The more you do the simple practice of closing your eyes, taking a deep, slow breath, and imaging yourself as empty space, the more you realize that you are not your thoughts, but that you are still here. Then these deeper, unconscious thoughts will have room to surface in you. They will likely trigger old feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, guilt, anger, resentment, sadness, or some other form of unease, of suffering.
Then you have to be really present with these feelings, this deeper angst. You have to be very alert, watchful, almost like a scientist in your curiosity to discover what is true in you. Past memories, usually of something traumatic that happened long ago in childhood, may arise.
When they do, you must learn to welcome them because they are showing you where you are not free, where you are not abiding in the happiness that is your true nature. So, the secret is to learn to welcome them, accept them, embrace them—and then see that they are not real either!
They may certainly have once been true—after all, the traumatic event, whether it was getting separated from your mother in the store, or being molested by a relative, did happen—but the memory or story is not true now. It is only a thought, a story, which has surfaced from the past into your conscious mind.
The more aware you are of that thought, the more deeply and slowly you breathe, and consciously be present with it—and actually see it arising within your inner visual field—the more it dissolves, and you find yourself experiencing a deeper level of release, of letting go. The old emotion triggered by the memory unwinds, releases, and you find yourself relaxing more into the present. You experience more ease, more inner harmony. You can see and think more clearly.
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