June 27, 2025 • 20 mins
We hold on to so many things in our life. Childhood trauma, embarassments, failures, disappointments all take up so much space that we leave little room for the successes, gratitude, hope, possibility. This meditation hopes to help the meditator remember that life is a process of letting go. One breath at a time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings, fellow meditators. Welcome to mindful meditation with calm the
bleep down. I am your guide Michael Beckameier, and today
we are going to let go of all the baggage.
Let's get started. As always, we have a mindfulness quote
(00:26):
to help us head into our meditation with some intent
and purpose. And today our quote comes from Ajon Shah
and it reads, if you let go a little, you
will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot,
you will have a lot of happiness. If you let
go completely, you will be free. Sometimes we read a
(00:50):
quote and they don't really need any explanation. That seems
obvious to me what that is talking about. But the
process of letting go is complicated. It's hard for us. Well,
we make it hard. We make it hard to let
go because we don't want to let go. So much
of letting go is tied up in our ego and
(01:11):
tied up in our imaginary version of what things are
and what things actually mean, and who we are and
who we want to be and what we want and
all of those things, all of our disappointments and all
of that going all the way back into our childhood,
(01:32):
things that happened to us when we were little and
young that upset us or scared us, or scarred us,
traumatized us, all of those things. We hold on to
those things for so long that we get to a
point where we're just we're defined by those things. Without
(01:55):
those things, who am I? Right? And then something happens
and you're in, you know, a defining thing happens and
it gets pulled up from under you, and that thing
isn't true for some reason anymore, for whatever reason, good things,
(02:15):
good reason, bad reason. And then suddenly you're you don't
know who you are, so you're trying to maybe cling
on to that thing that's not even true anymore, because
at one point in time it was the thing that
defined you. These are complicated issues that probably most of
(02:38):
the time you need meditation and therapy. But in terms
of meditation, it has really helped me let go of
some of the things that were stressing me out, some
things that were fictions that I had created in my
mind about how long things were taking for me to
(02:58):
get where I wanted to go. I had this like
giant ticking clock, and still do I deal with it
every day, This giant ticking clock in my head saying
that's one more minute where the thing didn't happen. How
much longer are you gonna wait? How much longer are
you gonna be patient with the fact that it's not
there yet? And the thing is, you just try to
(03:19):
manhandle things and control things and force things into submission
so that you can have your way all because you
have this notion in your mind of the way things
should be. It's it's a it's a slippery slope. It's
a complicated thing. Because if you listen to that, and
you and you and you hear it wrong, it almost
(03:40):
sounds like I'm suggesting we shouldn't have goals or dreams,
or we shouldn't let memories of our past be learning
process for us. And it could also sound like, hey,
something horrible that happened to you in your life is
just let go of it. Just you know, it doesn't
matter that was yesterday is today. I don't mean that,
(04:01):
I don't mean to sound dismissive of any of those things.
But what I am saying is, if we're for me,
if I'm having a problem, I can almost always link
it back to something that I am holding onto or
(04:22):
something that happened to me that I won't let go of,
and it's causing suffering. You can have a goal without letting,
without letting the fact that you haven't achieved that goal
yet make you miserable. You can be happy today even
(04:48):
though you were sad yesterday, twenty five, thirty forty years old.
Something that happened to you when you were fifteen, twelve, ten,
whatever it really happened, it's real. I'm not saying you
should just act like it never happened, because that's a
(05:10):
whole other problem. That's not letting go. That's denial. But
we have to be that we are the ones that
have to work through that so that we can live
a life that we feel comfortable with and happy with,
instead of letting things that happen to us, however many
(05:32):
years ago, destroy us over and over and over again,
every single day and again. A lot of those issues
require therapy and all that stuff. And I'm not saying
don't do that. I'm saying do that. But meditation for
(05:53):
me has always helped me purify how I'm feeling about
a thing I can get some distance from it, remind
myself that I just if I give myself a little
bit of space, I won't feel so awful about a thing,
or maybe I won't feel so stressed about a thing.
I won't feel so pulled off course by the thing.
