The “mind” here means the tyranny of thoughts that pull you about and create feelings of fear (stress, jealousy, anxiety, worry etc). Liberation, or freedom, in its true sense is to be free of being pulled in by thoughts. The mind is a very powerful tool but it becomes a huge hindrance to our well-being if we are taken in by its magnetic pull. If your mind controls you, it’s would directly mean that you are a prisoner and bondage is never pleasant. Moreover, the wall of thoughts keep the intelligence of life from freely flowing through you, hence it hinders your well-being.
The Simple Practice of “Sitting” in a State of “No Doing”
All techniques and practices eventually require you to exert some form of “control” over your body or mind. Whether it be breathing practice like Vipassana Meditation or the practice of focusing on your inner body. These techniques may help make the mind more disciplined or mature, but they don’t take you to “freedom” because you are still trying to control.
If you want to be free of the mind, you have to “allow” it completely – that’s the paradox. You can never be free of something that you resist or try to control. When you let go of the mind completely you realize that it has no power over you. The practice I followed, that helped me become free of the magnetic pull of the mind, is a below.
- Just sit in a comfortable position so that your entire body is supported in some way. For example you can sit in a very comfortable couch, that supports your back and head completely, so that you don’t have to “hold” any posture.
- Realize that you don’t have to hold your body anymore because the couch is doing it for you. So you can now just let go of the body as if it were dead.
- Just be in simple place of a completely surrender, where you are not trying to hold or control anything. You can feel that there’s some energy in you which is trying to grab hold of something, and is very fearful of letting go so completely. Notice this energy but let it be, don’t try to get rid of it.
- Don’t judge anything and don’t try to solve, or sort out, anything. If fear arises, let it arise, if panic arises, let it arise, if confusion arises, let it arise. Just imagine that you are a dead body with no control over anything. It may take a few tries before you can truly be in this absolute state of no control, an absolute letting go.
- Don’t try to be “aware”. In fact, quit trying to do anything at all and just let go. Notice that awareness is not something that “you” have to do, because awareness is always here. This is a big revelation for someone who has been trying to be “aware” or trying to stay as a consciousness.
- You may notice that the awareness is always in the background, and thoughts and emotions are happening in this awareness. Even the thought “I am not aware right now” is just a thought happening in awareness.
If you just stay this way for a while, you will start noticing how thoughts and emotions fleet past in the space of awareness. This practice helps you gain stability in your power of awareness which allows for a space of a wisdom to come in, in the absence of this space you just feel pulled around by the mind’s momentum. As you practice this state of awareness, you will also notice the intensity, and momentum, of the mind becoming slower with time, until it reaches a point where the mind loses it grip on your being which allows for a resistance-free movement in your physical life.
“Sitting” Allows Suppressed Energies to be Released
This simple practice of “sitting” (if you can even call it a practice), allows all the suppressed energies to come into consciousness and thus be transmuted or released. Since you are not trying to control anything, everything starts coming back into a harmonious natural balance. The energies in you that were out of balance, or suppressed, will be released in this state of “no control”. It’s like a rubber band, it automatically comes back to it’s normal state if you stop controlling, or holding, it.
Understand that this is a process and it takes time before all the suppressed energies can be released. In fact, as you continue with this practice you will also notice the personal will, or the “me” force, ebbing away. This is because the “me” force was always unnatural to start with, and it had to be maintained through constant struggle. As you let go of struggle this unnatural force automatically starts ebbing away.
With time you will start feeling as if your “body” is dissolving or becoming more spacious. Your body starts feeling almost transparent. This is because there is no resistant energy in it anymore, hence it feels like an open channel. It can take a few weeks or even months before you can sense this lightness, depending on the suppressed energy and “controlling” force that was present in you.
You don’t have to do this practice for any fixed time. Do it whenever you are free, whenever you are not occupied. All you need is a place to sit comfortably and let go. It’s like deep “Waking” sleep. You are awake, but without control, like you are in sleep.
Dear Sen,
I’m not able to stay awake while practicing this! The above practice is what each of us does before we go to sleep isn’t it? How is it different from going to sleep? Please throw light on this matter. I haven’t quite grasped the whole idea behind this.
