As we come to the beginning of a new year, we come to the end of a five-part series on mindful living in these tips. The idea we look at this week is how to allow what is to not cause us to react in unskillful ways.
How do we allow the cookies to be on the counter without craving or grasping? How do we allow our partner (boss, sibling, neighbor or you fill in the blank) to do what he or she does without it generating that old reaction in us? How do we allow peace of mind to prevail, regardless of the circumstances?
On Oprah.com, Mike Robbins has this to say:
As I looked into it more deeply, I noticed I had a judgment about the whole concept of “allowing.” It always seemed weak, passive, lazy or based on luck to me. I’ve always prided myself on being a hard worker, a go-getter and someone who makes things happen. However, as I have recently come to understand, much of this has to do with a deep-seated fear that if I ever slow down, stop pushing so hard or simply expect things to just show up with ease, the whole house of cards that is my life and my work will simply come crashing down around me. Can you relate?
Allowing, however, is an essential aspect of life and growth, as well as of your success and fulfillment. The first aspect of allowing has to do with accepting things as they are. As author and teacher Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100 percent of the time.”
And our friend, Dorothy Ann Coyne, who has been inspiring us these past weeks, writes about it this way to her grandson Alex: “One teacher I’ve learned from says this whole process is like being a child again in the back seat of the car. You are not controlling this experience and really have no say in where it’s going. I remember times in my parents’ car very vividly even to this day. Often I would be pressing my nose against a window in the back seat and just seeing what was going by with no particular energy.”
Dottie, as friends call her, goes on to say how just consciously breathing, relaxing, feeling our body and emotions, watching what comes and goes, and allowing the world—our lives—to unfold as it does without resistance gives us the ability to work with the moment from a place of peace, not running away from it, not wishing it away, but simply being present with it as it is.
This week appreciate the choice you have to allow yourself to use the next 365 days as opportunity to be mindful. You, your planet, perhaps the whole universe joins you in that choice.
“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
~ Alfred Tennyson
Tips from 5 April 2010 to 6 August 2012 are here: Archived Tips
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Rev. Debra Basham
Voice or text: (269) 921-2217 Email: debra@scs-matters.com http://DebraBasham.com http://ImagineHealing.info http://SurgicalSupport.info Small Changes … Infinite Results™
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa |