How do you quiet your mind? How do you meditate? 

My meditation teacher, Eric Berg, said, to meditate you need to let go of yourself, lose yourself, become a “Null”… that’s a scary thought (especially for a programmer). 

I have to be honest, that I’m attached to myself. I want myself to be Ok, I want everyone around me to like me. I’m quite busy with both of those activities. 

So, I didn’t let go of myself in my meditation circle… I counted my breaths, yet my mind wasn’t quite, I thought about this letting go of oneself dilemma.

And I realized that I do let go of myself all the time. I let go of “variations” of myself. 

I have to let go of a woman who is in Love, to be a computer programmer. For a bit, not forever,  but I have to do that to be able to concentrate on that programming task. I have to let go of that loving woman, to be a Toastmaster, I let go of her to listen and care about other people stories.

Later in that week, I open Ram Dass’s book, and it helped me. I felt like the Universe was helping me to understand. 

“When you are with a candle flame 

You Are the candle flame

And when 

You are with another Being’s mind

You Are the other Being’s mind

When 

There is a task to do

You Are the task”

Ram Dass, (Free Ram Dass Audio Collection on Sounds True)

So… you lose yourself, parts of you, you let go of yourself all the time.

 I asked my meditation teacher, Eric about it. 

“Eric, you have let go of being a loving husband to be a data analyst. How do you feel about it? How do you explain it?” 

He said, that if you put all of yourself into one thing, for example, a loving husband or a physicist, it can be a very difficult time in your life if you loose it.

It makes sense. If I’m in love, and that’s all I have, then if I lose that love, I won’t be able to continue living. That is so true.

Maybe fearing that, I let go of a loving woman too often, filling my life with too many other things… but that’s another story. 

What I see now is that every time I chose an activity, I choose what part of me is going to experience life. Is it a loving woman, a programmer, or a self observed talker?… it’s my choice.  Wen I say “Yes” to something, I say “No” to something else.

Coming back to meditation. Letting go of yourself isn’t all that foreign after all. Turns out that it’s something, I’m already capable of.  If I can let go of everything to be a computer programmer for 8 hours a day, I can let go of everything to meditate for a couple of minutes a day!

Meditation seems more attainable all of the sudden. 

Questions to Consider

What part of yourself do you want to choose more often?

Is it worth it to let go a loving partner part of yourself to be a passionate social media contributor?

Categories: Meditation, Mindfulness, Self-Study

Tags: Choices, letting go, Meditation, Mindfulness, questions, quote, read, Self-Study