nothing-to-do meditation aka "allow myself to die in this moment" I've been experimenting with this a bit over the last few years, and moreso the last week, and finding it quite potent. idk what the deal is exactly but here are some thoughts
Nothing-to-do meditation: allowing myself to die in this moment
19 tweets · July 2022 · 258 likes · 9 retweets · read on Twitter
this first happened to me spontaneously when I went for a short walk without my phone after a really long & challenging day that had culminated with me sending some important messages I had the sense of "I've done what I need to do, I can rest now. it's in their/god's hands"
the experience of resting & letting go was so profound I started crying & gasping. 🥹😭 it was as if I'd never had *nothing* on my plate before, and suddenly I did, and I was so free.
my experience of that moment resonates a lot with Tilopa's famous 6 words (though I forget when I made that connection)
as far as an intentional meditation instruction goes, well, intention is weird when it comes to letting go, right? that's part of the whole puzzle but weirdly, I've found that the word that points most directly at it for me is "die"—just "I'm going to die now"
this caveat should go without saying, but: the intention I am pointing at is completely unrelated to any act of *killing* "killing" takes an object—even suicide is "I kill myself" "dying" is purely first-person. it's a letting-go.
it occurs to me as I write this that if someone were actually on their deathbed at the end of a long life or a long struggle with illness, then intending to gently die might actually result in their last breath I've heard some such stories about human old-age death timing
but I'm a healthy young adult with plenty of momentum to revive me moments or hours later, and in any case I'm not actually letting go of the intention to keep *breathing* hell, often I'm not letting go of the intention to keep *walking* or *dancing* when I do this die & dance
anyway, some observations: when I do this letting go, this gently dying, often within moments I notice something I'd not noticed, that I want to attend to—maybe just going pee, maybe something more like "oh right, my plan for today was X!"
personally, I'm often inclined to follow those impulses, when I do this kind of thing. they're almost the point—whatever arises after I let go is usually internally generated, rather than reactive (like scrolling twitter or whatever) just remember to die again once complete
my sense is that there's also something valuable about also exploring something like this in more of a traditional meditation container: - have a timer & bell, or a path to walk - until the end of it, when an impulse arises, gently let it go and die again
I've noticed some sort of connection that I'm not yet sure how to articulate, between this and first-person-ness. it seems that what I often want to access in meditation, which this helps with, is coming back to my own subjectivity
and I can readily loose my first-person-ness - thinking about something - trying to do something - recording an insight for future-me - talking to someone, taking their perspective but afaict it's possible to stay in touch with it while doing those things
and as far as I can tell a really important skill is staying profoundly in touch with my own perspective while also taking someone else's this is what interpersonal depth perception is made of
meanwhile I've been realizing that a lot of my design thinking over the past few years has been realigning with this letting go and being in the not-knowing space of "what now?" my thoughts on overhauling browsers / operating systems, & this new feature:
in this convo with @_brentbaum, we talk at one point about how to make that page even more conducive to this kind of utter letting go
last thing I'll say before wrapping this thread for now is that there's definitely a huge connection between gently-die meditation & [Alexander Technique, non-doing, expanding awareness,.] eg this @m_ashcroft vid might be pointing at the exact same move: youtube.com/watch?v=i7TPXx…
@m_ashcroft ooh yeah, see this is totally fucking related
@m_ashcroft I now have a video elaborating on what I talk about in this thread, and talking about a bunch more: