Meditation Training: How I Ended my Story

Whether online or in-person, a garden variety of meditation training, meditation coach trainings, and mindfulness teacher trainings are dotting the professional training & certification landscape.

What you are about to read is how I ended my story. This will not be about how it started or what came in between— this is the finale. And I hope that you will end your story too with me.

My meditation teacher taught us about this practice and he specifically advised it for everyone who was craving a sense of freedom.

We were then instructed to give the exercise the best name, I called it “freedom from instability”, the others called it “freedom from worry” etc. and we were surprised when he told us that we should not call it that.

This marked the start of my ending.

Freedom from Instability

Our instructor told us that whenever we say that we want to be free from something it usually implies “liberty from a thing that causes inconvenience”. He told us we should be wary of how we frame the descriptions, the names we give to things because it can unknowingly affect us. Like how we should not call the exercise “Freedom from something negative” but rather think of the positive goal that we wanted from it. Freedom from the negative should have a vision with a positive end goal. Who would want to end something undesirable just to go into another, right? Instead of looking at what we’re running from we should align our perspective into the goal that we want to reach. Instead of calling it “freedom from negativity”, he wanted us to call it as a meditation training for stability”.

Meditation Training for Stability

After this short lecture, we did a quick social experiment, we were asked to think about that one thing that they truly want at the moment and we were given five minutes to think about our answer. As a group, we were expecting to get specific answers like “money” or otherworldly things but surprisingly the following are our answers:

• Peace of mind

• Security

• More time

• Improved social connection

He said that after years of meditation teaching the answers has remained the same. As we were asked why they gave generalized concepts than specific answers we realized that we’re all having the same idea: The idea that the physical things are just part of the bigger picture of personal stability that we crave for. Our instructor then told us that we will finally start our meditation practice for the day— and we’re all going to have to end our stories. It was simple but really hard because we have to let go of the personal scripts we’ve been telling ourselves and others.

The Ending Process

The practice of letting go is not an easy process but it can be gradually done through the three aspects of our life. The personal, physical, and mental aspects.

• Personal Aspects.

“So what’s your story?”

Take some time to think about how you answer this question. What is the narrative that you tell people about yourself? Have you ever thought of putting that story of yourself to rest?

It must have been tiring to recount yourself as the lonely, sad, and angry old version of yourself. Are you letting those stories define you at the moment? Yes, they are a part of you but you shouldn’t let it limit you to the person that you could become. Your past does not determine your potentials.

You can end your story now. You can stop rekindling that account of the old self and start writing another.

Do you have thoughts like: “I am not enough,” or “I can’t do it because…” What chronicles of your life can you try to let go of? What ideas of inconveniences are you running from?

Instead of seeking from or running from it, think of the goal that you want to achieve. Personal stability is your goal. Do you think you are the same person as your old stories? Can you say that you have had personal progress?

If you answered yes to those two questions, then maybe what you need to achieve freedom is to acknowledge it. Recognize the difference of the old version that you were back then, be proud of your progress no matter how small.

If you answered no to any of the questions, then pat yourself on the back, because you have realized that there is a need for you to let go! Realization is the first step of letting go, you have to be aware that you have to end those stories and thoughts that you have been telling yourself.

After realization, you now have to think of the story that will give you peace and balance.
You now have to start writing a draft of the kind of story that you want to be in.

For our meditation training, we were told to repeat the following: “I have everything I need right now, I am at a good place at this moment“ this was the story that we wanted. A story of personal stability.

• Physical Aspects.

Letting go is not just about our stories. It is also about the physical things that we have in our life. We acquire things and experiences that we believe are essential for our happiness.

We look too much at what we don’t have that we forget to look at what we already have. We have to remind ourselves that we also have to look inwardly or we’ll always be hungry for more and will never be full.

Try to imagine a state of having enough— do you really need to get that stuff, if so how much of it? Do you really have to feel like you have a heavy belly to be satiated?

• Mental Aspects

The things that are keeping our minds busy are our mental and emotional burdens. In this age of information, we get too much of everything that results in an unending list of pending tasks and to-dos. Carley Hauck, an author, and professor at Stanford University once said “Sometimes the best way to have more—time, connection, and freedom—is to commit to less.”.

To be able to allot time for the important things, people, and social connections, we have to let ourselves breathe and take a time-out.

Yes, work is important, but so is rest. Remember that you have to take care of the mental and emotional aspects of your life. So your physical body could take the load.

You can try to stimulate your brain with things other than work on weekends, find something that you could work on creatively, or maybe just cook, rest and find something nice to watch! I use meditation training every weekend to recharge myself.

Do not forget to keep your emotions in check too. DO not neglect yourself of feeling emotions just because you are too busy working. Cry if you need to, it’s healthy and suppressing doesn’t help.

Let go of the mental and emotional burdens. Free yourself from the reins of self-expression!

Seeing the End of my Story

It was a 30-minute session but it seemed longer as we were going over the letting go meditation. But it felt good! I felt braver as I faced the inconveniences that I used to run from. I felt proud as I ended my old stories to start living anew. I ended the old me in those 30 minutes and I took charge of making a new story where I was fully in charge. Have you tried this letting go meditation training? Comment below and let us know what you think! [wce_code id=2] [wce_code id=3]