(06:15):
It's funny that the thing you're trying to do is
so distracting that you haven't gotten there yet that it
actually pulls you off course of productivity because you're worried
about it. So you know, you start to like almost panic,
like a like a fly stuck in a jar, bouncing
all over it trying to get out. It's like it's
killing itself just by doing that instead of just trying
(06:38):
to solve the problem. Meditation has really helped just center me,
put me back on the ground so I can then
take one step forward from there instead of being five
(06:58):
minutes ago or a year ago, or this person did
something to me that really set me off course ten
years ago, and I still haven't gotten back on course
from that. If that just hadn't happened, i'd be completely
different place right now. But I'm not. And a lot
of it is from ego not letting go of that thing,
and now I've got a chip on my shoulder, or
(07:22):
I rush something that I think should be happening now,
but isn't so I do something before it's ready to
be done and then it falls apart because I rushed.
It's all all related to not letting go. It's that
very weird feeling when you're in a car and they
(07:45):
tell you hit your brakes and you start to hide
your plane. It's that counter productive, seemingly counterproductive act of
taking your foot off the brake to slow your car
down from losing control when you start to skid. Take
your foot off the break. It's scary to do that,
(08:09):
but we have to do it to regain control of
the car aka also your life. So this is what
we're going to meditate on today. And to do that, first,
you need to get yourself comfortable. You can either sit
down or lie down as always close your eyes, start
(08:33):
to lengthen your breath in and out. You want to
imagine yourself getting heavier and heavier, sinking deeper into relaxation
as you breathe in and out and let each exhale
(08:56):
take you lower and lower into relaxation, heavyer, and happier.
(09:20):
Even in a meditation analogy of letting go, when we're
meditating and our minds starts to wander, our thoughts begin
to buzz. We have to learn to observe them and
(09:41):
let them go and return to the meditation to actually
have a successful meditation. To practice mindfulness, we need to
practice letting go of our thoughts and returning to the
meditation so that we can proceed so in a way.
(10:05):
That is how for me, practicing meditation is a sign
or a practice of letting go as a process of
returning to the present moment, continuing to lengthen and deepen
(10:29):
your breath, scanning your body in and out, letting each
breath come in and out, and with each new exhale,
relaxing deeper into this present moment, feeling yourself sinking deeper,
breathing in and out, paying attention to the sensations in
(11:04):
your body, the breath coming in and out. How it
feels to be here and now, right here and right now,
(11:25):
and this perfect, never ending but still somehow fleeting present moment,
observing our breath, observing our body, And inevitably you will
(11:57):
notice that your mind has wondered at some point, and
it will because it does. Just observe that final thought,
let it go and return back to your breath. It
(12:18):
is just that simple however complicated it may be, it
is very simple. You just return to your breath over
and over again, breathing in and out. Continue the practice
(12:53):
on your own for a few moments.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
We'll be back when it's time to end.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Us u.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Okade. It's time to return to the meditation. Take another
few moments here to let your breath, the silence, and
the stillness settle in. Tune in for one more moment
here to the present moment, and fuel this serenity of
(16:18):
now that you have created. Meditation is helpful because we
(16:44):
learn to observe. We learn to witness and watch and
absorb something. So as you go through your day, look
around and think to yourself, am I doing this because
I want to? Or am I doing this because it's
something related to something I haven't let go of? What
(17:05):
am I holding onto that's causing me to respond this way?
Just observe, Just watch yourself, Just see what happens. We
all have things that we're still holding onto. It's a
daily struggle, it's a life long struggle. But it is
a practice of letting go. It's a practice of life.
(17:27):
Life is letting go over and over and over again.
And I think meditation is a perfect way to practice that,
because it's like training ourselves specifically to not get frustrated
or annoyed with the thoughts that are bouncing around in
our brain constantly that we suddenly begin to notice because
(17:50):
now we're trying to be quiet. Most of the time,
we go through our day and there's so much noise
happening on the outside that we don't see or hear
all the time. Thousands, millions, hundreds of thousands of thoughts
that we have on a regular basis, sixty to ninety
thousand thoughts every day. We don't hear a lot of
(18:11):
them because we're busy in the chaos of life. But
once we sit down and meditate and we're trying to
be still, suddenly we hear all the thoughts and they're
like WHOA meditation is the practice of letting go of
(18:32):
those so that we can continue to feel here and now,
right here and now, And it's just a practice. So
maybe spend the next day or two or the rest
of your life looking for things that you have yet
to let go of and just observe how they are
(18:55):
affecting your day to day life. How are they affecting
your happiness, your joy. Are they holding you back or
are they helping you? So with that, when you're ready,
you can open your eyes and go about your day.
Be well and have fun, one breath at a time.