This practice is sometimes referred to as “awake sleep” where you are awake but you are not trying to “focus” on anything. Closing your eyes allows the awareness to automatically rest in your inner space. When you are sitting it’s more difficult for the body to go to sleep, so do ensure that you are not lying down on your bed while doing this practice. Just sit, close your eyes, and allow yourself to let go of controlling your “attention” or focus, its a state of letting go of controlling the mind or the body. As you practice this “let go” meditation, you will notice the mind’s automatic movements, and how its thoughts are changing all the time. The mind in its free movement is never a problem because its thoughts are not constant. It’s only when you “contract” your attention onto a thought that you start fueling it and make it “active” in your consciousness and give it momentum. When you contract on a negative thought you give momentum to the negativity – over the years a strong momentum of negativity gets built in your being through this unconscious attention. Through this practice you are slowly letting go of fueling this momentum and thus allow it to ebb away in force, over time. It will take a couple of weeks before you gain some stability in this practice.
Really insightful! Thank you for the quick response!!
hi sen, I’ve been trying this but i can’t seem to let go of the thoughts, or its okay to have them if i don’t give them my attention?or maybe i have a long way to go?
Parbat, it’s important to understand what is your underlying energy when you do this practice, are you doing this out of fear of your thoughts trying to somehow get rid of them? Or are you doing this from a place of openness to get a sense of the wholeness of your being? If you are using this practice with the fear-based motivation of trying to get rid of some thoughts, you miss the whole point of it. Stay as a space of awareness of the thoughts, to just sense you own freedom, to sense that you have a choice to not be lost in the mind, to sense that you are not the mind and that the mind is purely a machine having its movements – this is how you start becoming free, by understanding your freedom as the space of awareness.
everything you’ve mentioned is true, its might be the reason that i just got out of a needy relationship (thanks to you). i have been meditating for long, you know the usual way, focusing on the breath and all. but what you have in this site is what i actually have been looking for. now that i have found it, i want to to really let go of trying to control my mind because its only making it difficult to find peace. i also know that peace is already within my wholeness, i also understand every single word you sat but sen, i just can’t seem to let go completely. i kept paying attention so much to my minds chats that now its got very hard to let go of it. i am usually conscious most of the day and i don’t force my mind into anything nor pay attention to it but in quiet times like when I’m having my meal or reading a book or studying i tend to go unconscious and give in to my thoughts and start having conversations with my mind about how i could have done something better and all. I’m still very hopeful that i will achieve complete awareness(I’m not looking for it though, i just know i let of of my minds fear i will be aware) but still lost and i need your guidance.
Parbat, it takes time for awareness to become stable and you need to make allowance for this time. It’s natural to want to come to stability as soon as possible, and it can feel very frustrating to sense instability in our being. However, this is a natural process and it can’t just be “forced” into happening too quickly – it takes time for awareness to keep building until it becomes stable. You can be a co-operative component to this process if you just stay allowing of what arises instead of trying to suppress or control it – the phase of letting go is required phase to reach a place of wholeness and real control. When I say “real control” it’s when you don’t feel a prisoner to your mind’s fears. You are on the right track and you just need to give yourself time, rest assured you will be in a much more stable place in a few months.
Sen, Very nice article..!All your articles pretty much talks about the thoughts. I wanted to know, how our mind reacts when you keep getting warnings/reminders from ‘external’ physical reality regarding some unpleasant exp & How different is it to keep mind calm in case of thoughts and unpleasant reminders in external physical reality..
Sat, when one is not rooted in an inner stability it’s easy to be influenced by the external reality. Inner stability comes from awareness, the more aware your are the more you see through all the negative patterns of reality and the less influenced you are by any of it. As you become aware, you go through a phase where you become aware of the “dark” side of reality – the fears, the hatred and the meaninglessness – but as your awareness continues growing you see beyond all of this and come to a place of inner stability/wholeness. In this place, you are not living life in a “gaurded” manner, worrying about the next thing that can upset you. The warnings for your external reality are basically a reflection of your own inner fears that you’ve not come to terms with – you need to bring awareness to all your fears to go beyond them, whatever is your fear it keeps you a prisoner to it if you fear it. You need to become consciously free of a fear, through bringing a deep awareness to it, so that it does not have a hold on you.
thanks sen. could you please let.me how it was for you when you went through this change?
