96 Practicing The Awakening Meditation

In this podcast, we review and practice the Awakening Meditation. This meditation is much like a mantra meditation except there is no verbal mantra. Instead, the mantra is your Being. You stay connected and aware of your Being while you watch everything else and let it either pass or dissipate and melt back into the same Bliss that you are. Let go of thoughts, and emotions and melt back into yourself.

These podcasts are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. They are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. They, also, all stand on their own. But if anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All are here and free.

Though I am a psychotherapist, these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful. They are not psychotherapy. Please reach out to a psychotherapist if ever needed.

Transcript

Hello, This is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well today. In our last podcast, We talked about Transcendental Meditation and we did a small practice together. In this podcast, I'd like to talk about the Awakening Meditation and do a small meditation together as well. We've talked about the Awakening Meditation in the beginning part of this series of podcasts, But I'd like to revisit it now on the heels of the Transcendental Meditation and go a little deeper with it, Perhaps. I say that because we've covered a lot of material between the beginning of this series of podcasts and now. So, Let's revisit the Awakening Meditation. It's actually a logical extension of the Transcendental Meditation we just explored. In the Transcendental Meditation we talked about in the last podcast, In order to prevent ourselves from being sucked into our thoughts and emotions and seeing life through the lenses of these thoughts and emotions, Which are skewed and colored through fear and hurt and anger, We stay centered in our being. And instead of jumping into the thoughts and emotions, We simply chant or say quietly to ourselves a mantra. And the Transcendental Meditation mantra is a sound which doesn't have a meaning. The sound that we picked in our last podcast was simply the sound, EM. So, As a thought or emotion arises, Rather than jump into it, We instead say the sound to ourselves, EM, And then let the sound go as well as the thoughts and or emotions that were trying to pop up and have us jump into them, Let them go as well. That's Transcendental Meditation in a nutshell. The Awakening Meditation is a good meditation to start once you've done the Transcendental Meditation for a while and you've become accustomed to not jumping into your thoughts and emotions. Once you're no longer addicted to your thoughts and emotions and therefore can watch them rather than have a need to jump into them and experience them, Because they can be quite addictive, You're ready to practice the Awakening Meditation. In the Awakening Meditation, There are no mantras. What happens is just like with the Transcendental Meditation, You sit in a relaxed position, You close your eyes, You breathe normally, And you simply watch your thoughts, Watch your emotions, Or I should say be aware of them as they come up. You also are aware of that which is watching, Because that's you. That which is watching, The awareness is you. And as you place your attention on that awareness, You become accustomed to the qualities of your being. This awareness is your being and its qualities are light, Love, Peace, Well-being, Joy, Bliss, Happiness, Anything in that vibration. And you may feel all of them or one of them, Or they may change from time to time. But those are the qualities of your being, That's your center. And what starts to melt away or let go is all the things that you are not, All the qualities of your separated personality. In separation, As we've talked about before, You experience separation anxiety or fear, The hurt of abandonment, Because you've abandoned yourself, You're separated from yourself, And the frustration and anger of being set apart from yourself, Which is the oneness of the universe. No way to live your life, To be separated. So, You're angry. This hurt, Fear, And anger forms a personality which is constantly trying to get the peace that you are, Instead of the fear that you're experiencing. It's constantly trying to get love instead of the abandonment it feels, And it's trying to constantly feel fulfilled rather than angry. The irony of it all is, It's simply a mental trick. Because you thought you were separated from yourself, You feel fear, Hurt, And anger, But you're not separated from yourself. You are yourself. So, It's kind of ridiculous in a way, Yet it is the human condition. The thoughts, The personality that's formed of thoughts and emotions, Hurt, Fear, And anger, Is constantly trying to get the remedy. It's trying to get, As we just talked about, Peace, Love, And fulfillment. That's your personality. It's a getting machine. So, The addiction is, You try to jump into your thoughts, Jump into your emotions, Jump into your personality, And live life through it, Trying to get what you perceive you've lost. The Transcendental Meditation interrupts that process by the use of a mantra, EM. So, Rather than jumping into the