Being an Allower of Other People’s Pain

Much of the discussion of the Law of Attraction discusses the first part - how to keep our focus on what we want and not on what we don’t want, but I don’t hear as much about the second part, which is the Law of Allowing. This law states that we need to allow ourselves to be what we are and also allow others to be what they are. This includes allowing others to attract pain and suffering into their lives.

I only recently understood what the Law of Allowing meant - I got it whilst listening to an old Abraham Hicks recording, their Special Subjects series that was recorded 20 years ago! Previously I thought it was just about allowing us to attract what we want into our experience, but I hadn’t realised the significance of how it applies to our allowing of others to be what they are and attract what they will.

I have a chance to put this into practice today as a close friend of mine is currently undergoing surgery to have her gall bladder removed. This particular problem is just one of many physical ailments and injuries that she is wrestling with and when I see the kind of job she does (she is a police officer), the kind of negativity she is surrounded by every day, the amount of anger and frustration she feels at what I would feel are unimportant things, I am not at all surprised she’s under the knife right now but of course it would be natural for me to worry anyway.

However, I didn’t worry and felt calm about it and she’s come out of the surgery just fine so all is well.

When I first started learning of the Law of Attraction I thought of this friend of mine because she’s one of the most stressed people I know and seems to attract a never ending stream of crap into her life. She would seem to be a good example of somebody who negatively attracts. At first I wanted to try and help her but she’s also extremely down to earth and would dismiss any discussion along these lines as pure drivel. It would be a lost cause.

I have another friend who is having a really hard time financially and with both of these friends I kept asking myself what I could do about it to try and help them but eventually I gave up and when I listened to that recording I realised that I hadn’t been much of an allower. On the surface it sounds like being an allower means to simply not care what happens to other people but that’s not the case.

It’s quite subtle really - you can see something negative happening to somebody and care about them and even try to help them in some way if you are able but the key is the emotion you are feeling. If you are feeling their pain then you are not allowing. If you can care without feeling negative emotion and without letting their pain into your experience then you are being an allower.

I remember when I first watched The Secret I saw the sections about world events and it seemed to make sense that having a war against everything would just add more power to the things we were pushing against but it left me with the question, how do we alleviate those situations without just making them worse? Surely the moment we try to do something we are just pushing against the problem?

Not necessarily. First of all its always useful to look at a problem in terms of the desired solution rather than the problem itself. So for example, if you wanted to do something about world hunger you’d be better off joining an organisation that promoted “food for all” rather than one that promoted “end world hunger”. But aside from that, I think the real difference is again in our emotions. If it is possible to observe the problem and work towards a solution without feeling badly about what you are observing then you are making a change whilst still allowing the current situation to be what it is.

I’m not looking to solve the problems of world hunger but at least now I can be there for my friends without allowing their pain to add to my own.

Resistance, Acceptance & Effecting Change

One of the things I have been trying to do on an emotional level lately is to release resistance so I’m not always “fighting against” something. They said that what you resist persists and I have certainly found that to be true in my own life.

What is Resistance?

Emotionally speaking, resistance is not wanting something and more importantly, not accepting that it is there. We tend to resist against current circumstances, perhaps an illness that we are suffering, or somebody close to us is suffering. It might be not wanting to be in a particular job, not wanting to be in debt and so on. When we feel resistance it feels bad. The more I fight against something the worse I feel.

Acceptance and Change

The opposite is resistance is acceptance. Now there is a very subtle difference between acceptance and tolerance. Let’s say you are in an abusive relationship. The reality of the situation cannot be argued with so you resist it and you feel bad. However accepting the situation for what it is does not mean that you condone the behaviour of your partner or that you should tolerate it.

To tolerate something is to put up with it despite the negative emotion that lies underneath it. This does not feel good. There are many situations that we resist against that we have some power to change, though often this change would take time. If you are in an abusive relationship, in a career you hate, are recovering from some injury or surgery, there is some action that you can take to make a change to ease the situation for the future but that change will not happen overnight. What happens in the meantime?

