Now we're gonna look at the idea of allowing and letting be, and how this can help us practice acceptance.
Allowing and letting be simply means allowing whatever we're experiencing right now, to be there. No matter what comes up, we simply allow it into our awareness and let it be, however it is.
The people who developed Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy use the poem The Guesthouse by the poet Rumi, to give an example of the flavor of allowing and letting be.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor, welcome, and entertain them all.
Even if there are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be cleaning you out for some new delight, the dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes.
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. And so allowing in and letting be involves taking whatever we're experiencing, and inviting it into our awareness.
And we invite these things into our awareness, even if they're unpleasant, and greet them laughingly. And so we're not just tolerating them, or resigning ourselves to their presence, but inviting them in with their friendliness.
And so by inviting these things in, we can experience them without creating any excess suffering for ourselves, like we would if we tried to slam the door in their face and shut them out, or tolerate their presence begrudgingly. And this is why it's important to cultivate this attitude of acceptance and allowing in and letting be, because if we're unwilling to allow certain things into our awareness, by fighting against them, or trying to shut them out, we only give them more power, feed them more fuel, making it more likely, they set off vicious cycles, or pull us into a downward spiral, the consequences of which are much more unpleasant and difficult to recover from, than if we just allow the unpleasant experience into our awareness in the first place.
And so allowing these experiences into our awareness and letting them be diminishes the power they have over us, and we're much less likely to be hijacked by them and let down some negative road.
If we do get caught up in some automatic cycle of negative reactions, the best way to pull ourselves out of something like this is to meet it with an attitude of acceptance and allowing in and letting be.
By allowing these unpleasant thoughts and feelings into our awareness, and noticing the effect they have in our body, and paying attention to these thoughts, feelings and body sensations, following them in awareness and allowing them to be, we have the chance to see how our experiences aren't static, and are constantly changing from moment to moment in quality and content and intensity, coming in going, waxing and waning.
If we just allow them to run their natural course, they tend to become more manageable, lessen in intensity without us having to do anything about them.
Notice them, allow them in, accept them and let them be.
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