In life, we go through so many ups and downs from our early childhood to our teenage years to becoming an adult. Stuff happens and this post advises that whatever your experience is, to just allow it.
We are conditioned from an early age (usually after 2) but the process starts earlier. Our conditioning encourages us to like, love and enjoy good experiences and dislike, negative experiences, feelings and push, ignore and repress them. Right now, you’re probably thinking “What the hell is this guy talking about? Of course I like good feelings, situations and dislike negative ones, duh!”
I understand, and while it is OK to have preferences, to become attached to them (and 98% of humanity is) these preferences only create suffering. Why ? The world will not always align with what you or I want. Reality is the reality. What happens is what is.
Let’s just look at this concept of “allowing experience no matter whatever it is” in a different way. Firstly, whatever your experience in any given moment is, is what is happening and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.
BUT what if we could become curious and look within at what is happening.
All our thoughts, images, sensations, feelings, and sense perceptions happen within us. These are the good, the bad, the ugly and the stories we tell ourselves. If we could just allow the experience rather than resist it, would the experience be different? Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti and many other modern spiritual teachers advise people to become present in their experience. By becoming aware and more present in the moment ‘the Now’ we can truly experience this moment and whatever it has to offer, and be present to it consciously as it is.
In my experience and through practice, I have found this daily practice to assist my life in many ways. For example, while working in security and being in situations in which I could have reacted in a very negative way, even with violence, I would allow whatever a person brought to me (anger, abuse, stress, racism and arguments) to just be as it is. Now that means YES I did have certain feelings and thoughts arise in the body and mind, even some interesting images 
but I would not feed them in that moment.
People have said negative things but I am so grateful that in those moments my sense of awareness was developed enough to stay present and not react. Don’t get me wrong here please, you know sometimes I manage to stay calm and in the present and not take it personally but at other times I may react. Just having the knowledge and being committed to a more conscious life is enough to keep learning and developing in the human and the spiritual sphere.
It’s not about being a perfect human being that is happy all the time, No one is perfect. My intention is to draw people’s attention to the point that NOT allowing our experience to be as it is causes suffering. Now, while the most advanced spiritual people I know and have been blessed to be a student of have had pain, sorrow and illness in their lives, the thing is they do not suffer from them. They allow them to be. I am learning to let go more and more and it is easier to flow with life than to fight it.
In the movie ‘The Peaceful Warrior,’ the character Socrates said: “When life doesn’t give you what you want YOU suffer. Even if life gives you what you want, YOU still suffer because you can’t keep it.” Interesting game this human condition! Hahahahahah
Wherever we are in life, the awareness and capacity we have is enough to begin to become more aware, more present to what is, to allowing the moment to be as it is. Lao Tzu said ” the cure for the pain is in the pain. We just have to allow what is happening to happen, truly and not resist it. At this point, transformation can happen and we are entering the field of the now as a conscious being, truly living life to the full.
May you have a great life filled with love, joy and peace and please pass it on.
Namaste
Marcus A