That is where you can make the choice between resistance and acceptance. I’ve mentioned before that fighting against the current situation is futile because right now in this moment, what is, simply is and so to fight against it is pointless. The key to inner peace is to accept the current situation whilst doing whatever is within your power to make a change.

How to Release Resistance

I have certainly found myself increasingly able to release resistance and accept what is, but I’m not sure I can explain in words exactly how do to it but I’ll try :-) First of all, I would look at the situation and see what, if anything, could be done about it. I always like to start from a practical level. I would look at what I could do about a situation, plan out how I was going to do it and that in itself would make me feel better because at least I knew that I was doing whatever I could.

At that point, the rest was out of my hands. I’ve had many situations where I had very little control over the thing that was given me the resistance. For example, when I went through a relationship breakup, I had no control over what my partner did, or felt, or thought. There was nothing I could do about that. I could change my own behaviour but that is only one half of the equation in a relationship.

Once you get to the point where you have identified what you can do, if anything and figured out how and when you’re going to do that, there is nothing left but to accept the situation.

I found that the resistance usually manifested itself in one of two ways. It was either as that little ‘voice in the head’ that Eckhart Tolle talks about or it was simply a feeling - an emotion that would feel bad. The voice in the head used to be a big problem for me but I actually find this easier to deal with than just raw emotion because I can reason with it and if that fails I can quieten it.

Quietening The Voice in the Head

If you have a chatterbox in your head who drives you nuts going over and over the same stuff in your head then see if you can learn to quieten it down. I do this simply by concentrating on something else. You can concentrating on your breathing, or a background noise such as the traffic, a ticking clock, the hum of an electrical appliance and so on. If you practice this you’ll notice that the voice was quiet for a moment. It might just be a few seconds at first but its a start. I have been practicing this for several months and I have found that not only am I able to shut that voice up almost the instant it arises, but it simply doesn’t arise anywhere near as much any more.

Dealing With a Bad Feeling

Other times I don’t get the voice but just that feeling. This can feel like all sorts of different things - an eerie nagging feeling that something is not right, restlessness, frustration, or sometimes something much darker like a feeling of dread, fear or intense loneliness.

I used to just use distraction to try to get rid of the feeling - watching TV for example but I always found that to be short lived. It would temporarily cover up the emotion but it was still there waiting for me. My new approach is to try to look at the feeling. This is hard to describe. When I notice something I try to sense if I can feel it physically and usually I can. For example I have found that I feel loneliness in my chest, sadness in my throat, guilt in my stomach and stress tends to sit in my shoulders.

Once I can feel where in my body the feeling is, I just try to watch it and let it be. This is something else that is difficult to describe but I guess it is simply doing nothing - not trying to distract yourself, not trying to feel better by directing your thoughts, but simply sitting (or lying) quietly and watching the emotion for a while it can lessen a little. Over time, I have found that the feelings have lessened more and more.

Getting Comfortable With Not Knowing

Have you ever had a situation where something is about to happen, and it might turn out well or not so good but in the meantime you just want to know? It feels like you just can’t take the suspense? You just need to know one way or the other? What IS that?

When I was a child my 4-month old kitten went missing and I was incredibly distraught. Obviously I wanted the best outcome, I wanted to find her and bring her home but it was the not knowing that was really eating me alive. As the days drew on I just wanted to know one way or the other what had happened to her. If she had been run over then I just wanted to know. I remember on the first day she went missing I told my mother that I wasn’t going to bed until she was home! I would be damn tired now if I had stuck to that one! It was over 25 years ago and I never knew what happened to her.

This morning I’ve just got into one of those situations where something is happening, and it might go either way - good outcome or not so good. I’m actually fine with it going either way but i feel like I just really want to know! I don’t know when I’m going to find out what the outcome is. Hopefully it shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks but it might be several months! What is this need to know?

I decided to do a little bit of inward questioning to see if I could figure out what was going on and to see if I could give myself a bit of peace. I asked myself, if I knew today that it was a positive outcome, would I do anything differently today? No I wouldn’t, nothing would change today. Similarly, if I knew today that it would be a negative outcome, would I do anything differently today? Nope! And would I do anything differently if I went the rest of the day not knowing? Well no! So if it makes no difference what the outcome is and makes no difference whether or not I find out today, then what on earth am I getting in a tizzy over?

