When I recognized I was in a “spiritual depression”, I decided I would just let it be. Instead of running after the conventional self-help solutions, what if I just allowed, and continued to rest in awareness, and continued to release?
What if I just allowed and watched?
What might I learn?
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credit: The Boatman
What I learned from allowing
Love: Loving ourselves enough to want inner peace is the key. We can love ourselves to completely allow, so we can see. The way we know we love someone is when we selflessly want the best for that person. The way we know we love ourselves is when we can selflessly and completely accept who we are and who we have become. It is from Love that a willingness and readiness to awaken, to learn, to explore, and to avoid solidification of particular point of views can develop.
Openness. It isn’t easy for us to relinquish particular points of view. Openness is the innocent, wide-eyed openness of awareness, prior to beliefs. Fixating on particular points of view or beliefs is not ultimately helpful. “Do not seek Truth; only cease to cherish opinion.”
Patience. Awakening ebbs and flows. There are periods of resonance and periods of disturbing states. In the disturbing states, we feel that these states will last forever, we feel alone, we are concerned that we will never get it, we are concerned about where we are as opposed to others who seem to “get it.” We can simply know that we are not alone, these states are temporary and natural, and they are our opportunity to allow, love and surrender.
Whatever we need shows up. We may need many things at various points in our journeys—courage, humility, self-honesty, dedication, discipline, practice, wisdom, spirituality—whatever it is that we need, shows up, when we have love and openness. In love and openness, whatever we need must develop—it can be no other way. When I had anxiety, a release method showed up, when it had not many times before, because I was willing to see. When I was in a slump, the wisdom to allow and let it be and learn from it showed up, whereas in the past I would have run after conventional solutions of self-help. When I needed self-honesty, I was able to admit that I am not always able to be honest with myself and I can fool myself with beliefs, and this open admission was the perfect place to start. The incentive to start this website showed up suddenly, without decision. Whatever is needed will show up, in love and acceptance.
I invite you to allow
“Your physical energy is also subject to cycles. It cannot always be at a peak. There will be times of low as well as high energy. There will be periods when you are highly active and creative, but there may also be times when everything seems stagnant, when it seems that you are not getting anywhere, not achieving anything. A cycle can last for anything from a few hours to a few years. There are large cycles and small cycles within these large ones. Many illnesses are created through fighting against the cycles of low energy, which are vital for regeneration. The compulsion to do, and the tendency to derive your sense of self-worth and identity from external factors such as achievement, is an inevitable illusion as long as you are identified with your mind. This makes it hard or impossible for you to accept the low cycles and allow them to be. Thus, intelligence of the organism may take over as a self-protective measure and create illness in order to force you to stop, so that the necessary regeneration can take place.” Eckhart Tolle
Awareness is the Source and the background of all our stories and beliefs and points of view. It is beginingless and constant. We can rest in awareness, and at first this can be for very short, determined moments, but repeating short moments of awareness adds up to effortless awareness.
With allowing, we can see the true nature of existence. We can see for ourselves, and learn on our own, without having to memorize or adapt concepts of others. Learning and wisdom do not come about in forcing change or developing special characteristics. Emotional stability does not come from forcing out disturbances or by covering them up with positive beliefs.
The wisdom is in the allowing, with love and openness.
Love and openness. That’s all. We have been trained to believe the opposite, and the world out there continually reinforces the belief that we must cultivate special characteristics and learn special secrets and graduate through special spiritual hoops. It is difficult for us to believe that we already are perfect, natural, effortless beings.
We run around in circles. When we get tired of it, we chase things which make us run around in tighter circles. Wisdom is stopping. Wisdom is in allowing, with love and openness.
In the end, all clinging must relax. All attachment to particular ideas and concepts—even our most cherished and beautiful concepts about spirituality and awakening, must relax. Practices must relax. The practice of Awareness and the practice of Release are techniques of unclinging. They are direct and naked, unadorned by spiritual concepts, and require no pre-requisites of character. I promote them here, knowing full well that even these practices must be left behind. And they are indeed left behind, when we see that Awareness is innate—that is, it requires no concept or effort or practice to be. And when we see that Releasing is simply not making the choice to cling.
Any good teaching or practice will self-dissolve with realization.
I invite you to not buy into anything that is said here. There are absolutely no promises of enlightenment or achievement or spiritual advancement.
Love yourself enough to want Truth. Be open, allow, be patient—and absolutely everything you need will develop at the right time. See for yourself.
Next week, for sure maybe
I was going to publish an article about why we don’t always find it easy to do the things which are good for us but I decided to write this first because I felt that I was not clear enough last week. Writing is like that. It wants to flow from awareness when we allow it, but we can trip it up by thinking too much about it, and I thought too much about it last week. This I hope was clearer.
Love to Haiti
I’ll donate all proceeds from book sales in the month of January to Doctors without Borders for relief in Haiti.
It’s difficult to simply allow these states. We are all trained and conditioned to solve our “problems”. There is a lot of self-help advice out there about spirituality, meditation, medication, therapy, how to get things done, how to make money, how find happiness, how find passion and purpose, and even ironically complicated advice about how to simplify our lives.
To completely allow, so we can see what we learn from it, can feel a little uncomfortable. Old beliefs keep nudging. The world out there keeps nudging. Allowing the disturbing states can feel lonely and self-indulgent.