completed,

That we don't need to hold onto the arising,

Whatever it was.

Gatte gatte,

Simply honoring the natural dissolving of the experience.

So,

As you move through your day,

You might begin to notice the end of a breath,

Gatte.

The fading of a sound,

Gatte.

The settling after a moment of tension,

Gatte,

Gone.

A thought that dissolves,

Gatte.

You're gently teaching your nervous system,

You can release this now.

So,

For decades,

I have suggested that sometime in the afternoon,

Sometime,

When your day has already unfolded,

Somewhere between noon and dinner time,

When a moment has arised and passed,

You give yourself a sacred pause.

I call it the bookends of your day.

We meditate to start the day,

And then sometime in the afternoon,

We create the bookend,

Somewhere between noon and dinner time.

A short meditation,

But with the intention of letting go.

Letting go of all the energy we absorbed from the moment we woke up and throughout the day.

Something we read or saw that activated us,

We let it go.

Something we said or did,

We let it go.

Something we regret,

We let it go.

Something we took personally,

We let it go.

A grudge,

A grievance,

A holding onto,

We let it go.

So,

The morning meditation should set the tone of your day,

Set the trajectory,

Set your course,

And that afternoon meditation,

That second meditation of the day can always carry the intention of letting go.

I even created a course right here on InsideTimer called The Healing Sessions,

Freeing your soul through the second meditation of the day.

And there are many techniques that we can use to heal ourselves this way and release what no longer serves us.

One of those techniques,

I often breathe in as I silently repeat let,

And as I exhale,

I silently repeat go.

Let go.

Let go.

And I do that for at least five minutes,

And I would recommend that you do too.

Breathing in to let,

Breathing out to go.

But I want to share with you another very powerful technique.

It's using gatte gatte,

Gone gone.

It's a time to sit.

It's a time to breathe.

It's a time to allow completion.

We don't have to revisit the day in detail,

But by feeling into what still lingers,

And as impressions arise instead of let go,

As memories come in,

Sensations,

All those echoes,

We meet each one with gatte gatte,

Gone gone.

Gatte gatte,

Gone gone.

Sometimes I'll breathe in to gatte gatte,

And breathe out to gone gone.

Other times I just allow the mantra,

Gatte,

Gone.

You can flow it any way that feels good to you,

And you can practice that for five minutes,

And you will really start to feel some moksha,

Some liberation,

Some freedom,

Emotional freedom.

This will allow your nervous system to unwind,

To release what it no longer needs to carry,

To return to its natural rhythm.

Think about this.

We were never taught to release energy on a daily basis,

Yet we've taken it on virtually every single day of our lives.

Just stuff that we've just received and held on to energetically.

So my gift to you today is a practice where you can begin the process of releasing,

Of letting go,

What you no longer need to carry,

And what no longer serves you.

So before we move into our meditation here together,

Let this question ever so gently settle into your heart.

What has already ended that I am still holding?

What has already ended that I am still holding?

No need to answer.

Just allow this awareness to begin,

And we'll take it deeper with our meditation.

So let's settle in.

I'm so excited for this process,

This format.

This is pretty much how I've guided all of my courses where we chat for a little bit,

Hang out for a little bit,

Have a heart-to-heart,

And then go deep into meditation.

But let's do it right here,

Right now.

So ever so gently feather your nest.

Remember,

Comfort is queen.

Always keep moving towards comfort.

And together,

Let's take a long,

Slow,

Deep breath in.

And ever so gently let that go.

Let's do that one more time.

Long,

Slow,

Deep breath in.

Let's take one long,

Slow,

Deep breath in and allow our eyelids to ever so gently float closed.

And just allow your upper lids to rest so softly and tenderly on your lower lids.

This practice of yours is a gift.

Gatte Gatte comes from the closing mantra of the ancient Buddhist Heart Sutra.

That full mantra is Gatte Gatte,

Paragatte,

Parasamgate,

Bodhi Swaha.

I know,

Sounds like a lot.

It's actually pretty easy.

It speaks to the journey that we all take from the shore of suffering to the other shore,

Beyond suffering.

The actual translation is Gatte Gatte,

Gone,

Gone.