personality, While you're meditating during that 20 minutes, You're simply saying the word or the mantra, EM, Rather than jumping into the thoughts or emotions. You're letting them all go. Because you've let them all go, All that remains is your being, And you start to stay in your center. You are centered, And you start to experience peace, Love, Light, Relaxation, As it flows through you. So, The Transcendental Meditation interrupts the addiction of feeling that you have to jump into your thoughts and into your emotions. Once that addiction is interrupted enough, Now you're ready for the Awakening Meditation. Because you're not needing to jump into your emotions and thoughts so much, You don't need a mantra. You can sit still and watch your thoughts and emotions. You can just let them unwind. As we've talked about in previous podcasts, Your thoughts and emotions, Your personality, Are made of consciousness that you've formed into thoughts and emotions. So, Basically, They're made of peace, Love, And well-being, But they're constructions. They are thoughts. They are objects. They are emotions that persist. They're still in your consciousness. They're still haunting you. They're still coming up. You're waking up in the middle of the night with these fears, With these anxieties, With these hurts and abandonments and frustrations and anger. And as you go through your daily life, Your whole world is colored by them. Any anger at all in your system is coming from your personality and it's fueled by this initial separation. Any fear at all, And it can take a lot of different forms. A relationship might bring your fear out. You might think your fear is because of your relationship or your hurt is because of your relationship or your unfulfillment is because of your relationship or any other external event, But it's not. It's because you're unresolved in the inside. You're not centered. You're separated from yourself. And all of the separation, Hurt, Fear, And anger jumps out onto external circumstances. Again, We've talked about that a lot in past podcasts. This is all very true with the one exception. There are certain physiological uses of hurt, Fear, And anger. If a lion is actually about to eat you, It's probably good to be afraid and to get out of there or angry if somebody is actually attacking you so you have the power to defend yourself. I'm not saying that the anger is necessary. You can have power flowing through you in other ways without the anger, But it might be useful. So in these rare circumstances, When you are being attacked by a lion, Then that fear is called for. I have a friend that has a rule of six. If something's about to attack you and is within six feet, Or it's about to happen within six seconds, Then these emotions might be realistic. But short of that, He says the rest is psychological. So all of the psychological emotion comes up when you're in the awakening meditation. As you sit there and as you're aware of thoughts just running their course or emotions just running their course, They will spin. And because you don't engage in them, You simply are aware of them, Or I could use another word, You watch them from your center of being. You watch them, You experience them, But you don't jump into them. They just spin and they expend their energy. Also under the light of your awareness, They start to melt and they're almost like an ice cube melting in the warm sun. And as they melt, Instead of an ice cube exuding cold, Your emotions, As they melt, They exude anger, Hurt, Or fear. You can feel that and it doesn't feel good. It's been repressed in your system. And now it's coming out because as you sit still in awakening, All of the cloudy, Non-resonant, All the things that have been blocking you, All the repressions, They come up to dissolve, To let go, To relax out of your system. So the advantage of the awakening meditation versus the transcendental meditation, In my experience, Is the transcendental meditation, I don't so much even get to all of this repressed thoughts and emotions because as they begin to arise and to express themselves, And I start to become sucked into them, I simply say my mantra, And I let them go. In the awakening meditation, I don't let them go. I let them come up. I just don't jump into them. And as they come up, They exude their energy. And as they exude their energy, They weaken. In the light of my awareness, They also melt and they exude more energy of hurt, Fear, And anger. And that burns off. Also, As they melt, As they loosen up, They can begin to be invited to breathe in the well-being of your being. You are peace, Love, And well-being, And light. And you experience yourself as that as you meditate. You become familiar with yourself because you don't leave that center. And that center is energetic. Peace, Love, Joy, Bliss, Happiness. So that part of you that's been formed because you perceive that you are separate now begins to heal because it begins to soak up, Reconnect with you. And you are peace, Love, And joy. So it soaks up. It reconnects to peace, Love, And joy. The fear no longer feels fear when it drinks in, When it soaks up that you are peace. It is peace. So that emotion can relax, Dissolve, And let go. And just like after a good massage, Tension