I was first introduced to the insight of bringing awareness to the mind in the book “the power of now” by Eckhart Tolle, till then I was living a highly disconnected life, and going through a lot of suffering as a result. The very process of bringing a space of awareness allowed for more stability in my being, which created several shifts in my reality where many disconnected elements moved out. With time I was able to gain more stability in awareness and I could sense several stark patterns of fears/resistances in the mind, a lot of negative momentum which I was not even conscious of before – it was like waking up from a daze of living a disconnected life. For a while I was working on suppressing the fears or using techniques to think positively, but soon I realize that all this was just too exhausting and there was sense that there needs to be a better way of coming to harmony. Around this time I came across the teachings of Adyashanti and few more teachers like Mooji, which pointed me towards the state of “open allowing” or letting go, rather than fighting the mind or negativity. Initially it was really challenging to just stay allowing of the intense negative movement I felt within, but in a few months I could sense a stability coming into being, and the intensity of the negativity started ebbing away in force. I would say in a span of 8-9 months I felt a deep stability in my being and from there on it felt as if a different force had taken over, it was like I was previously being run by the force of external conditioning or the ego, whereas now I felt I was in the flow of my own life-stream – there was no determination or personal will needed, it was like life just moving you through inspiration. It has been that way since, with subtler resistances ebbing away each day.
This journey of alignment becomes much faster when one has an understanding of what it entails, because then one does not get stuck up at any phase. When I went through this journey I didnot really have much guidance other than some pointers I got from these teachers by listening to them on youtube. Along this journey I came to several insights of my own, which helped me understand this process in a much clearer way, and I basically share those insights in this blog.
thanks sen 🙂
Hi sen, I am finding that I am definitely in the beginning phases of awareness- I am aware of some very negative patterns that have been occurring in me for a long time, and am a stage of acceptance where I am allowing these negative energies to flow and run their course while not giving them too much attention. However I have found that there is a part of my mind that is afraid to let go of its thoughts as its scared of what could be left… This “fear” was reinforced by your statements: “Who you are is “Nothing” or Everything, it’s one and the same. Can you see that you don’t exist that way you thought you did? The “me” does not really have any existence beyond the thoughts about it. This realization is called “Awakening” or Enlightenment experience.”. Before reading this, my understanding of the ‘inner self’, ‘core being’ or ‘life stream’ was that this space encompassed all our human instincts, our values, our intelligence and everything that made us unique… After reading your statement I fear that’s what’s really there is an emptiness and why would I want that?
Jess, it’s just a simple, and obvious, realization to understand that who you are is not just this body but also the wholeness of life because inherently there is no separation – physicists have also proven that everything is just life-energy vibrating. When I say you are everything does it not mean that it encompasses your humanness, your thoughts, your emotions and physicality? And do you not see the silliness of the thought that somehow when you let go of negativity you will end up in some form of “emptiness” – it’s just some dramatic idea of the mind. The “me” structure in the brain is obviously a thought construct, but it has a value and usefulness in physical living – enlightened living is not about getting rid of the “ego”, but rather about bringing a wholeness to the ego by understanding that you are not just an ego thought of the mind but also the wholeness of life. The main thing is to let go of the negativity, nothing else, and the pointer of you being the wholeness of life is meant to help release thoughts of limitations. The ego is needed for physical living, plus the mind will always have its dimensions of love, joy, fear, hatred, boredom and sexuality, it’s just about letting go of the negativity that we carry within or the imbalance that we might have through a total ego identification.
It’s important to let go of all kinds of dramatic ideas about enlightened living, all that will happen when you let go of negativity is that you get aligned with your natural expression in your physical living and thus have an enjoyable experience of physicality.
In think this must be a very old post of mine and the way I’ve expressed the idea of wholeness here is very abstract and actually vague, I can see why it created such dramatic ideas in your mind about “emptiness”. I’ve made modifications to the post to remove the ambiguous-ness.
Hi,
Its strange, but I had this experience last week. I never go for meditation with my friend (they do the sitting meditation, and they dont teach it etc). But one day I just said, Yes, I want to come (again very spontaneously and effortlessly) and went. I closed my mind and had all these thoughts coming and goin, very chaotic, had colors (white light and some sun rise ) and I was falling asleep but yet awake… lol, now that I read what you mean, i think I was a bit close to what you are describing, if I do it more, I will let the negativity inside (the fears etc) come up too. Does one have to do this daily?
Many thanks again Sen…. sending you warm wishes and happiness.. 🙂
Regards,
Ketan
Ketan, it’s something you just start enjoying, where you feel the desire connect with your space of being. It’s not something you need to do as a daily practice, but soon you just start enjoying it to the point where you automatically feel inspired to do it daily.
Hi Sen,
I have some strong fears and anxieties. When speaking of ‘sitting’ to let go of suppressed energies, is it at some point necessary to be in the actual situations where my fears and anxieties are triggered to truly let go of them, or can I still do it where I feel most relaxed/safe?
Alex, you don’t have to forcibly put yourself in some negative situation. Life is a teacher on its own, and you can trust your life-stream to provide you the situations that are required for your growth, that will help you overcome any negativity that you may be holding within without it really affecting your well-being, it’s part of the deconstruction process – you can trust your life’s intelligence. Your job is to bring awareness to the negativity as it arises without getting identified with it, and thus allow it to dissolve.