(19:20):
We'll see you, sir. That's it for this time on
calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation, please
feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again, I'm Michael Beckamaia reminding you to please calm
(19:43):
the bleep down. We'll see you again soon. Thank you
for meditating with us. Be well, have fun, and no
mistake
Speaker 3 (20:00):
A hunter out took the opin de aged tossing
Greetings, fellow meditators. Welcome to mindful meditation with calm the
bleep down. I am your guide Michael Beckameier, and today
we are going to let go of all the baggage.
Let's get started. As always, we have a mindfulness quote
(00:26):
to help us head into our meditation with some intent
and purpose. And today our quote comes from Ajon Shah
and it reads, if you let go a little, you
will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot,
you will have a lot of happiness. If you let
go completely, you will be free. Sometimes we read a
(00:50):
quote and they don't really need any explanation. That seems
obvious to me what that is talking about. But the
process of letting go is complicated. It's hard for us. Well,
we make it hard. We make it hard to let
go because we don't want to let go. So much
of letting go is tied up in our ego and
(01:11):
tied up in our imaginary version of what things are
and what things actually mean, and who we are and
who we want to be and what we want and
all of those things, all of our disappointments and all
of that going all the way back into our childhood,
(01:32):
things that happened to us when we were little and
young that upset us or scared us, or scarred us,
traumatized us, all of those things. We hold on to
those things for so long that we get to a
point where we're just we're defined by those things. Without
(01:55):
those things, who am I? Right? And then something happens
and you're in, you know, a defining thing happens and
it gets pulled up from under you, and that thing
isn't true for some reason anymore, for whatever reason, good things,
(02:15):
good reason, bad reason. And then suddenly you're you don't
know who you are, so you're trying to maybe cling
on to that thing that's not even true anymore, because
at one point in time it was the thing that
defined you. These are complicated issues that probably most of
(02:38):
the time you need meditation and therapy. But in terms
of meditation, it has really helped me let go of
some of the things that were stressing me out, some
things that were fictions that I had created in my
mind about how long things were taking for me to
(02:58):
get where I wanted to go. I had this like
giant ticking clock, and still do I deal with it
every day, This giant ticking clock in my head saying
that's one more minute where the thing didn't happen. How
much longer are you gonna wait? How much longer are
you gonna be patient with the fact that it's not
there yet? And the thing is, you just try to
(03:19):
manhandle things and control things and force things into submission
so that you can have your way all because you
have this notion in your mind of the way things
should be. It's it's a it's a slippery slope. It's
a complicated thing. Because if you listen to that, and
you and you and you hear it wrong, it almost
(03:40):
sounds like I'm suggesting we shouldn't have goals or dreams,
or we shouldn't let memories of our past be learning
process for us. And it could also sound like, hey,
something horrible that happened to you in your life is
just let go of it. Just you know, it doesn't
matter that was yesterday is today. I don't mean that,
(04:01):
I don't mean to sound dismissive of any of those things.
But what I am saying is, if we're for me,
if I'm having a problem, I can almost always link
it back to something that I am holding onto or
(04:22):
something that happened to me that I won't let go of,
and it's causing suffering. You can have a goal without letting,
without letting the fact that you haven't achieved that goal
yet make you miserable. You can be happy today even
(04:48):
though you were sad yesterday, twenty five, thirty forty years old.
Something that happened to you when you were fifteen, twelve, ten,
whatever it really happened, it's real. I'm not saying you
should just act like it never happened, because that's a
(05:10):
whole other problem. That's not letting go. That's denial. But
we have to be that we are the ones that
have to work through that so that we can live
a life that we feel comfortable with and happy with,
instead of letting things that happen to us, however many
(05:32):
years ago, destroy us over and over and over again,
every single day and again. A lot of those issues
require therapy and all that stuff. And I'm not saying
don't do that. I'm saying do that. But meditation for
(05:53):
me has always helped me purify how I'm feeling about
a thing I can get some distance from it, remind
myself that I just if I give myself a little
bit of space, I won't feel so awful about a thing,
or maybe I won't feel so stressed about a thing.
I won't feel so pulled off course by the thing.
(06:15):
It's funny that the thing you're trying to do is
so distracting that you haven't gotten there yet that it
actually pulls you off course of productivity because you're worried
about it. So you know, you start to like almost panic,
like a like a fly stuck in a jar, bouncing
all over it trying to get out. It's like it's
killing itself just by doing that instead of just trying
(06:38):
to solve the problem. Meditation has really helped just center me,
put me back on the ground so I can then
take one step forward from there instead of being five
(06:58):
minutes ago or a year ago, or this person did
something to me that really set me off course ten
years ago, and I still haven't gotten back on course
from that. If that just hadn't happened, i'd be completely
different place right now. But I'm not. And a lot
of it is from ego not letting go of that thing,
and now I've got a chip on my shoulder, or
(07:22):
I rush something that I think should be happening now,
but isn't so I do something before it's ready to
be done and then it falls apart because I rushed.
