Episode 031 – The Cork Meditation: The Most Powerful Meditation In The World

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

I’ve spent an excessive amount of time learning about and practicing meditation throughout my ten-plus-year personal development journey.  I’ve spent days in silence in Indian Ashrams, sat amidst the energy vortexes of the Red Rocks in Sedona, and tried virtually every technique out there – transcendental meditation, repeating mantras, visualization, box breathing, you name it.

Still, it seems like no matter what I tried or how hard I tried to make it work, I spent more time thinking about the thoughts I was trying to get rid of than I did finding myself in a place of calm, relaxation, or serenity.  That is, until I discovered the technique that I’m going to share with you today – one of the only meditation practices that ANYONE can do to still their mind and begin freeing themselves from the stress, anxiety, and overwhelm that meditation is supposed to help us alleviate in the first place.

To Think, Or Not To Think?

If you follow my work, you know I’m a big proponent of the idea that thoughts become things and our beliefs dictate our destiny.  As such, the life you’re creating is a reflection of habitual thoughts and emotions.  The reason people drink alcohol or turn to drugs is because of what they’re thinking.  The amount of money you have in your bank account is a result of your thoughts.  The type of relationship you have is based on what you’re thinking.  EVERYTHING is a direct reflection of your thoughts.

Now, research tells us that approximately 75% of the 60,000 thoughts we have on a daily basis are negative, disempowering thoughts.  They’re happening all the time.  And the key to living a good life, much like the key to an effective meditation practice, is to not entangle with those thoughts.  So if we can learn to separate ourselves from these thoughts, we can stop having as many of them or, at the very least, begin having more positive thoughts on a daily basis.

Building Your Neurophysical Muscles

The traditional way of meditating might be to sit down in a quiet room, close your eyes, take a couple of deep breaths,  and focus on your breathing while allowing your thoughts to occur.  But when most people do this, they notice that they become entangled with one of those thoughts.  The more they try NOT to focus on it, the more they find themselves fixated on it.  Then, all of a sudden, you start thinking about something else – a person, a situation, something on your to-do list – and the next thing you know, you’re a thousand miles from the original thought.

You sit down to focus on your breath, but realize it’s the last thing you’ve been focusing on.  This leads to feeling frustrated, even defeated, with the idea that you’ve “failed” the whole premise of what meditation is supposed to be.  Now, that’s a mistake that a lot of people make.  You see, the focus of a meditative practice is NOT to not think or not entangle with your thoughts – in fact, that’s par for the course.

The focus of a meditation practice is to notice when you’re getting entangled with your thoughts and to let the thoughts go.  The dichotomy of this is that you cannot let go of your thoughts unless you do in fact become entangled with them and bring them up to the surface.  Keep the word “surface” in mind as I share this technique here with you in a moment and remember this about meditation – the goal is to effectively make the transition from thinking about your thoughts to letting go of them.

If you’re able to become aware of the fact that you’ve become entangled with a particular thought that doesn’t serve you and let it go, you open up radical new possibilities in your day.  Commit to practicing this, you build up the neurophysiological muscle strength needed to stop spending so much time entangled with your negative thoughts and start thinking thoughts that are more positive altogether.

Relaxing & Removing Resistance 

If you’re not familiar with Abraham Hicks, “he” is a non-physical form of intelligence (aka, not a “real” person) that a woman named Esther Hicks is able to channel conversations with.  Call it “woo woo”, but I’ve been to an Abraham Hicks event and it’s some pretty powerful stuff.  Now, one of the things that Abraham has spoken of prolifically is that the changes we want to make and the outcomes we want in life require that we’re in a relaxed state in order to create them.

I’d put my own spin on this idea with the formula I believe is the key to all creation – DESIRE + NON-RESISTANCE = DESIRED OUTCOME.  In other words, if we can learn to be in a non-resistant state, then we can find ourselves in the “flow state” of life and naturally start producing the thoughts and emotions that allow us to take the actions required to produce positive results in our lives.

When we’re not in our heads constantly thinking about what we need to do, what we didn’t do, what we should have done, or what we shouldn’t have done, we can actually pay attention to life as life is unfolding in front of us.  We expand our capacity to see opportunities that lead us to our desired results.  And when we are in a non-resistant state, we find ourselves in a more consistent habit of positive emotions – joy, happiness, compassion, curiosity, calm.

The Cork Meditation

One of the analogies that Abraham uses is that we spend the majority of our lives holding everything we want underwater, like a cork.  But when you let go of a cork that’s being held underwater, it naturally bobs back to the surface.  You don’t have to do anything to push it back up, it just surfaces on its own.  The same is true for the things we want to materialize in our lives – we don’t actually have to DO anything to create them.  I’m not saying action isn’t required, but that the actions we take become inspired, effortless actions when we’re coming from a relaxed, non-resistant state.

The goal of the Cork Meditation is to release the “cork” of your thoughts so that they may float back up to the surface.  When your cork is floating on the surface, it’s riding the “Great Wave of Life” in a flow state.  You have empowering thoughts, you make the right unconscious decisions, you find yourself in serendipitous situations and circumstances and naturally attract the right people and resources to help you achieve your goals.  It doesn’t feel like “work”, because it isn’t.

The problem with traditional meditation is that when we try to stop thinking about something, it creates even more resistance and defeats the purpose of the practice.  We have a greater propensity to think even more about the thing.  For instance, if you and I were in a room together and I asked you NOT to think about a pink elephant, that’s exactly what you’re going to think about.  In comparison, the idea behind the Cork Meditation works because it allows us to translate our thoughts, which are invisible in and of themselves, into a visual of a simple cork.  That’s because our brain operates in four different ways – thoughts, emotions, senses, and visuals.

Putting The Cork Meditation Into Practice 

Step #1 – Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing, just like you would in a normal meditation practice.  

Step #2 – When you notice yourself fixated on a certain thought, visualize a cork underneath the water.

Step #3 – In your mind, release the cork and watch it float back up to the surface.

That’s it.  All you do is let go of the cork and watch it float back up to the surface.  Do it as many times as it takes until you find yourself in a more relaxed state.  You’re not doing anything with the thought other than translating it into an image and giving you a scenario to play out in your mind.

Over time, what this does is break the pattern of thought.  It doesn’t happen by TRYING to break the pattern, it happens by repeating this second-long movie over and over again.  Every time you release the cork in your mind, you’re doing a rep in the “mental gym”.  You’re strengthening your ability to release and building a new habit of relaxation within your nervous system.  Over the course of 15-20 minutes, all you’re doing is releasing, releasing, releasing, and releasing.  In doing so, you’re building the capacity to more easily release the negative thoughts and emotions as you experience them on a daily basis.

Why This Works 

This technique is a neurophysiological practice that leverages visualization, imagination, and meditation in order to “train” your nervous system to put you into a relaxed, non-resistant,  Powerful State Of Being.  When you’re in this state, you’re able to think differently, perceive differently, feel differently, act differently, and naturally begin producing different results in your life. 

Of course, you’re still going to experience the “monkey mind”, but instead of continuing to deal with the invisible world of your thoughts, you’re simply triggering a little movie in your head – seeing the cork under the water, letting it go to the surface, focusing on it floating on the surface – and feeling what that feels like, knowing that it’s the most vibrant, authentic, aligned feeling you should strive to have as much as possible in your life.