'Allow' by Donna Faulds

ALLOW

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak –
fear, fantasies, failures, and success.

When loss rips off the doors of the heart
or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

Wise words from Danna Faulds, ones that I don’t find easy to remember in the moments I need it most. The attempt to control in difficult moments seems to be a core coping strategy of mine, a habitual pattern which always appears to offer that much hoped for outcome… and yet there is a deep recognition that it just won’t work – the thunderbolt and tornado, or even the stream finding new channels are good external examples of that.

So what is there to do when in a tight spot, wanting to control, but to breathe and allow, as the poem suggests…

There’s a practice that was developed by Chris Germer and Kristin Neff (as far as I know!) which places two steps before the allowing, which I find very helpful. Before I get to the allowing stage, there usually is the need for softening, dropping some of my resistance to let the guest that’s knocking on Rumi’s guesthouse door in. Softening to own up to my own feelings, and the reality of anyone else involved in the situation (which actually requires an allowing of itself: the allowing of the reaction to the guest). And then comes the need for soothing, for caring for what’s there with all the kindness I can possibly muster  (you could say, the step of allowing the soothing and warmth to flow to where it hurts). Only after this thorough ‘attending to’ does allowing in its fullness become possible, and often there seems to be layers of allowing that reveal themselves over time… which reveals a new perspective, ‘new eyes’ to look with.

And repeat!

Photo by Michael D on Unsplash

August 25, 2019

Tags: acceptanceallowingfearletting go

Author: Kristine Mackenzie-Janson

Kristine has been practising Tibetan Buddhism since 2000, and spent four years working and practising meditation on Holy Isle, Scotland. She has trained extensively with Rob Nairn and has been teaching mindfulness and compassion as a lead tutor for the Mindfulness Association since its early days. She offers eight week courses and drop-in sessions near her home in Edinburgh and mindfulness supervision both in person and by phone. Kristine is also a qualified art therapist, having earned her BA (Hons) degree in 2004 at the Hogeschool Leiden in Holland.

The Sun My heart --> Giving our emotions a wide pasture.--> Not make our minds a battlefield

 after meditation this afternoon during meditation this afternoon I took notes on one suggestion coming from the sending from the information in excerpted from the book called The Sun my heart.

you can hear about not making our mind the battlefield. learning to use the Sun the light of awareness to illuminate what is trance coming coming through her in our minds example I mentioned fear and I was thinking about the fear of Death Cure blindness fear of deafness all coming at the same time dying alone.

well I didn't say these things I wasmy concern about the fear and letting emotion being overwhelmed be overwhelming

Our teacher had a beautiful way of suggesting that quoting Suzuki that we simply give our emotions very wide pasture I best way to control things is the ways we control things first we try to push it away and then we try to control it and then we try to the best way is to observe it

Friendship v. control

True friends and healers do not limit your options; They expand them. ~ Alan Cohen