I don’t know!

There’s a kind of excitement at the possibility of getting a good outcome but there’s also a kind of excitement right now, just playng with the possibilities in my mind. I decided that all I could really do was simply notice what I was feeling and become okay with it. So I sat for a while, took some deep breaths, and just noticed that uneasy feeling, that wanting to know, and decided to just let the emotion be. After a few minutes it began to pass but it keeps popping back in again!

It’s just like that feeling when you’ve been on a job interview and you’re waiting to find out if you’ve got the job or not. You’ve already prepared yourself either way but t’s just that not knowing that gets to you. You feel like you’re in limbo until you know what the outcome is.

I’m sure other people get this. I’d love to hear about your experiences with it! Do you experence this feeling? Have you found a way to get comfortable with it?

I Don’t Care! A First Glimpse at Letting Go Of Attachment

I’m sure I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that I am not in a relationship right now and this has been quite a big concern for me. It seems to be one of those areas that I hold a lot of attachment around and seems to bother me more than anything else, but last night I got a glimpse that perhaps that attachment is breaking…

I’ve been working far too hard lately - working through the evening until I go to bed and I figured that I really shouldn’t just work all the time so I decided to make time for some recreation and I dug out a computer game to play on my PC.

Games are a resource hog (well the kinds of games I play are!) and so is Firefox so I had to close that down and just as I was about to shut it down I had a thought: I’m registered with an Internet dating site (yeah you can laugh!) and if I leave a browser tab open it leaves me logged in so I appear ‘online’ when other people login to the site. I noticed that I get a lot more messages if I leave myself logged in so I tend to just leave it open all the time.

So just as I was about to shut down Firefox it occurred to me that I’d be logged out of the site and as it was the evening, that is the time when people generally log on and browse the other people online so of course I thought, “oh no, if I’m not logged on my soulmate might not find me today!” Before I had even finished thinking it, my mind responded with “ugh whatever, I don’t care anymore”, and I shut down the browser.

Just then I noticed what happened - I didn’t care! I thought about it, was that true? Yes it was! I actually didn’t care. I know I’ll meet somebody at some point and at that moment I just wanted to play my game. I held that feeling for a while and I could feel the relief. The attachment was gone, I was no longer feeling desperate.

This morning is the same so I know a shift has happened which is great news but unfortunately I’m not really sure why. It could just be a matter of time. My last relationship ended four months ago which really isn’t very long and most of that time I have still been pining over my ex and I was not in a position to get into a new relationship anyway but I can see that as the time as passed I have gradually felt better and better about the situation.

However I’m not sure that it is as simple as that because I have been using time in a negative way. I’ve had thoughts run through my head such as, I don’t want to be single at Christmas, or even worse - on Valentine’s day and thinking that if I’m still single when I buy a home I’m going to be living all on my own and will be lonely. If a lot of time passed I’m sure my mind would start saying stuff like - why are you still single after all these months / years?

So, I doubt that it is not just time which has resulted in my shift. There are two other things that it might be. A couple of weeks ago I started reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Now I have to say that after A New Earth, I have found this book to be quite hard going. The truth hurts. Eckhart talks a lot about attachment and in particular, being attached to the idea that we need another person to be fulfilled and I could sense the resistance rising within myself when I read it but the more I have read the more I have felt at ease to perhaps Eckhart’s message is getting through.

Secondly, at the same time I also started experimenting with meditation. I haven’t been particularly good at it as I find my mind keeps wandering all over the place but I’ve done around 15 minutes most days and I have felt quite peaceful when doing it so that could also be a contributing factor.

Really though, I think its a combination of all these things. I have always known that being attached to the idea of finding the ‘perfect’ relationship was not particularly healthy and wanted to lose that attachment so every day I read, watch and listen to material that moves me towards this. My favourite authors right now are Wayne Dyer, Esther Hicks, Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. All these people have different things to teach but one thing they all have in common in their teachings is that everything we need is inside of us - nothing ‘out there’ can make us happy and that is the concept I have been living and breathing over the last four months.

