Giving up, in a good way.

Today’s Deepak/Oprah meditation from “The Energy of Attraction” included the sentences:

When I go into my true self, then the energy of attraction meets no resistance.  All the complaints, demands, and criticisms that create problems at the level of the ego are erased.

For reasons unknown, when I heard the words “are erased,” my eyes began to well.

The relief, I suppose, of imagining that all the “complaints, demands, and criticisms” becoming absolved, removed, unburdened from my consciousness…  Imagine the LIGHTNESS if we/I weren’t laden with those “ego thoughts”?!

It’s punctuating to notice that the experience of imagining freedom brings such relief—just the imagining of it!  To be hamstrung by anything in this world, and then look down and realize, Hey, it’s gone!

Or, it could be.

Sometimes in meditation, like the other morning, I imagine placing all my thoughts about a topic or person into a cardboard box.  Then I place that box in G-d’s hand.

G-d gets to hang onto that problem or person for a while, and when I’m done meditating, I have the option to come pick that box up… or not.

It’s a relief to know that I can set down my carrying of all my thoughts about them, if only for a brief moment, and not feel concerned with clinging onto my plans for them.  However, for me, one benefit of this idea is that I can come back to them.  I can pick it back up, this security-blanket sack of concern and habit and burden.

Clearly, this is not the benevolent security blanket a person may say they want, but when you’ve been carrying it around for so long, just giving myself a few minutes without it is a big enough deal.

And then, coming to this idea of Erasure — that these concerns or demands or criticisms don’t even have to exist.  That it’s not about putting them down, or picking them up, or peeking inside the box to make sure all my worries are still tucked in tight.  Rather, to imagine them GONE.

That, is different.  That is a release of this security blanket at all.

Having experienced a moment this morning of imagining a relief, an ERASE, of my concerns/demands/criticisms, I do wonder if I can allow that spaciousness and levity to breathe

for

more

than

one

moment.