Welcome to our meditation on Aparigraha. Aparigraha is the last of the yamas, and it is the sacred art of letting go, and it is an art. We are all works of art and so it isn't to let go of the self, but it's to let go of something else. It is not to let go of the self, rather it is to let go of the ideas. Of the self. So just take a couple of minutes to find yourself in a comfortable seated position.
Or maybe you're laying down, maybe you are going to clean the house, do some meditation in motion. Wherever you are, find a place where you can center. Center in the body center on your mat center, in your car, in your home, in the work that you do, and the friends that you have. The community with whom you engage, the city in which you live, the city and the state, and the country you live. Find a place where you can center yourself. In all of that and just take some easy breaths.
An attachment that I find many yogis have is an attachment to meditate correctly. And so if you have that expectation of yourself, that attachment, I invite you just to notice it and see how that might change. After our time together, begin to relax your jaw. And then relax it a little more. Notice how when you do that, it gives permission for the rest of the muscles in your face to relax. Now take your awareness to your mouth and relax your lips and your tongue.
Maybe letting the lips part relaxing the muscles in the nose around the eyes, and notice the mind if it's bouncing around. Just notice. Our job is not to get rid of anything about you. That would be silly. Everything about you has constructed this magical human being that you are. So notice the mind and see if you can use your breath to slow the thoughts.
By slowing the inhales and noticing the contrast and temperature of the air that you bring in, that you borrow from the earth and notice the body as it releases and gives back to the earth. Keeping this reciprocity between you and the earth, slow and steady throughout our meditation. And then I invite you to close your eyes if they're not already closed, and take your gaze and rest them on the backs of your eyelids. Notice what you see. Name any color or any texture. Say it to yourself quietly.
Notice any light. Rumi says, pain is where the light gets in. So take your awareness to the light. And rest your gaze on what you see and not what you think. There's nowhere to go and there's nothing to do, but to be here in this moment. Aparigraha is not about rejecting what we love. It is an invitation to understand why we hold on so tightly. It is only through the why, through walking through the, why do we do this that we will find more freedom. There's a story from the Buddhist tradition.
It goes like this. Two monks were traveling when they came upon a river. A woman stood at the edge, unable to cross one of the monks, picked her up, carried her across, and set her down. The monks continued walking in silence. Hours later, the second monk spoke. He said, we are not supposed to touch women. Why did you carry her? The first monk replied, I set her down at the river. Why are you still carrying her? This is the essence of aparigraha. How often do we carry what is no longer here?
We grasp at many things, identities. Beliefs, control, pain, even love joy, success. The Buddha teaches that suffering arises from attachment we suffer not because we love, but because we believe we own love, that we can hold time, that we can grasp certainty. But all things like the breath you just borrowed from the earth and the exhale you gave back, all things must change. Now return back to the jaw. Relax your jaw, take your shoulders away from your ears. Check back in with the breath.
Nice and long. Now bring to mind something to which you hold tightly, whether that be a person, an idea, a version of yourself, a success, the future. Notice a story you hold tightly, and then notice where you feel it arise in your body. Feel the weight of it, the way it clings to you. Making you small or the way you clinging to it, keeping you small. The Buddha once said you only lose what you cling to if you were to release your grip.
Would this thing truly be lost or would it simply become what it was always meant to be? Attachments are not mistakes. They are stories we have written to make sense of pain, to make sense of love, to make sense of survival. They have saved us, but they have also shaped us in ways that most likely on the healing journey begin to lose their utility. But they have also shaped us in ways that through our healing journeys, we no longer need. Our attachments oftentimes no longer serve us.
And that is the wisdom. And it takes a great deal of courage and patience to settle, to surrender, and to release into that freedom. As we heal our attachments shift, some soften and some fall away, and it can feel like loss, like being untethered, stepping into a world we no longer recognize. What would it feel like to trust life in this way? Rumi writes, try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. In Islamic wisdom, there is a teaching.
Tie your camel and trust in Allah. This reminds us that surrender is not passive. We do our part and then we do our part and we continue to do our part. What would it feel like to trust life in this way? To know that nothing is ever truly taken from you only transformed that the things we release make space for new becoming. Imagine just for a moment, looking back at all the steps you have taken in your life. What did you really lose? Did you ever truly lose anything or anyone?
Or did they all evolve into your own becoming moment by moment, notice that all the steps you've ever taken belonged and still belong to you. They belong to your becoming. Imagine if you were truly to let go, there would only be transformation. You cannot truly let go of anything with your hands when you journal or when you burn a letter.
Or when you give your dreams to flight in a balloon or in a bottle thrown into the ocean, you cannot let go of parts of yourself because you have already become The suffering comes from losing the illusion that you still need your attachments or that you needed them at all. And now just begin to deepen the breath. And find some movement in your body. Take a long and hell with me and hold it at the top. And then exhale it out.
Feel how the breath leaves you effortlessly without force, and the next breath comes just as effortlessly. What did you lose in that exchange? The Buddhist teacher, a Jean Cha said if you let go a little, you'll have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace If you let go completely. You will be here still and free as you return to your day. I'll leave you with these questions. What is ready for transformation?
What is one thing that you clinging to that you know is patiently waiting for your permission to transform? You are the knower of this life. You are the knower of this body, which means you are the knower of the sacred art of becoming. Because we really let go of nothing other than the illusion that we are more or less than exactly who we've become. I.