Let Everything Within You Reveal Itself to You

Since the nature of our entire being is to awaken, when we allow everything to be as it is in a deep way, what often happens is that repressed material within our psyche emerges. In fact, a lot of spiritual students unconsciously use their meditation techniques to keep repressed material repressed. They may not know that they are doing this, but this is what is happening. When we let go and really open and allow things to be as they are, it's not uncommon for certain repressed material to come up, which can be quite shocking. All of a sudden, you may have a fit of anger in your meditation or a fit of sadness. You may find yourself weeping. You may find various memories will come through your consciousness and reveal themselves. You might have physical pains; people report that various parts of their bodies become painful when they allow everything to be as it is. When we really start to let go, what needs to rise to the surface rises to the surface. The mind may not want this material to arise; as I said, many spiritual people unknowingly use their spiritual discipline to suppress their unconscious. When we stop suppressing, our unconscious starts to come up and reveal itself.

What do we do with this unconscious material that rises to the surface? Nothing. We simply allow it to reveal itself. It does not need to be analyzed. What arises is, for the most part, unresolved conflict within us: emotions we've never allowed ourselves to feel fully, experiences we've never allowed ourselves to experience fully, pains we've never allowed ourselves to feel fully. All of this arises. This unresolved material within us yearns to be experienced fully, without being relegated to unconsciousness. So when our repressed material arises, we need to allow it to arise without suppressing it. Without analyzing, we allow these feelings to be experienced in the body, in our being, and to unfold as they will. What you'll find if you do this is that whatever kind of pain it is—whether it's emotional, psychic, physical, spiritual, or otherwise—this repressed material will arise, reveal itself, be experienced, and then pass away. If it doesn't pass away, you will know that somewhere there is resistance, or denial, or indulgence—which is a good thing to recognize, because it gives you the opportunity to let go of it once again.

Now, just because we allow everything to be as it is doesn't mean that our meditation is necessarily going to stay totally peaceful and silent. The point here is awakening, right? The point is not to learn how to suppress yourself so that you feel better. It's how to wake up to the reality of your being, and we wake up to the reality of our being by relating with our human nature, not by avoiding it.

Not by going around it. Not by trying to pray it away or mantra it away or meditate it away. We wake up by letting everything within ourselves reveal itself, be felt, be experienced, be known. Then and only then can we move on to a deeper level. This is very, very important and it's something a lot of people don't understand. It's easy to use meditative techniques to suppress our human experiences, to suppress things that we don't want to feel. But what is called for is just the opposite. True Meditation is the space in which everything gets revealed, everything gets seen, everything gets experienced. And as such, it lets go of itself. We don't even let go. It lets go of itself.