It’s been a struggle sometimes and I would get very frustrated with myself that I hadn’t reached this ‘enlightened’ state that so many people talk about. I even posted about how I had decided to accept my non-acceptance! What I can see now is that back in May I started on a new path (I’m almost at that point in my weekly story series so I’ll explain all that later) but this is such a different state of mind to what I have ever been in before that it was unreasonable to expect to just radically change all my thinking in just a week or so after 36 years of conditioning.

It takes a while, its a gradual progression but as I have just seen, these little shifts are possible and sometimes a thought pops in your head which shows you the evidence of that shift taking place. So if you’re in a place of frustration right now, just keep at it and try not to be so hard on yourself.

You Should Never Worry About Anything - Ever!

In today’s post I want to talk about the emotion of worry. This is an emotion that I feel is not only completely and utterly useless but one of the most damaging emotions we indulge in. The worst thing is, so many people seem to spend most of their lives in worry!

Why Worrying Is So Damn Pointless!

Wayne Dyer has a wonderful way of explaining this. I am paraphrasing of course but he says that we whatever it is that we worry about will fall into one of two categories. Either we worry about something we have no control over such as the weather, the economy, the result of some political election, the behaviour of somebody other than yourself etc, or we worry about something we do have control over.

I think a lot of people worry about things over which they have no control and if you stop and think about this for a moment you’ll realise that there is really no point - if you have no control over the outcome then worrying about will do nothing to affect that outcome so it’s pointless. Now if the object of your worrying is something you can control to some degree then your energy is far better served in actually doing something about the situation rather than worrying about it!

No matter what you are worrying about - it’s always pointless, every time! I challenge you to find any situation where worrying about something can be beneficial!

Worrying is Not Problem Solving

Some people get confused over the definition of the word ‘worry’. The feel as though as long as they are facing some challenge that they need to keep their focus on it in order to find a solution to it. Focusing on a solution is a good thing but this is not the same as worrying about it. Worrying means to catastrophise, to think the worst, to agonise over the what if. What if the thing you are worrying about actually happens?

It can be useful to ask this question once or twice but not in that whimsical sense but to really and deeply ask yourself the question - if this thing I am worrying about actually happened, what would I do? For example, right now I want to buy my own own but I don’t yet earn a high enough monthly income to afford the living expenses. As a precaution I am going to keep back a large chunk of the equity from my previous home as savings so that I can live off it when my income is lacking. I’ll have enough to last me almost 2 years.

However every now and then I notice a little worrying thought pop into my head. It asks “what if I never earn enough and I eventually run out of money?” After I had noticed this thought pop up a few times I decided to really answer it. Ok what if I do run out of money? Simple - I’ll sell my house and go back to living with family like I am right now. Sure it will suck but I will survive. The chances of this happening are very slim but if it does happens then I’ll just deal with it so that’s it now - subject closed, no more worrying.

7 Years of Worrying Over Something That Never Happened

I have personally had a very profound experience with the futility of worry that I have already talked about recently. In the last of my story posts I talked about my experience at University and how I found a job after I graduated.

The period of time between me throwing away my career due to my own stupidity and my re-launching my career with my new job was seven years. Here was my worry - how on earth would I explain the fact that I was fired from my job for gross misconduct when going for a new job? What would I say? I didn’t want to discuss the details of what I had done but surely I would have to? How could I show that I was a changed person?

In those seven years I must have lived through that job interview in my head thousands of times and let me tell you, this was absolutely torturous! I tormented myself day after day for several years worrying about this stuff. The tragedy of it, (well its a good thing!) is that the thing I worried so much about never even happened!

As I said in my post, my University lecturer lined up the job interview for me, and did all the talking on my behalf. I never even had to talk about it - not once! I was so relieved when I was offered the job but in that moment I also lamented all those years of worrying and from that point on I vowed that I would never worry again!

But What If It DOES Happen?

So bloody what? Seriously! So what? Do what I did - face it. Face your very worst fear and ask yourself what would you do if your fear actually transpired. You might decide that life would suck but do you really want to waste your present moment living that fear?

Even if the thing you are worried about does come about you’ll have plenty of opportunity to deal with it at the time but there is no reason to ruin your present moment and this is what so many people do. They go through their whole lives worrying and it really doesn’t matter if the things they are worrying about come to pass or not because in their minds they are living out their fears every day anyway! This is nothing short of torture - don’t do it to yourself!

In my case I had a good dose of guilt thrown into the mix as well but once I got my new job I was able to let go of that guilt too.

Why Worry is So Damaging

Worry is a negative emotion and the state of mind that it promotes never produces solutions. You tend to over-dramatise the event and make it seem much worse. There is a big difference between making some kind of contingency plan and worrying. If I can’t afford my monthly expenses then I will be in trouble but I have made a contingency plan to deal with it. Of course I had to think about the problem to come up with the plan but that is not the same as worrying. Worry just asks endless questions and never produces answers.

If you are a believer in the Law of Attraction then I’m sure you can also see what kind of vibration worrying gives out. If you look at a problem over and over again and imagine the worst possible outcome then that is what you are going to manifest! In the four years before starting University all I did was worry - I couldn’t see any way out of my job situation and I stayed right where I was in agony. It was only when I started to see a way out of it that I was able to begin shifting my vibration.

Rather than spend every day imagining myself in that dreaded interview situation I just imagined myself in my new job. Of course, back then I didn’t know about the Law of Attraction so I did a fair bit of both but luckily you don’t need to stay positive all the time in order to manifest what you want - as long as your dominating thoughts are on what you want rather than what you don’t want you should be moving towards what you want, even if its slowly.

When you worry your mind is focused directly on the thing you don’t want! Even if you are not convinced about the Law of Attraction I can tell you from experience that worrying feels decidedly BAD and seeing as life should feel good, do yourself a favour and ditch the worrying and think about something that feels better - like chocolate or strawberries, preferably the latter dipped in the former :-)

Learning To Deal With The Fear Of Change

Another little pearl of wisdom that I have been hearing a lot lately is that the fear of change causes us great suffering. Why? Because things are changing all the time, nothing ever stays the same so unless you learn to embrace change you will always be suffering.

This Too Shall Pass

We often hear those words when going through some kind of crisis. It can be very helpful to remember that nothing lasts so no matter what kind of crisis you may be going through, it cannot endure forever. Of course, this also applies to the ‘good stuff’ too and that is where people get themselves into a bit of a pickle.

Looking at my own life, I can see that I am somebody who resists change. I like to get settled, to get myself into a nice routine, surround myself with the familiar and just sit in my little bubble-wrapped comfort zone. The problem is that as soon as I start to get everything into place just as I want it, something will happen to upset my nice balance - something changes.

This has been going on for years and it’s only literally been in the last few months that I finally figured out that it is always going to be like that!

Everything Operates In Phases

In my last post I talked about how everything in our life expands and contracts, even life itself. As we go through life things change around us. For those in a typical western society it might start with school then perhaps some higher education, getting a job, getting married, having children, mid life (whatever that is!), retirement and so on.

When we fear the new phase it causes us pain. In many cases there’s even a name for this fear such as the “mid-life crisis”! The problem is that the ever changing phases of our life are inevitable. Of course some changes are more subtle than others. For example our bodies are changing all the time so as the days go by we might notice the odd new wrinkle or grey hair but we usually don’t wake up one day and look 20 years older.

Other changes can be a major culture shock - a new job, a child, a relocation, the breakdown of a relationship, a death etc. These are of course much more difficult to deal with but deal with them we must because absolutely everything must come to an end at some point in time.

Everything is Temporary

After the breakup of my last relationship I was so traumatised that I was desperate to prevent myself from ever having to go through that experience again. I figured that in my next relationship I would have to make sure we stayed together forever! But of course it didn’t take me long to figure out how absurd that was!

