The Art of Allowing

Saturday I wrote about resistance. The flip side of resistance is allowing. With a life-time of training in the art of disallowing, creating a life that allows is my challenge.

Esther and Jerry Hicks (www.abraham-hicks.com) refer to their Law of Attraction workshops as The Art of Allowing. I agree...allowing is an art, hopefully one in which I am gaining skill daily.

I'm learning how connected I am to this grand and glorious world, the souls that touch my life, and the limitless Source that is all. I don't have to be the cause of everything or the power to make it happen, I can simply envision and allow it. It is my greatness, more than my work that is to be my focus.

For me, allowing is getting out of my own way. My habitual thinking often does not align me with the good that would come to me. I get so caught up in activity, trying diligently to achieve what I want. But alas, I am not very successful. I am more successful when I slow down, focus on what I really want, and let my activity flow out from an inside, authentic place.

A few lines from an upcoming book:

alone i am no mighty force of nature

i stand one with her in wonder

all is as it should be

i do not cause events to happen

do not make it so

i just allow and so it is

i need not flex my muscles

fill my lungs

or stamp my feet

it is not mine

to find the way

nor summon energy from my depleted store

i am not a mighty force of nature

yet I stand with her in concert

while mountains move and rocks erode

it is so simple

she but flows

and I do nothing but allow

A Posture of Resistance

I couldn’t read the fine print from where I sat waiting for the light to turn, but I sure didn’t miss the message. “I RESIST!” shouted at me from the bumper of the car in front of me. It was almost as though whatever was being resisted was of infinitely less importance than the posture of resistance.

I RESIST!

Now, as I ruminate on it, I realize it’s not just the car or the driver in front of me that’s at issue, it’s me, too. My girlfriend tells me that I often resist what is sent my way just for the sake of resisting, because I can’t accept good coming to me. Actually, she more often says it’s just because I’m stubborn, but that’s probably the same thing. I want to do it all by myself, and I decide to resist before the offering presents itself. Could it be that I have a posture of resistance? Heaven forbid!

What you resist persists. So goes the well-worn cliché. My resistance works for me this way: I end up maintaining circumstances and situations that I really don’t want. That’s the underlying rationale for resisting in the first place. I focus on something that I don’t want. I protest, find fault, judge all else as beneath my standards, knowing that my way and only my way is right and best. And those circumstances and situations stick to me like tar.

In the process, I disallow so much good that might come to me, proud s.o.b. that I am. My failure to appreciate the good around me, to allow it to close in on me, while I am focused on having it my way does, in effect, prevent the good that I really want from ever arriving.

Hmm…so this is the way that I block the blessing that would flow to me. I sit tight in my posture of resistance.