It's all all related to not letting go. It's that
very weird feeling when you're in a car and they
(07:45):
tell you hit your brakes and you start to hide
your plane. It's that counter productive, seemingly counterproductive act of
taking your foot off the brake to slow your car
down from losing control when you start to skid. Take
your foot off the break. It's scary to do that,
(08:09):
but we have to do it to regain control of
the car aka also your life. So this is what
we're going to meditate on today. And to do that, first,
you need to get yourself comfortable. You can either sit
down or lie down as always close your eyes, start
(08:33):
to lengthen your breath in and out. You want to
imagine yourself getting heavier and heavier, sinking deeper into relaxation
as you breathe in and out and let each exhale
(08:56):
take you lower and lower into relaxation, heavyer, and happier.
(09:20):
Even in a meditation analogy of letting go, when we're
meditating and our minds starts to wander, our thoughts begin
to buzz. We have to learn to observe them and
(09:41):
let them go and return to the meditation to actually
have a successful meditation. To practice mindfulness, we need to
practice letting go of our thoughts and returning to the
meditation so that we can proceed so in a way.
(10:05):
That is how for me, practicing meditation is a sign
or a practice of letting go as a process of
returning to the present moment, continuing to lengthen and deepen
(10:29):
your breath, scanning your body in and out, letting each
breath come in and out, and with each new exhale,
relaxing deeper into this present moment, feeling yourself sinking deeper,
breathing in and out, paying attention to the sensations in
(11:04):
your body, the breath coming in and out. How it
feels to be here and now, right here and right now,
(11:25):
and this perfect, never ending but still somehow fleeting present moment,
observing our breath, observing our body, And inevitably you will
(11:57):
notice that your mind has wondered at some point, and
it will because it does. Just observe that final thought,
let it go and return back to your breath. It
(12:18):
is just that simple however complicated it may be, it
is very simple. You just return to your breath over
and over again, breathing in and out. Continue the practice
(12:53):
on your own for a few moments.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
We'll be back when it's time to end.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Us u.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Okade. It's time to return to the meditation. Take another
few moments here to let your breath, the silence, and
the stillness settle in. Tune in for one more moment
here to the present moment, and fuel this serenity of
(16:18):
now that you have created. Meditation is helpful because we
(16:44):
learn to observe. We learn to witness and watch and
absorb something. So as you go through your day, look
around and think to yourself, am I doing this because
I want to? Or am I doing this because it's
something related to something I haven't let go of? What
(17:05):
am I holding onto that's causing me to respond this way?
Just observe, Just watch yourself, Just see what happens. We
all have things that we're still holding onto. It's a
daily struggle, it's a life long struggle. But it is
a practice of letting go. It's a practice of life.
(17:27):
Life is letting go over and over and over again.
And I think meditation is a perfect way to practice that,
because it's like training ourselves specifically to not get frustrated
or annoyed with the thoughts that are bouncing around in
our brain constantly that we suddenly begin to notice because
(17:50):
now we're trying to be quiet. Most of the time,
we go through our day and there's so much noise
happening on the outside that we don't see or hear
all the time. Thousands, millions, hundreds of thousands of thoughts
that we have on a regular basis, sixty to ninety
thousand thoughts every day. We don't hear a lot of
(18:11):
them because we're busy in the chaos of life. But
once we sit down and meditate and we're trying to
be still, suddenly we hear all the thoughts and they're
like WHOA meditation is the practice of letting go of
(18:32):
those so that we can continue to feel here and now,
right here and now, And it's just a practice. So
maybe spend the next day or two or the rest
of your life looking for things that you have yet
to let go of and just observe how they are
(18:55):
affecting your day to day life. How are they affecting
your happiness, your joy. Are they holding you back or
are they helping you? So with that, when you're ready,
you can open your eyes and go about your day.
Be well and have fun, one breath at a time.
(19:20):
We'll see you, sir. That's it for this time on
calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation, please
feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again, I'm Michael Beckamaia reminding you to please calm
(19:43):
the bleep down. We'll see you again soon. Thank you
for meditating with us. Be well, have fun, and no
mistake
Speaker 3 (20:00):
A hunter out took the opin de aged tossing
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