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Originally posted by sunrise

How to let go? I still have no idea because how can we let go something good as LOVE or HEALTH? What is the emotional attitude behind the ability to let go? I only can imagine that a key to let go is, that we do not really need and care about the values expressed in the sutras??
For instance, cosmic samyama is pretty easy because the body parts or planets are there, I do not need to question or think or understand them.
Very easy is the samyama technique to dissolve obstructions: To think "war" or "famine" and let go is easy. Healing samyama is also very easy, to think the name of s.o. and let the name go, returning to inner silence.
But regular samyama is difficult as hell. E.g. the first sutra LOVE. How can we pick that up faintly? How can we let it go easily? What are the necessary conditions to have the ability of picking up and letting go easily? I'm fuzzing with samyama since years, having achieved 0% personal or spiritual growth, because I simply found myself unable to figure out how to do that process easily, faintly.
When I try to pick up any sutra faintly, this "faintly attitude" has remarkable impact on my daily life, making me weak and powerless to an unhealthy extend: I need to put all my power together just to get up from bed, master the day and its challenges. Thus I tried to focus intensely on the sutras and think them with clearly strong intended will power. This gave me a long lasting feeling of strength and decisiveness! But the faint approach is too difficult for me to understand
Dear friends, anybody who can give me some help, very appreciated, thanks!

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Originally posted by Shanti

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Originally posted by Emil

Hi Shanti,
I understand your point. However so far I haven't managed to find out how I can let go. As you know there is not "let go" switch. How do you let go of the Sutra and/or its outcomes when deep down you're really interested in them? and how can you tell in Samyama if you have managed to let go?

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Hi Emil,
You have it right, there is no switch that can be flipped to say"let go"... letting go will happen.

The example I give people is, when you want to fall asleep, you get into bed, turn off the light, lay down, at times you may even have a cup of chamomile tea, or take a shower or read a book or watch some TV.. these are all steps we take to relax and get into bed and then... falling asleep happens... "we" cannot fall asleep, we can do all the preparations to make sure we fall asleep, but falling asleep just happens.

Like that, letting go will just happen, we can only do various practices to get us to a point where letting go will happen, but just like we cannot make the mind help us fall asleep.. in fact when the mind is involved, we may not fall asleep, like that we cannot make the mind help us let go, while the mind is involved, the letting go will not happen.

The practice that AYP offers to help us cultivate the ground on which letting go will happen is meditation and samyama. At first samyama is a very mechanical process... like training a baby to sleep through the night, give them a warm bath, sing them a lullaby, turn off the light... sooner or later the body learns that it's night now and I should sleep... and the baby falls asleep (if the parents are so blessed)... like that at first we do the mechanical process of picking the sutra and holding it for 15 seconds and dropping it... how do we drop? We just stop thinking the word (in the beginning when we don't know how to drop i.e.). Every session, we just follow the procedure given in the lesson http://www.aypsite.org/150.html

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Now we are ready to begin samyama practice. Here is how we do it.

With samyama, we are initiating meaning in silence. We do it in a simple, easy, systematic way. First we create an impulse of meaning in silence, and then we let it go in silence.

Let's begin with "Love." It is a good place to start with samyama. In samyama it is suggested you use your most intimate language, the language that goes deepest in your heart, whatever it may be.

In your easy silence, pick up, just once, the fuzziest feeling of the word "Love" in your own language. Don't deliberately make a clear pronunciation, or mental images of this or that scene or situation that represent Love to you. Just have a faint remembrance of Love, and then let go into your silence, the easy silence you are in as you pick up the faint meaning of Love. Don't contemplate Love or analyze it during samyama. Don't think about it at all. Just come to it once in a faint, subtle way, and then let go into silence. It is a subtle feeling of Love we are coming to, nothing more, and letting it go. Like that.

Having thought "Love" once, be in silence for about fifteen seconds. If any thoughts come, let them go easily. Don't look at the clock. With a little practice your inner clock will tell you with good enough accuracy when fifteen seconds is up. Just be easy in silence for about a quarter of a minute. Then pick up the faint, fuzzy meaning of "Love" again, and let it go again into your silence for about fifteen seconds again.

That is two repetitions of samyama – twice picking up Love at its subtlest level of thought, and twice letting it go into inner silence.

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We do this without trying to control the outcome, without trying to judge the feelings arising, without holding on to any meaning or feeling. It's not hard to do once we decide the bigger rewards are there when this body/mind lets go. Right now I follow the procedure no matter how boring, before we know it, the letting go and the wonders of samyama manifest. We continue letting go and samyama becomes every step of our life.

Hope some of this helps Emil. I am just trying to share what helped me... I was looking for this and that for a long time... this and that started showing up when I stop looking for them.

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Originally posted by sunrise

Unfortunately my repeated experience is different: what we let go disappears and doesn't come back. When thinking "Love", there might be a simultaneous feeling of happiness and love. The less fuzzy thought, the more presence of happiness / love.
When letting go of it, all of it - thought and emotions - disappears in silence, and nothing comes back. So far still acceptable, but after meditation and 'samyama' - thinking and letting go of love - my heart feels cold and kind of anesthetized, very difficult to have empathy for anybody. It takes conscious efforts and about 30 - 60 minutes to be a warm-hearted human being again. I somehow can't believe that this should be rightful yoga.

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Originally posted by sunrise

But when trying to do samyama, inner silence is like a huge erasor, wiping out all thoughts, intentions and emotions surrendered to it, leaving me poorer and colder inside than I was before doing samyama

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Originally posted by sunrise

Do you suggest to have the concept of ishta when doing samyama? But that means to involve lots of believings as additional prerequisite to do fruitful samyama?

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Originally posted by Artisan

Thought I would join this interesting discussion. The thing I do not understand about the idea of releasing the feeling about a sutra is that what happens if you have no experience of the sutra you are using. For instance say I am using "Abundance" as a sutra but have never experienced abundance. I do not know what it feels like and my feelings or thoughts about it may not accurately relate to what it is, so is it enough just to relate to something as I currently comprehend it or what I think that it might be? Love is a great example as it is something I may not have experienced so what feeling do I release?

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Originally posted by mathurs

Hi Sunrise and Artisan,
There is some good discussion on samyama here:
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic....TOPIC_ID=854

Artisan, You don't need to have experienced / or not experienced it. Just pick up the word "abundance" at a fuzzy level and remain in silence. That is it.

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