is gone. It melts totally out of your body and no longer exists. The fear melts out of your body. The abandonment melts out of your body because it reconnects with the love of you. It doesn't have to get love because you are love. It is love. The unfulfillment melts because you are fulfillment. You are happiness. You are bliss. When previously the personality has been seeking to achieve things in order to get happiness, It finds it no longer has to do a thing in order to get happiness because you are happiness. It already has itself. It already has you. Yes, You can flow down through your personality now as a whole being and you can do things. You can experience things, Experience life, But you don't have to get life because you're lacking. You come from being full and simply enjoying rather than trying to get because you're not enjoying. So all this happens in the awakening meditation. To reiterate, You sit in a relaxed position. You close your eyes. You breathe normally. And this is where we stopped before because rather than chant the mantra, You have no mantra. You, Your being in a sense is a mantra and you are centered in yourself and you simply watch your thoughts and emotions. And after a time you might feel yourself connecting to your thoughts and emotions as they unwind. And in that connection they're invited to soak you up because you are connected to them. They soak up your qualities of wellness and happiness and love and peace. And therefore they begin to relax. And when they relax, They disappear. So after a time, There's nothing to be aware of, Nothing to wind down, Nothing not to be jumping into because all of it has disappeared. It's relaxed. And when it relaxes, When it melts, When it disappears, It melts into its basic building blocks, Which are peace, Love, And wellbeing as well. So your center grows more radiant and more radiant as what formerly were thoughts and emotions melt into peace and love and joy. And they merge with the infinite peace, Love, And joy, Because there only is oneness and that is your experience. So that's the awakening meditation. Let me describe it just a little bit more and then we'll practice it together. Again, Sitting in a relaxed position, Closing your eyes, Breathing normally, And then watching. And if your mind wanders, Bring your attention back to your center and let any thoughts or emotions just take in the peace and love that you are. Yes, For a while, They may not feel like it because they're simply exuding the radiance of hurt, Fear, And anger. And when there's so much outflow of hurt, Fear, And anger, As it's melting out of your system, There might not be a lot of room to soak up for them to absorb your thoughts and feelings to absorb peace, Love, And joy. But I bet they could absorb it. Maybe 1%, Maybe half a percent of them could enjoy it. And everybody likes to enjoy things, Even thoughts and feelings like to enjoy things so you can invite them. Would you like to enjoy peace, Love, And well-being as you experience them? After a while, They will. And they will begin to soak it up. So after some time, Might be that meditation, Could be days of meditations, Could be weeks or months of meditations, Depending on your backlog of separation and unresolved, Repressed personality fragments. Depending on all that, Those things that formerly were distracting you will melt into their basic ingredients, Merge back with you, And all that there's left is peace, Love, And well-being. That's called awakening, Right? When you're clear inside, You can see clearly on the outside, And you can go through your life outside of your meditation, Just like you do inside of your meditation. After a while, Life and meditation are indistinguishable. If there's something left inside of you that still is repressed and blocking, You don't have to hunt for it. It will come up naturally. And if it doesn't come up in your meditation, It'll come up naturally in life. You'll have a relationship or a job or an interaction or a physical activity that will clash with something, And it will bring up anything anything that remains in you that is centered on separation, That has its genesis, Its beginnings in separation. Anything that includes hurt, Fear, And anger, As we just discussed. Okay, So on a practical matter, Let's just do the meditation together so that you can experience it and know that you're doing it correctly. It's really very simple. It's not always so easy because it takes some, As we've talked about in past podcasts, It takes some nervous system maturity to be able to sit with all that previously was repressed and is releasing itself. Sometimes it's massive amounts of hurt, Fear, And anger that reveal themselves. Although the nervous system is very good at only giving you that which you can handle. So let's meditate together. Sitting in a relaxed position, You close your eyes, You breathe normally, And you just watch everything that you're not. You're not your thoughts. So if a thought comes up, You're aware of it. You watch it. You don't try to make it not happen. You just let it do whatever it wants to do. If it wants to think, You let it think. You just don't jump into it. You don't add any energy to it. You simply watch from your center. It will eventually disappear at some time. If you experience an emotion, And usually thoughts are fueled by emotions, That's what keeps them going. So often there's an emotion nearby. You don't have to hunt for it. If there is one that wants to come up at the moment that's ready to dissolve, It will come up. And you experience that from an awareness standpoint. You watch it. You experience it just like you are with your thought. You don't jump into it. You don't take it seriously in that regard. You don't add your energy to it. You simply are aware of it. You let it run its course. Let it continue to exude energy. As we talked about in a past podcast, That energy is part of your radiance. It can be quite intense. Just as your bliss and well-being becomes very intense as all of this separated energy unwinds, Relaxes, Melts back into peace, Back into peace, Love, And joy, Which it's made of. Now that radiance is in the form of peace, Love, And joy, And it merges with you as oneness. Massive peace, Love, And joy. So it's a good thing. It's simply been twisted off into a thought or an emotion that's exuding hurt, Fear, And anger at the moment. There'll come a time when it actually feels good to feel it melt back into its own peace, Love, And joy. It might feel like pain, And then it begins to unwind, And it hurts, It hurts, It hurts, And then slowly it kind of hurts good. It hurts and feels good at the same time, And then after a while simply feels good. And that original hurt is gone. Poof. So that's the awakening meditation. You do that for, Say, 20 minutes. I have a teacher in India. He might, Say, Do it for a minimum of one hour a day or two hours. He himself meditated eight hours a day for something like eight years straight. If you meditate for a long period of time, A lot of clarity comes because a lot of stuff melts out. And once it melts out, There's now a lot of space for the radiance to flow through your cells and through your body and your emotions and for your personality to reform. So meditation is a good thing, And I would say do it as much as is practical. Again, We'll just do a short meditation together because mainly I'm walking you through this so you can do it on your own. Again, In a relaxed position with your eyes closed and your breathing normally, You're in your center and you're aware of sounds around you, Thoughts occurring within you. You watch them. You're aware of them, Emotions you experience. And as you do that, All this energy called thoughts and emotions unwind, Relax, And eventually they will melt back inside of you. You simply watch them and you don't jump into them because you're no longer addicted to them. If at any point you find yourself jumping into them and you're lost into a daydream and then a few minutes later you realize that after having been carried away by those thoughts and emotions, No problem. You just simply resume your awakening meditation. Now you're watching them. Now you're experiencing your emotions. You just continue along as if nothing happened. But if you'd find it helpful to have a good place to fix your attention, My teacher in India says a good place to put your attention is focus on the spot just above the center of your forehead between your two eyes. In other words, Your third eye. Focus your gaze with your eyes closed on that spot, On a spot there that feels good. Just find a spot that feels good and just leave your gaze there. That's if your eyes would like a place to rest or your awareness would like a place to fix itself. In a sense, That could be your mantra. Although I'm not sure you even need to do that, But maybe in the beginning that's not a bad thing to do. You can experiment and do what feels good and right for you. What's most effective for you. The goal being staying in your center, Experiencing your thoughts and emotions as they come up and letting them unwind, Relax and melt into their basic building blocks, Peace, Love and well-being. After you've meditated the time that you'd like, And perhaps you've set a timer, You can simply take a deep breath, Open your eyes, Look around and you know, You can stay in your center and flow through your life. Okay, I've enjoyed that. I look forward to talking to you next week. Take care. Bye.

Reviews

William, I am so grateful for this 96th day (or week or moment) summary of all of the concepts around meditation that you have guided us through so far. Your explanation of meditation is non-judgemental and open to “what feels good” for us, the individuals. After many years of trying and feeling there was something wrong with me, I see how therapeutic and right this feels. Thank you!

Hi William
I felt a great sense of opening with this one thank you, I could feel the bodily pains being absorbed. I have a question about the observer, which is awareness and Me feel anything. There is awareness which is me and the experiences that are coming up. So who is feeling the awareness that I am or the experience. My experience is telling me that the Awareness does not sense or feel anything but then if all is Oneness and experience melts back in which Awareness and the experience become one does Awareness feel anything? Thank you 💕

Thank You 🙏 William. That was very helpful. I look forward to the next one.
Be Well!
~ Jennifer Lea