Like the Morning Mist

Monitoring Your Motivation: Link it to Love & Let it Go

You are going to do a variation of Insight Meditation also called Vipassana. In this meditation you simply learn to watch your stresses and desires as they float in and out of your awareness. You monitor your motivation by watching your desires, fears, angers, and so forth as they arise and pass away like the evanescent morning mist.

Set aside at least twenty minutes to meditate. Sit or lie down and make yourself comfortable. If you already meditate and have a mudra (hand position) that you use, then use it. Otherwise simply place your palms in your lap with your left hand cupping your right hand and your thumbs just barely touching.

Soften your belly and do what I like to call belly breathing. Breathing in, feel you belly rise. Breathing out, feel your belly fall. Now bring your attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air as you inhale through your nose. Notice the coolness of the air passing over your sensitive nasal membranes. Think the word c-o-o-l as you breathe in. As you exhale, think of how the air has warmed up in your body, and silently say c-a-l-m.

Send a wave of warmth and heaviness down through your body from your neck, down through your shoulders, chest, abdomen, pelvic region and on down through your legs and out the soles of your feet.

dentify your stress, anger, fear, sadness, and depression. Using a quieter and calmer version of the shift your focus and energy technique, you identify your negative emotions. You then link it to love and let it go. For example, you might say: “Ah, there’s my anger over being misunderstood. It tells me that I hate being misunderstood. And that’s because I’d love to be understood.”

Recenter your awareness on your breath. Thinking c-o-o-l as you breathe in and c-a-l-m as you breath out. If you prefer, after silently saying c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m a few times to start the meditation, you may choose to simply focus on the sensation of the air coming in and going out of your nostrils.

Then when another emotion arises, you identify it and do the same as before. You link it back to love and let it go. This is your main operating principle in this meditation. You just keep linking the negative emotion to love and let it go. If it comes up again, you do it again.

You use the word my before the emotions and issues to own them psychologically as a truth about your personal emotional history. But you use my in a relaxed non-grasping way in order to achieve a neutral position with regard to your emotions, desires and issues.

If you are able to stay with the mantra of c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m with no intruding negative emotions, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. Each time a sensation, emotion, thought, memory, concern or issue arises in awareness, you silently say to yourself something like: “Ah, there’s my_____. It’s telling me I hate or don’t like it when_____. And that’s because I’d love it if_____.” Then return to c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m.

You may go straight from the negative to the positive and skip using the word hate. For example, you may remember an incident or anticipate something coming up. “Ah, there’s my desire for approval telling me I’d love it if everyone always liked me.” Or, “Ah, there’s my fear that I might forget to go to the store telling me I’d love to remember to go to the store today.” As another emotion or issue comes up, you once again link it to love and let it go.

• Today, apply the principle of monitoring your motivation and unhooking your heart throughout the day. Eventually, you’ll learn how to be free on a moment-to-moment basis.