Release meditation is the meditation of letting
go - letting go of thoughts, and of emotional and physical tensions.
One
simply drops one's thoughts, one at a time; not by pushing them away, for you can only push a thought away with another thought, but rather by letting them go. The thoughts
dissipate and disappear, like smoke released into the blue sky. It is to
go in the exact opposite direction, perhaps, to what you had become used
to.
But paradoxically (release reveals one paradoxical discovery
after another) when you meditate in this way you may find that thoughts
come visiting all the same, but now they're moving 'on their own', and
they carry a new quality of conviction evoked by their peacefulness and
clarity. You have a
feeling that reminds you, perhaps, of your early childhood.
You
were like a body of water that was gradually becoming stagnant, for
the streams that run into and out of you had become encumbered and
dammed. The logs and rocks that were damming the streams were not held
in place by an outside force or influence over which you have no control
: they were being held in place by your own inner tension, and maybe by
a lack of deep trust in yourself, or in life, or both, that prevented you from
letting go.
But when the tension is released, the logs and rocks
begin to dislodge, and the current begins to flow more
strongly again.
An energy born of peacefulness, released from
the center of my being, or is it from somewhere outside of me, spreads
to my limbs, untangling like a deft wave the physical knots of worry,
anxiety and mistrust.
In the longer term the value moves outward
in other directions of my life, if only because I begin to feel more and
more renewed and rejuvinated, and the feeling gradually becomes more
enduring and constant.
Do you remember when you were little? If
you were like me, you hated to be put to bed at night, and you thrilled
to return to the world so early in the morning, at dawn, long before
your parents had grudgingly aroused themselves.
One does not
have to become tired of life, and there is no sound reason to
believe that the seeing of life through weary eyes is more lucid,
realistic or objective than through the eyes of passion
or wonder.
Truth lies in following the emotions of release where
they want to take you, to their destination and origin, and the colours and scents
of the earth become so vivid that you feel you can almost reach out and touch them.