Lektion 1
Introduction
This first lesson outlines what Allowing is all about, how to approach this course, how to practice and what you can expect as results. Take note, the results are often quite subtle.
Lektion 2
Breathe
Breathing has been an integral part of meditation and contemplative training for as long as these practices existed. This however, is not a breath training practice, it is a doorway.
In Allowing, the breath, like closing your eyes, is used as a way of bringing attention inward, to begin the process of paying attention to the subtler energies as well as allowing the bigger energies of resistance and stress.
It also has a quieting effect on the mind and allows us to eventually have authority over the otherwise, wandering attention.
Lektion 3
Body Awareness
From the breath we begin to expand our inner gaze towards more of the body. But we do that as an internal observer.
In other words we focus on feeling the body. Which is a little harder than it sounds. Part of the training we all received into the conditioned state of resistance is the tendency to conceptualize. That is, we tend to think about emotions and sensations rather than feeling them.
This flip into thinking happens so fast that we don't even realize it has happened. Focusing on the body as the purse experience of sensation begins to break the spell of this conditioning and we find that the body is way more than we had thought.
Lektion 4
Allowing Thought
Now that we have learned to use the body as an anchor point we can begin to allow everything to be what it is.
Over the next sections we will isolate components of our experience, focus on them and allow them to be. We will start with thought.
We want to change our entire relationship with thought. Thought itself is not the problem. The mind secretes thoughts the way salivary glands secret saliva. If we don't regard thought as a problem to get rid of it ceases being a problem.
So allowing thought is the best entry place for immersion in Allowing.
Lektion 5
Allowing Emotions
We tend to struggle with emotions. We try to push away the ones we don't want and try to cling to those we do. But the more we push away the more they come. And the more we cling the more they slip away.
This is the nature of emotions. They are also just a flow, mostly shaped by conditioning. In fact, the feelings were conditioned into us first, long before we could think or even talk.
You will notice that you are always in a struggle with emotions, but that is about to stop. The key to emotions moving from difficult to supportive is the magical state of allowing. Allowing provides the space in which even the most unpleasant things can transform, like a caterpillar to a butterfly.
Lektion 6
Allowing Sensations
Sensations are the raw material, the exact thing the body is sensing and communicating to our whole mind and soul. I say raw material, unprocessed information because the body is not doing any kind of filtering or buffering. It simply and naturally experiences everything just as it is all the time.
Later on, as the information moves up through the various channels all sorts of things get associated with them. Things like; memories, associations, reactions, conditioned responses, words, concepts until it is a full blown story in our minds.
But the direct experience is completely innocent and neutral. None of the extra stuff is actually in the sensations themselves. Which is why this meditation is so very powerful. It is the direct connection to experience the way a little child or an animal experiences it... alive, vital, juicy.
Lektion 7
The Subtle Body
As we move deeper into direct experience and let go of more and more of our concepts about our bodies and ourselves things get more fluid.
Without the idea of the body's form, which is simply a visual memory, the body almost disappears into a constant flow. Yet, it is very much still here.
This body without a fixed shape is called the subtle body and is, in fact, your real body.
Lektion 8
Allowing Resistance
This may seem rather strange since reducing resistance is what allowing is all about. But resistance is just a particular kind of conditioning we received and as such are just made up of emotions, thoughts and sensations and so there is no need to make it an enemy.
As we begin to experience resistance directly as an energy vibration it begins to lose its power and authority. It becomes just another feeling to be allowed and witnessed like a cloud passing through the sky.
Lektion 9
Allowing Desire
At this point in the program we will begin dropping the resistance and opening the heart to the things we desire.
Desire is very misunderstood thing. We all acquired unnatural and unnecessary relationships with desire. This is very evident in most spiritual traditions which reduce desire to something to be controlled and even sinful. We have been trained to deny our own natural innocence.
This leaves us with a confusion that makes it difficult to trust our desires and ourselves and make wise choices.
So now we will begin to allow this most natural and beautiful aspect of human life.
Lektion 10
Allowing the Good Stuff
My approach to inner work and deep emotional healing is a holistic one. It is absolutely necessary to be able to allow all of our feelings. In our modern world we tend to want to have nothing but good feelings and attempt in some way to get rid of the so-called "negative" feelings.
This course started our with the willingness to open our hearts to all of our feelings, to begin the process of embracing the whole our humanity. Once that open door into the darker places has become more natural we can begin to open up to the other side as well.
You know, the mechanisms that push away the so-called negative are simultaneously pushing away the positive.
Moreover, we get so used to being in the state of resistance that we actually assume that all the good stuff comes only after a lot of struggle or some huge accomplishment. So in this lesson we begin to open ourselves up more than ever to all the good stuff.
Lektion 11
Allowing Self-Love
Isn't it funny that the thing we all want, more than anything else, is the most difficult thing to receive. In this unique case we are both the giver and the receiver of love.
When I speak of self-love I. am speaking of unconditional self-love. That is coming to love oneself, as you are right now. This is, in fact what we have been doing throughout this entire course. Every time you allow yourself to feel something without an agenda, without trying to fix or change it, you are in the state of unconditional love.
Imagine what life will be like when this becomes your default state.
Lektion 12
Allowing the Divine
I am first and foremost a spiritual teacher. All of this inner work is to reconnect us with the divinity that is, in fact, the very nature of our true being.
In the divine is the oneness with all beings. This isn't just a nice spiritual platitude, it can be experienced as a fact, as the reality of our existence.
Like so many of the things we humans do to become free and happy, we think that divinity is some advanced state that we have to get to. You don't have to get to, attain or earn what you already are. You simply have to allow yourself to accept it.
You are already divine
You are already everything you have been seeking
Lektion 13
Just Be
This is kind of the whole point. We come back to just being, just being your glorious self.
Like when you were a child. There was no editing or self-censoring. Everything was alive and magical. Everything was authentic and totally innocent.
But it too takes practice. We are all so used to being active and accomplishing things and on the go and multitasking that the pure joy that is inherent in our very being is overlooked.
So just be, many time during the day, just be.
Lektion 14
Inner Reconciliation
Allowing is an integral part of an umbrella of tools, processes and meditation that I call Inner Reconciliation.
It has that name because, well, isn't that what we have been doing this whole course? Reconciling with ourselves. Harmonizing with ourselves. Coming into accord with ourselves in a whole new relationship.
It is a great deal like reconciling with a partner. And what is the first thing they do in counseling couples. You listen to each other. In this case you listen to yourself, to the disowned parts of you.
And in that listening a door opens up and, yes many difficult memories and experiences will come to the surface, but they come to the surface on their way out.
And underneath all of those is the real you, the One you have been seeking all your life.