Sen- Is it possible to be in a state of relaxed awareness for too long? I was in this state for 2 hours today and didn’t want to stop. I felt a constant rush of positivity. Along with this, a stream of good memories came back to me. Normally, I recollect only the bad memories. Could this mean I’m slowly aligning to my life force, which is positive and happy?
Anne, for a while you will notice a strong desire to connect more and more with your space of being (state of relaxed awareness) – it’s like having a love affair with the self. This is part of the process and it means you are moving pretty quickly towards alignment and thus towards a positive cycle. At some point you will sense that you just feel this grounding in inner stability (like a connection that just falls in place), and then it’s not so much about being in relaxed awareness (or being with yourself) but about just living life from a state of inner wholeness and you will feel a desire to get involved with the outside a lot more and enjoy the external physical life. Right now, what will happen is a desire to just connect more with yourself in this state of relaxed awareness and there is no such thing as too much of it.
Hi Sen,
I have been trying for a couple of days with this meditation and I think I am not approaching it with the right intentions, I am expecting something from it but I have decided to keep trying and some day hopefully I will get the hang of it.
Anyway, the main problem now is that I easily fall asleep, despite that I am sitting. I tried to do it in the morning but I can’t help it. Is there some technique that I can use to stay awake, maybe caffeine is not a good option because it makes my mind too anxious…
sen what is the difference between this act of “doing nothing” and mindfulness meditation?
or rather zen meditation?
Aaryan, mindfulness meditation is a practice of staying aware of the mind – as a practice. This meditation allows you to improve your capacity/power of awareness – I use the term “relaxed awareness” to refer to the right way of doing this meditation (without being too rigid about it). The act of “doing nothing” is akin to the practice of “conscious allowing” which is about letting go of the need to for any form of control within yourself – not even trying to “stay aware” as an effort. This practice is what actually releases the momentum of your mind and emotional accumulation, however it’s required to have some capacity for awareness (through the practice of relaxed awareness) before working on conscious allowing. Conscious allowing is not a “passive state” rather it requires a willingness to allow yourself to face the emotional release and mental fears, which is what allows the state of inner freedom to come in.
Hi Sen, is “conscious allowing” the same thing as “total allowing” or does “total allowing” arise as a result of the “conscious allowing practice”? Thanks!
That’s fine Sen. No reply needed. I think I’ve answered my own question – Total Allowing is when you’re past all practices and no longer afraid of the negativity.
Whereas, Conscious Allowing is a practice.
I wrote a big message to you , explaning alot of the things that have taken over my mind the past months, alot of them are just the same as most of the people here – unwanted thoughts and anxiety, worry and fear of my own mind.
– Is the biggest advice you can give to relax, to not care, to no worry, to say to your self, it dosnt matter it is just a thought; or i’m nervous, so what, it happens i’m human – to relax, to not care, is this the way?
I try to say this to my self, but it the worry comes back, the anxiety later comes back, rcently in every problem of my life, even in the halloween, were i got tricket at my house, i worried in anxiety for two or three day that the kids would come back and kick my door and scare me again. Sometimes my mind is to strong and i cannot relax it, it just goes on and on the negative or anxiety evolves and develops in other forms – i wanto to go back to the stat i was in a few months ago, with no unwanted thoughst and where i could focous well, not behing afraid of the NOW moment, because thats when i realyse reality and are more susceptible to anxiety and unwanted toughts.
Also you mention the ALLOWING – to me, it sound scary because its like, ” hey obsessive thoughts and anxiety, come on and emerge and be bad for me”. It’s scary its like i’m vulnerable.
I need to be stronger inside, with my mid, and with my self-esteem
About the article of this page – i don’t really understand what it really is – it is like me stopping my mind, looking around and saying i’m here, i exist, i am on the now, this is the present or is doing what?
Because sometimes i don’t understand; you say we cannot like be the mind, but what will i think when i don’t have to think, i want to have those times, where you are like day dreaming, or like just so evolved with thoughts ( not bad ones) that you loose contact with reality, that trance state that you can go doing anything, i don’t want to lose that, i want to lose the extremely conscious of my existence, because thats where i realize i have a mind and it can be bad for me. Because some articles when you talk about the mind and detaching from her, i don’t want to lose the god things it has for you. I don’t want to lose my criativity – is the mind is not the center of criativety, so what is the mind?
