Differentiating allowing
The process of deepening into who we are, and awakening to what we are, involves an ongoing process of differentiation.
One of the most basic (and common-sense) differentiations is between ways of allowing.
Allowing as a practice
The basic way of allowing, as a practice, is to allow the content of our experiences, as they are. To allow everything, including any resistance to content and to allowing certain content.
Not allowing certain content is suffering, and creates a great deal of struggle and drama. It comes from an identification with a region of content, creating the appearance of other regions of content as other. It comes from an identification with beliefs, thoughts, ideas and identities.
Allowing it releases our identification with content, and allows the ground of this content to come more into the foreground - this ground of awake emptiness that already allows it all, that has no inherent boundaries and no inherent separate self anywhere.
This is the practice we do for ourselves, to reduce suffering, burn through habitual patterns of identification, find clarity, and find ourselves as what we already are.
We allow a full experience of what is, independent of its particulars.
Allowing (or not) in the world
The other form of allowing (or not) relates to our live as an individual in the world. Here, it is just common sense. If someone inflicts suffering on someone else, and I am in a position to change it, I will. I am not going to allow it, if I can prevent it.
Allowing experiences, but not allowing whatever to happen to myself or others
So there is a full allowing of any content of awareness, of any experiences. This brings a reduction of a sense of struggle and drama, and of the confusion that goes along with the struggle and drama. Instead, there is a sense of the stillness, quietness and clarity inherent in the ground.
At the same time, I am not going to allow certain things to happen to myself or others if I can prevent it. And independent of what unfolds, I can fully be with my experiences of it - as it is.
Labels: allowing, talking about