To start with, no matter how suited two people can be, things can change. Even if I did find somebody who would be perfect for the next 40 odd years, she might get run over by a bus! Even if we made it to our old age, there would be an extremely high possibility of one of us dying before the other.

Nothing in this world can last forever! No life form, no relationship, no job, no structure, no social status - nothing!

There are some things that do indeed last a very long time but there is still change. Jobs change, people change, friendships change, political parties change, social establishments change, holiday resorts change. Everything, no matter how large or small goes through a natural process of change throughout its existence.

Attachment To Temporary Entities Is a Recipe For Pain

A subject I have been talking about in recent posts is that when we become strongly attached to something, we inevitably suffer when we lose it and so when we couple that with the knowledge that everything in this material world is temporary that’s a pretty gloomy way of looking at things!

Or is it? I’ve been reading some books on happiness and one of the principles seems to be that true happiness needs to be found inside of ourselves and now I can see clearly why that is. If our happiness depends on all those temporary things then we will eventually lose something and suffer as a result. If we can learn to experience a deep sense of inner happiness no matter what goes on around us then we will always be happy.

But HOW do we do that?

That is what I have been working on over the last couple of months. What I have found is that knowing that things will change, knowing that people will move in and out of my life, knowing that I get a little older each day has lead me to a certain sense of acceptance. I can just surrender now because I can’t control all that stuff! I know that life will throw me more curve balls somewhere along the line and when it happens I’ll deal with it then.

In the meantime I have stopped worrying about all the stuff I have no control over and just work on what I can control.

My Acceptance Of My Non-Acceptance

There is a common theme in a lot of the reading that I have been doing recently. The Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer and others all have this to say:

“Trying to fight ‘what is’ right now is futile and will bring you nothing but suffering”.

This is so true because what is, simply is! The past cannot be changed and the present is what it is. All we can do from this point is move forward from where we are right now. On a conceptual level this makes perfect sense to me.

No matter what the situation is, whether you are single and don’t want to be, or you’ve been fired from your job, or you’ve lost a friend or family member, or you’re suffering from an illness or you have a mountain of debt, etc etc. That is what is it and in this very moment it cannot be changed so why fight it?

Because fighting it is human nature. It’s not fair. Like sucks. Life is hard. I DON’T WANT IT TO BE HOW IT IS! I was in this place this morning. Over the last few months I have been doing pretty well at adjusting to my new life circumstances (I’ll share more about that in my story posts that I’ll be publishing on Fridays) but sometimes I just can’t keep it up.

Sometimes I regress to a five year old and I cry and kick and scream and get very frustrated, impatient, miserable, and generally wallow in self pity. The problem is I ‘know better’ than this now. Because of what I have learning, my belief is that the energy you put out into the world comes back to you so if you just focus on fear and frustration and misery that’s what you’re going to get back.

So then what happens is that I get frustrated at myself for feeling frustrated! I know that I shouldn’t be indulging in negative thoughts and then I start to get scared that I’ll attract more crap into my life for feeling that way. All I am doing here is creating another layer of fear and frustration over the original causes of those emotions. How ridiculous!

Therefore I have now decided that if I can’t accept my current circumstances, then what I can do is accept my non-acceptance! I accept that I am not perfect, that I can act like a spoilt child at times, and that I am wallowing in self-pity when I have a million things to be grateful for. Yes, I am human, I make mistakes, and sometimes I don’t learn from them.

Furthermore, I accept the fact that even if I am willing to undergo a lifelong journey in exploration of a life that feels good that it is entirely possible that I will continue to make mistakes and get frustrated with myself for the rest of my life. I might never reach that enlightened state that certain gurus seem to exude as I mentioned recently.

You know what? That feels better! I’ve let myself off the hook and when I did that I felt a lessening of resistance. Okay so I am still resisting my circumstances but not all of the time. It’s just moments – an hour here and there. The rest of the time I am generally feeling positive and making changes in the areas of my life that I can control.

Of course I already knew this too, I seem to recall having a conversation along these lines with a friend recently but I forget my own advice! Well that’s just human nature too! And that’s also okay. Maybe I should go back and read my own blog hehe.