Paragatte,

Gone to the other shore.

Parasamgate,

Gone completely to the other shore.

That's the shore beyond suffering.

Bodhi,

Awakening,

Swaha.

Make it so,

Or so be it.

All right.

Gatte Gatte,

Paragatte,

Parasamgate,

Bodhi Swaha.

Gatte Gatte,

Paragatte,

Parasamgate,

Bodhi Swaha.

It's a gorgeous mantra.

Such a beautiful mantra.

And it concludes the 35 lines of this Heart Sutra.

Pretty powerful.

Think about yourself being ferried across from this shore,

The shore of suffering,

Whatever that is,

Across the waters to the other shore where there is no suffering.

Your heart just empties.

All the weight gets lifted.

All the pain is gone,

Gone.

Gatte Gatte.

I think we all would like to be ferried across from the shore of suffering completely to the other shore beyond suffering.

So let's begin our journey of healing right now.

Just drift your attention right now ever so gently to your breath.

Just noticing the inhale and noticing the exhale.

And now begin to notice the end of the inhale.

Right?

We breathe in.

Right?

The inhale ends,

That gentle turning point.

Gatte.

And at the end of the exhale,

That quiet stillness.

Gatte.

Let your awareness rest on the completion of the inhale and the completion of the exhale.

Gatte.

Let your awareness rest.

Inate.

And now expand your awareness to sound.

A sound appears.

Maybe there's a sound in your background right now.

Maybe it's me.

And at some point it fades or disappears.

And when you notice that ending,

I have a fan that's running here.

Maybe you hear it even.

But when I stop becoming aware of it,

Gatte Gatte.

When you notice that ending,

Gently whisper within.

Gatte.

Another sound arises and then subsides.

Gatte.

Arising and completing.

Gatte.

Effortless.

Natural.

And now allow your awareness to open to the day that you've lived so far.

Right here.

Today.

Don't search.

Let something arise on its own.

Maybe it's a moment or a conversation or a feeling.

And as it appears,

Recognize it has already completed.

And gently whisper.

Gatte Gatte.

Another moment arising and completing.

Gatte Gatte.

Gone gone.

So just allow all those arisings,

Knowing that you can complete them with a gentle Gatte Gatte.

With this process,

You are allowing what was unfinished to complete itself in your awareness.

Let's stay in the space for a few moments as we receive and Gatte Gatte.

And now simply notice thoughts as they arise.

Gatte.

Sensations in the body.

Shifting,

Softening,

Fading.

Each ending acknowledged.

Each completion honored.

Honored.

And now allow me to whisper the full mantra as you sit in silence.

I'll just keep whispering it.

You can ignore me.

You can start to move rhythmically with it.

You can repeat it with me or simply receive it.

Gatte Gatte.

Paragatte.

Parasamgate.

Paragatte.

Parasamgate.

Moriswaha.

Of itself.

Nothing to hold.

Nothing to complete.

Already whole.

And take a long,

Slow,

Deep breath in.

And ever so gently let that breath go.

Gatte Gatte.

Let's do that one more time.

Long,

Slow,

Deep breath in.

Gatte Gatte.

And when it feels comfortable,

You can begin to wiggle your fingers and toes.

Maybe give your heart a gentle massage.

Maybe give yourself a bit of an embrace right here.

This is powerful.

Release is powerful.

Gatte Gatte.

Gangan.

Letting go all those things we've been holding onto.

That are not ours to carry anymore.

And with your eyes open,

Gazing into each other's eyes,

Welcome back.

As you move through the world today,

Notice what completes.

Let your awareness just soften on each ending.

And you may hear ever so gently within.

Gatte Gatte.

And feel the lightness that follows.

From the sweet spot of the universe,

This is davidji.

Hopefully you enjoyed our exploration into Gangan.

Into acknowledging,

Celebrating,

And revering the endings.

Since we're already paying attention to the arisings.

Sending you love.

Have a beautiful day.

And feel free to use this mantra.

Gatte Gatte.

Gangan.

Or Gatte Gatte.

Paragatte.

Parasamgate.

Bodhiswaha.

In some fashion as well.

Namaste.

Keep meditating.

And I'll see you in the gap.