Sometimes in your articles, when you talk about the changes i feel like some of this changes are going to have to be like a magical process inside you – my question also is, is this articles spiritual or psicological?
A lot of the time when you talk about look inside, is it like meditatio? because i never seem to be able to do it – this spaces of conscioness, what do think, what i’m am looking for?
Thanks for now
Filipe, the pointer that I emphasize on is to stay “allowing” internally, which just means – be free of the need to suppress something (be it your mind or emotions) or the need to identify with something blindly (like getting identified with a certain anxiety in the mind or getting identified with an emotion like “sadness” that arises). It’s possible to misunderstand this pointer and turn it into some mind-based technique of trying to “feel good” by saying “I don’t care”, “It doesn’t matter it’s just a thought” or some other ways of trying to comfort/convince yourself. The state of allowing is not about trying to comfort yourself, it’s about an openness to allow what arises – if it’s a bad feeling (or a negative thought) allow yourself to experience this bad feeling, instead of trying to push away from it by saying “it’s just a thought, I don’t care”, the deal is to be totally open – you have to be honest with yourself about whether you are being fearless towards allowing what arises or if you are trying to make this into a technique to find some comfort or “good feeling”. Of course it’s normal to feel “scared” initially when you start moving into a state of true allowing – it makes you feel “vulnerable”, but soon you realize the power that comes in from your ability to be open. This openness is what reveals the true power in your being to be invincible to thoughts/emotions, however it does feel uncomfortable initially since you are not used to the state of allowing. You will have to ride through this fear to move into a deeper state of allowing – there are no short cuts.
There is nothing magical about this process, it’s just logical. The state allowing means that you are not “suppressing” and your are aware and hence not unconsciously identified with the mind/emotional momentum, and hence you are not “fueling” it anymore, and hence you are allowing its past momentum to be released – once this past momentum releases you feel your natural sense of wholeness in your being as it no longer has the baggage of emotional/mental momentum. This state of wholeness allows you to be receptive to inner wisdom and allows you to lead a balanced life since you are no longer driven by emotional/mental momentum. None of this is magical, it’s just a simple understanding of the dynamics of thought/mind and being.
You can read this post – FAQ on the state of allowing – to get a better understanding of what the state of allowing entails.
So mr.Sen,i have very big problem regarding my next door neighbour,he is litlle bit crazy,and often put some music very loud trought the night,police dont do nothing because im from shity country in the meditteranian,so every time he put loud music,i become very angry and i want go to kill him,so this anger is mixture of tension and redines to go and beat him to death,its allredy happend for 5-6 yrs,and i have too much negativity only from him and what about life itself,as i dont know what to do because have high blod pressure from this high tension,and im only 30.So is the relaxed awerness wright stuff for me?Thanks and good bless you,sory for my bad english!
Hi John, at one time I was also in this situation. What I understand is that, the external situations are the mirror image of our internal condition, we can’t change our external situations by struggling or crying. Some times we can change the external situations by effort, but the same kind of situation will occur in our life again and again. In my case I was imbalances in “fear” and “love”, the only solution for this is we have to understand our mind and internal negativity and allow it. We can react to a negative situation in three ways, 1st- we can blame our self and keep crying ie, saying like, why is this happening to me always or I am not good. 2nd- we can suppress it or hide from facing our internal negativity or fears. Like saying, this is not my fault, or people around me are very bad so they have to change, or we can force fully try to change the situation. 3rd- We can face our fears or internal negativity, and allow the negativity or fear to loose it’s power on us, and the external situations will change it self.
I think your issue with your neighbor is the external reflection of the internal struggle going inside you. Try to find your internal issues and allow it, don’t regret or hide from it just allow or accept it(this is how my life situations changed). Try to understand your mind and “allowing”. Allowing is the only solution. Once you become stable inside, the external situations will change it self.
Sen, please when you said we shouldn’t pay attention to our thought did you mean we shouldn’t react to our thought ?please help me understand this.Thank you
Hii Sen,
There is a lot of meekness in me and a vibe of powerlessness in me.I tried to change this by literally forcing myself to face negative situations but it’s not working.I came across your site 1 year ago and since then I have been observing my mind and trying to understand the state of allowing.But I have literally failed, as I find myself being oversensitive and weak and I am not able to handle even normal situations due to this sensitivity.I don’t even know if I have awareness or not.
I want to commit to this process again. My question is, will I sense this inner stability by simply following this practice as stated above everyday?When I sit and allow my mind I feel as if nothing is happening.Is this Normal??Will this practice help me resolve my issues related to oversensitivity,Meekness and fears??Or do I have to work on facing and solving negative situations?