If You Decide to Let Go,
You Become Yourself Again

Veeresh on Going Beyond Your Limits

All resistance is based on fear. You are afraid something terrible is going to happen so you say "no". I want to tell you about my own resistance, my own fears so you can identify with me and then maybe you can relax too.

In the early seventies I was running a Therapeutic Community in London. I was training the staff and at a certain point I realized that I had given so much to everybody all the time, that I had forgotten myself. Everybody was growing emotionally; their behaviour was changing. The community and the staff had a great attitude, but I had forgotten myself. And I didn't like the idea of getting help for myself. It was okay for me to help my community, to train my staff, but I didn't want to admit that I also needed some help. Sudha, whom I was married to at the time, was doing bio energetics. It was a new school and I didn't like it, even though I had never done it. In my thinking the Encounter school was the best school. However, I could see that Sudha had started to change, so then I said, "Okay, I'll also go."

I went to the sessions regularly. I would go in, say hello, take off my clothes, lie on the table and then they would put a belt around my stomach with a microphone. They would squeeze my body and you would hear "burp" out of a loudspeaker. In this way they knew that I was blocked. Then they would move the microphone and you heard "burp" again and then they knew that there was the point where we could release the block.

I would always end up in the same position, week after week, month after month. I would breathe heavily and my therapist, Gerda Boyesen, encouraged me to make a sound. I screamed and cried and I always ended up in the same position. Gerda would come over and either put a little milk bottle in my mouth, or put me next to her breast and say, "It's all right."

After about six or eight months I was sitting in a cab on my way to another session and I thought, "I know what is going to happen again." I had the whole picture ready and then it suddenly hit me. I said, "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life." I was determined that there had to be something more than this or I was going to quit.

I went into the session, and consciously I said, "I am going to find out. Me, I am going to find out." I got down to the heavy breathing and screaming stage as usual, but this time I didn't feel Gerda coming around saying, "Hmm, nice..." And then I started to really scream. I didn't want to stop anymore and I screamed and screamed with all the determination I had. I felt a hand, her hand, very softly and gently place both my hands by my side. Then I said to myself, "Something different is happening", and I was pushing and pushing and then my body started to vibrate on the table... I was crying, I couldn't control my body anymore. I looked up and I said, "Gerda, what's the matter?" She said, "It's all right, you are having an orgasm reflex."

I had pushed myself beyond my own limits and I got into this state of let-go where I was just vibrating and laughing and crying and I knew that I had done it. I had found the space. It has always been there inside of me, but I was always too frightened to go there. I thought I would go crazy, I thought I would die, I thought something terrible would happen. I had been fighting my own resistance, my own fear.

You know that you can decide to go deeper if you want to, but you keep the line where it is safe. You can do that for the rest of your life, just be safe, or you can consciously decide to take a risk and discover something new.

In group therapy it is safe to take a risk, because everybody is doing it together. If you do everything totally and you let go, you will find out that your body starts to open up and it releases a certain chemical. People who are enlightened have this chemical all the time. You are like a walking orgasm reflex, which is your natural state of being, but you end up saying "No, no, no", all contracted.

I would like you to open up and go beyond your limits. It has nothing to do with time. You can do something for thirty seconds, and it is just as powerful as a nine month primal group. If you decide to let go, you become yourself again. Make a conscious decision to go beyond your limits, to discover yourself. That is what I would like you to do. It is not all that frightening; it's a turn on.

I didn't know that at the end of all my pain and negativity there is pleasure. I was stuck at the surface. I was afraid to go deeper - I didn't know where I was going to go.

Now I understand it's pleasure. Your natural state of being is pleasure. There is nothing wrong with you at all. You have learnt things in a peculiar way. Instead of asking for love straight, you stuff yourself with food, or you feel like a victim. You play all these incredible games, and it is not necessary. The way you are right now, with all your imperfections, right now, you are okay. Tomorrow you can work a lot on yourself, but right now... You have to start with that, and it is always right now. You can work out your relationships, your parents and society later. Change begins NOW. You have to say, "The way I am right now is enough. With all my trips about myself, all my negativity, all my wishing that I could be different, right now, I'm okay."

***

I am going to show you how you can come home to yourself immediately. You don't have to work hard and do hours and hours of heavy breathing, so that your body can be open, your mind can relax and you can slip into a certain space. You can do it right away, if you understand the process. Here's how it goes.

Close your eyes. Concentrate on something that you consider a good feeling. I don't care where it comes from it could come from food, from sex, from anywhere. Now, right now, as you're concentrating on feeling good, you are what they call "home." You are at your center. A good feeling brings you to your center. That's it. You're all home now.

You can do this meditation anywhere. You can do it on the toilet; you can do it walking down the hallway; you can do it in a train station; you can do it anywhere. When you get lost, take a little space, concentrate on a good feeling, and it brings you home to your center. All good feelings bring you home. Once you're home, the idea is to start operating from that space. Everything else is negative, and that's called "your mind."

You are pretty well stamped. You will always have peculiar relationships. You will always be mindfucking about yourself the way you always do it. You will always be leading your particular life style the way you always do it. You are unique, and if you want to change it, that is part of it.

Just smile more, hug more, touch more, love more, turn yourself on more. Every time you're turned on, everybody else gets turned on. It becomes infectious!