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Inspiration

Grandmothersphere: Letting Go, Judgment, and the Ego as Teammate

East Forest
East Forest
Nov 20, 2012
6 min read
Watch · 6

Three minutes and forty seconds into the official visualizer for "Grandmothersphere," a short spoken meditation runs underneath slow, shifting imagery and a bed of soft music. There is no chorus to hook onto and no verse structure to count. What you get is a series of sentences that circle one idea: enlightenment is not a summit you reach but a practice you keep returning to, and what you most need to release is not the world but your own rigid verdicts about it and yourself. The piece is built on that spine, and it is worth slowing down for, because the words are doing more work than the sparse production suggests.

This article draws only on the video itself: its spoken lines, its title, and the description that accompanies it. The visualizer was published on YouTube in November 2012 under the channel eastforestmusic, and its description ties it to the release "Love Bomb." Beyond that, there is no interview, biography, or production history here. What follows is a reading of what the words say and how they fit together.

Read · 6 sections

What does the opening question about enlightenment mean?

The video opens with a question rather than a statement: do you want to know what enlightenment is? The answer, when it comes, is deliberately deflating in the best way. Enlightenment, as the spoken line frames it, is "with you every moment," and it moves in a "back and forth." That phrasing matters. It rejects the picture of enlightenment as a permanent state you finally arrive at and never leave. Instead it describes an oscillation, a repeated movement of gripping and releasing.

Contemplative teachers across many traditions have made a similar point, often with the image of waves or breath. The practitioner is not asked to stop the movement but to notice it, and to return. The line at roughly the 33-second mark makes the practical instruction plain: the work is "letting go of your attachment to yourself to outcomes, letting go to the way things are." Three objects of attachment are named there, and they escalate in subtlety. First the self, then outcomes, then the basic fact of how things are. Letting go of the way things are is the hardest of the three, because it means releasing the hope that reality would be different.

Why does letting go of right and wrong go deeper?

Around the 87-second mark the visualizer makes its most radical move. The speaker says that "if I could let go of everything or I could let go of right or wrong it would get deeper and deeper." Right and wrong are the most automatic filters most people carry. They sort every experience before we have consciously chosen to evaluate it. To let go of that sorting is not to stop caring about what is good or harmful; it is to stop treating each moment as a verdict.

The sentence is compact, but the logic is clear. Every act of letting go removes a layer of friction, and the layers beneath the surface are the deepest ones: the moral reflex, the instinct to classify. The spoken line says the process "would get deeper and deeper," and then adds, "it was amazing." That word is not hedged. The visualizer treats the release as a pleasure, not a penance.

What is the "lifetime of judgment" against yourself?

The emotional center of the piece arrives around 136 seconds: "I could sense the lifetime of judgment against myself and letting it go." This is the most personal line in the visualizer, and it is also the most instructive. The judgment is not described as a fresh event. It is a lifetime of accumulated self-criticism, layered over years, that has become so familiar it reads as neutral.

Notice the grammar. The speaker does not say "I fixed my judgment" or "I overcame it." They say they could sense it, and then they let it go. Sensing comes first. That is the difference between suppressing a self-critical thought and seeing it clearly enough that it loosens. Sensing a pattern in the body and in the mind is the precondition for releasing it, and the visualizer compresses that whole process into a single gentle exhale of an "oh."

How does thoughtless breath bring bliss back?

At about 186 seconds the spoken line offers its most concrete instruction: "with thoughtless breath instant bliss returns instant." The phrasing is spare and almost liturgical. Thoughtless breath is breath that is not being narrated, managed, or evaluated. It is simply happening. The line suggests that when the commentary stops, something returns quickly, and the word "instant" is repeated for emphasis.

There is a practical teaching embedded here. Many people assume bliss or peace must be pursued through effort, through the right technique or the right mental state. The visualizer points the other way. Bliss is described as something that returns when the mental noise pauses. The breath is the doorway because it is always available, always in the present, and cannot be argued with.

