Letting Go of Useless Baggage Part 1 – Kriya Yoga Satsang – Asheville, NC
When you meditate, you can learn to pull back and be aware of what you are to the exclusion of all else. This whole idea of waking up is about being able to hold your attention on a point, knowing what God is, and then learning to hold your attention on that.
For the most part, we all have a lot of useless baggage. Baggage is whatever keeps us from holding our attention on God, such as regrets and memories of wrongdoing or suffering. Awareness of painful experiences should diminish over time unless we actively hold on to the memories of past suffering. Why do we hang on to past pain despite the non-usefulness of doing so? We hold on to painful memories because they’re part of the story we tell ourselves about who we think we are. Our stories reinforce our small sense of self.
Tell yourself another story. Reinvent yourself. Reinventing yourself seems hard, but it’s really easy. You just need to decide to be something else and develop new habits. Your nervous system will support whatever state of consciousness you continuously embody.
There are two techniques that can help dissolve your attachment to painful memories:
First, you can do a life review.
Step 1: Think about the last thing you did. Perhaps it was sitting to meditate.
Step 2: Rewind and think about what you did before that. Pay attention to your breath as you rewind. It will help dissolve your attachment to those memories.
Step 3: Continue in this way until you no longer remember anything. What is before the stuff you can’t remember? What were you before?
Step 4: Hold your attention on the clarity that is revealed. This is the therapeutic aspect of the practice.
A life review can be a useful way to extend your meditation sessions as well as calm the mind and emotions before sleep.
Second, pay attention to negative emotional states and negative thoughts. Ask yourself, “Are these thoughts and feelings helpful and healing and allowing me to feel peaceful and calm, or are they upsetting and distracting?” Renounce those thoughts, feelings, and states of consciousness that are unwanted, and choose what you do want to experience.
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