Three Depths of Release in Meditation

The practice of meditation leads us through a succession of releases that ultimately bring us into direct contact with an unfiltered awareness of reality exactly as it is.

The truth that is revealed through the release of meditation is so radically different to our normal understanding that it is impossible to fully convey in words. But if you engage with the practice in one of its true forms and follow it through three layers of release you will encounter the miraculous.

Release into the Instructions
The first release is so simple that it is often overlooked, and that’s why so few of the many people who try meditation ever experience extraordinary results. The first release can be stated most simply as: actually do the practice.

That means following the instructions exactly as they are given, without needing any confirmation that they are working.

If the instructions ask you to count your breath, label your thoughts, or, as in the meditation I teach, not make a problem out of anything that happens, you just do that. Period. Full stop.

It took me more than a decade of committed spiritual practice before I finally, unconditionally, just followed the instruction to let everything be as it is.

My book The Miracle of Meditation, contains this journal entry from the ninth day of the 60 day retreat that changed my life,

“Never allow yourself to be tempted away from giving all of your attention and all of your energy to letting everything be as it is.”

What I discovered through this first release was that the only thing I could truly do was follow the simple instructions. That meant abandoning all of my attempts to understand them, to figure out how they work, or to evaluate whether or not I was making progress.

The whole point is simply to follow the instructions and not do anything else.

Release of Control
The first release in meditation occurs when we surrender to actually following the instructions unconditionally. This marks a pivotal turning point in practice because we give up trying to influence, manipulate, or control what happens as a result. In that moment, a deeper release of control begins to unfold.

If we continue to follow the instructions with sincerity, we start to sink into a subtler dimension of reality. Eventually, we discover that even the effort to follow the instructions is unnecessary.

On the fifth day of my retreat, I sensed this shift approaching. I wrote,

“Today I experimented with the possibility of doing the practice while even letting go of the effort I was making to do the practice… To let everything be as it is, all you have to do is renounce the temptation not to let everything be as it is.”

On the nineteenth day of the retreat I confidently declared,

“Letting everything be as it is couldn’t possibly require any effort.”

What I discovered in this second release was that meditation is not something we do.

Everything already is the way it is. There is no way for anything to be other than it is. Meditation, in its truest sense, is simply being. When this is seen, all effort can fall away, and we rest naturally in what has always been so.

Release of Identity
On the twenty-second day of the retreat I wrote,

“I have lost all desire to make any distinctions whatsoever between any parts of my experience.”

Later that same day I added,

“Meditation is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself. Letting everything be as it is, is the end.”

What I was experiencing then was the utter delight and absolute fulfillment of being. There was nothing I wanted except to sit and be. The entire universe was opening up to me each day, and I simply sat in stillness and did nothing.

This depth of release initiated a mystical turn that set off an unending cascade of experiences and insights. Day after day I found myself in miraculous encounters with deeper and subtler dimensions of reality. On the fifty-fifth day of the retreat I wrote,

“I am completely overwhelmed by everything that is happening. My mind is being totally obliterated. It keeps racing to try and create theories that will explain what it experiences in some linear fashion so that it can locate itself, but I have no idea what is happening or where I stand in it at all. My personal sense of self is being totally overwhelmed.”

What I discovered through this release of identity was absolute and radical trust. Meditation, I realized, is an act of perfect trust. On the fifty-ninth day I described this depth of trust in my journal:

“The entire hour passed in unbroken trust—even if I became lost in thought, even if I found myself making effort to do something. Trust in myself, trust in life. But the best way to describe it was simply trust—absolute, unbroken trust—the willingness to be unguarded, undefended, and open.”

I have a journal filled with descriptions of the extraordinary experiences that occurred during this retreat, but I would gladly trade them all for that one hour of unbroken trust, one hour of being in perfect, loving relationship with life.

The discovery—or perhaps the recovery—of perfect trust is the true miracle of meditation.