Did the speaker transcend the ego, or partner with it?

The final section of the spoken track, from about 198 seconds, carries the most distinctive idea of the piece: "Infinity. I didn't transcend my ego. We became partners. We became teammates."

This is a notable reversal. A large part of the spiritual vocabulary is built on transcending the ego, dissolving it, or defeating it. The visualizer declines that framing. The speaker says they did not transcend the ego at all. Instead the relationship changed from opposition to collaboration. The ego becomes a teammate rather than an enemy to be eliminated.

For a listener who has struggled with self-criticism, this is a useful correction. A war against the ego tends to reproduce the very judgment the visualizer describes: one part of the self condemning another. A partnership is different. It assumes the ego has a job, perhaps protection, perhaps planning, and asks that it do that job without running the whole show. The word "teammates" implies shared goals rather than a truce.

Where to go from here

"Grandmothersphere" is short, and its strength is its restraint. Its lines are best approached as practices rather than conclusions. A useful way to sit with them is to take one at a time: notice where you attach to outcomes this week, notice where you sort experience into right and wrong, and notice when your breath is narrated by your thinking and when it is simply breathing. Then notice what changes when you let it be simply breath.

If the idea of the ego as a teammate resonates, the video is worth watching more than once, since the spoken phrases return to the same themes from different angles. The official visualizer and its description are the primary sources here, and they are enough to build a practice on without needing to know anything more about the speaker. The lines themselves are the teaching.

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Transcript

[0:03] [Music]

[0:08] do you want to know what enlightenment

[0:10] is

[0:19] [Music]

[0:33] it's with you every

[0:37] moment a back and forth back and

[0:41] forth letting go of your

[0:45] attachment to

[0:47] yourself to

[0:49] outcomes letting go to the way things

[0:51] are

[0:55] [Music]

[1:27] if I could let go of everything

[1:31] or I could let go of right or

[1:34] wrong it would get deeper and

[1:38] deeper and it was amazing

[1:42] [Music]

[2:16] I could sense the lifetime of judgment

[2:18] against

[2:23] myself and letting it go

[2:30] oh

[2:35] [Music]

[3:06] with thoughtless

[3:07] breath instant Bliss returns instant

[3:13] [Music]

[3:18] Infinity I didn't transcend my ego we

[3:22] became Partners we became

[3:25] [Music]

[3:29] teammates for

[3:31] [Music]

[3:38] [Music]

East Forest
ArtistEast Forest

Multidisciplinary artist Krishna-Trevor Oswalt, known as East Forest, makes lush ambient, neoclassical and experimental music, and his concerts and films reach from clinical resear…

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GrandmothersphereLetting-goEgo-as-teammateSelf-judgmentThoughtless-breath

Got Questions?

Frequently Asked Questions

It is an official visualizer built around a short spoken meditation on letting go. The spoken lines describe enlightenment as an ongoing back-and-forth practice, release of attachment to outcomes and self-judgment, and a shift from fighting the ego to partnering with it.
In the visualizer, the speaker says they did not eliminate or defeat the ego. The relationship changed from opposition to collaboration, with the ego described as a teammate rather than an enemy to be destroyed.
The spoken line says that letting go of right or wrong 'would get deeper and deeper,' suggesting that moral sorting is one of the deepest layers of mental friction. Releasing it means no longer treating each experience as a verdict, while still caring about what is good.
In the visualizer, thoughtless breath means breathing that is not narrated, managed, or judged by the mind. The spoken line says that with thoughtless breath, instant bliss returns, implying peace comes when mental commentary pauses rather than through effort.
The video's description links it to the release 'Love Bomb' and provides streaming links for the track. The visualizer itself contains only the spoken lines and imagery, so the connection is through the release listing rather than anything stated in the video.
The video suggests first sensing the judgment clearly, rather than suppressing it, and then releasing it. Pair this with noticing your breath when it is unnarrated, and note where you attach to outcomes during the day.

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