Seven Gems from Louise Kay
Last week we had our first Sat Gong. This is a session where we listen in to (meditate with) a spiritual teacher for some minutes and then have a gong bath.
The meditation we used was from a teacher named Louise Kay. Here is the meditation we used before the gong bath.
What I love about this meditation is that not only is it immediately actionable, but it has many phrases that you can come back to again and again when you need it most.
Here are 7 ideas I find very useful.
1. Let go of all ideas of what it means to meditate.
This is very important. What they call in Zen a beginner’s mind. Every time you meditate, and you can meditate wherever and whenever, a fresh and open approach leaves you free to just be there, in the present moment without all the shoulds and coulds and woulds that the mind creates endlessly, if we buy into it. By accepting the idea that we don’t actually know what meditation is, every meditation becomes a discovery of newness.
2. Let go of any goals of meditation.
In our society, we are taught to be goal – oriented. The problem with this, when it comes to discovering who you are in the now, is that all goals are based on memory. You heard about some outcome (in the past) and you want to achieve that outcome (in the future.) It totally ignores the present moment, which is where all the magic happens!
3. Be here without labeling or mentally interpreting experiences.
All experiences have one thing in common. That is: All experiences go away as surely as they come here.
Nothing lasts.
Everything flows. But then we label the experience and the flow becomes mental hypnosis.
A label is like the beginning of a hypnosis. When you label something, anything, it is like a Google search in your mind. Instantly there are 1.6 billion connections with the label. Then you choose an interpretation, association, with that label and your gone….down the rabbit hole of inscesent thought. The way out of this exhausting scroll down the news feed of your mind, is to not do it in first place. Refuse the label!
4. Focus on being aware of thoughts; not in the thoughts themselves.
But what happens when you do label?
You will label.
It is the mind’s nature to label. To create distinctions. There is nothing wrong in this, by itself. The problem is when we believe the labels we create. We believe the thoughts. We identify with them. We judge ourselves and others because of them, and worse, we forget the present moment.
The thought about experience becomes more prominent to us than the experience itself.
So what to do?
Simply be aware that you are thinking.
As soon as you are aware that thought is going on, in that second, you are not identified as the thinker.
As soon as you are aware that you are aware of thought, you are in the present moment.
5. In discomfort, stay there, move closer to it, say yes to it.
What keeps us stuck in a life of suffering?
2 things.
- Our preferences.
- Our habits of inattention.
Above we talked about inattention, here I want to talk a little about preferences.
Why do our preferences create an obstacle to true happiness? How can that even be? I know, this may sound like crazy talk. Think for a moment about all the quotes about manifestation and living the good life. Going on holiday, posting it on Instagram, getting in shape, having the best food, the best body, the best sex, the best outlook, the best anything.
Those are the dramatic examples, but preferences rule our lives, mostly. Where we sit on the bus, the music we listen ot, the food we eat, when we eat it, the people we engage, all are governed by preferences.
So how can that be bad?
None of it is bad, or wrong….except when we insist of getting our way.
We fight with reality. We stress to keep control of the uncontrollable.
This is what is called suffering.
When it is raining, you can run, you can walk, but one thing is for sure, and that is you are gonna get wet!
A funny thing happens the moment we start to let go of our preferences and accept things as they are.
We begin to see who we actually are in clarity….when we surrender the need to control everything, we begin to get quiet inside and alert outside in a different way, and when we get inwardly quiet and alert, it is easy to surrender!
Until we surrender our preferences, we can’t see life as it actually is. There is a bias inherent in the human mind that sees life as it relates to desires and fears.
What happens when desires and fears stop ruling our attention?
We begin to see life as it is…beyond labels, beyond filters, beyond likes and dislikes. This is called freedom. It is called fearlessness. It is called true LOVE.
I speak from experience.
Almost every profound moment of my life has happened when life rained on me pretty heavy.
In those moments, I simply had to surrender to the overwhelming forces of life both ‘external’ and ‘internal.’
For me, it wasn’t a choice. I was defeated, but in my defeat, I discovered that I didn’t need to win to be happy, to be who I was and not who I thought I should be.
You don’t need to be a blockhead like me. You can face smaller, daily, discomforts and wake up in the mundane, rather than the ultra-dramatic/traumatic as I did.
The thing is, if you don’t move into discomfort, life will do it for you.
Either you willingly submit to the sensations of the moment, or the sensations will get stronger; your experiences more destructive. We see it all the time in life. Our running away is creating a crisis on the planet. Just think about how nature came back strong, when we were quarantined in the Corona time. This is a metaphor. We stopped running away, and life came back!
It’s simple. If you are in pain or discomfort, be it physical or emotional or mental, don’t run away. Stay where you are and be with it, without labeling it as good or bad.
Just stay there and see what happens.
6. In experience, there will always be one problem or another.
In experience, there will always be one problem or another; something that can be improved on, something that can be healed, something that can be integrated, something that can be released.
To escape the cycle of suffering we have to free ourselves from that constant need to do something, to change something
It ‘s not by changing your experiences that we discover peace.
It’s by allowing experiences to be as they are and in that allowing we open to peace that’s already here. it’s giving up the addiction to doing, changing, fixing and trying to get somewhere.
When I heard Louise say that the first time, it really did it for me.
It was a huge AHA moment. I had been trying to create a perfect moment, without even realizing it. The idea that it will never happen never had occurred to me until that moment.
As a result of that understanding, I could just relax with things as they are. Huge difference.
7. I am that which is aware, not that which I am aware of.
Totally and completely allow all experience without making any of it personal so you the concept that’s doing something dissolves.
With the dissolution of the conceptual self, there is a discovery that you don’t actually disappear.
In this way, you realize: i’m still here but i am not who i thought i was as an idea. I am that which is aware.