Not in the mood to listen or read? Maybe my recent watercolor painting will intuit what allowing time to unfold means to you.
A mother often laments that her baby is growing up, relinquishing the innocence of the first years.
An artist tenses up when realization that even the most beautiful of pieces cannot last forever, and never completely captured the magic of aliveness in the first place, but simply echoed it.
An Olympic gold medalist wonders why the medal ten years later can’t hold the moment in which it was placed around their neck.
For many, the day after Christmas brings with it a ghost of yesterday’s excitement hovering in the air. It is a bittersweet reminder nothing lasts, not even to those we so lovingly gifted presents.
We can not squeeze time to stop its unfolding.
There is no point in which we can grasp a moment. Trying to is akin to grasping sunlight—when your hand closes, the light disappears. When we allow time to unfold naturally, not grasping in a futile effort to make something stay still, do not we become not more peaceful, more calm?
The art of discovering how to allow the universe to unfold as it will is just that, an art. And art can be learned. We can teach ourselves to allow time in our experience to pulse and move, its winds lapping over each other. If we fine-tune our skill of allowing, we discover a strength. Not vying for power or status or happiness or away from happiness, we touch base to the magical flow of aliveness, an experience of joy in simply being alive.
Can we practice allowing the unfolding of the breath? Can we allow the unfolding of our thoughts? Are we capable of allowing the unfolding of our emotions, one at a time, as they bleed into one another?
How do realized yogis and yoginis of past and present discover this great Allowing? How do these people, no different from you or me, face reality as it is to come out on the other side, complete in peace and whole in wisdom?
After teaching for over two decades and drawing on my experience, I’ve observed that, when we taste the light of our worth, we nurture courage to Allow. We can begin that nurturing by starting with a physical calm. This is why practices such as Tai Chi and Yoga are so wonderful, as they usher us into a physical calm, and in the end, we learn Allowing.
Sending Light and Love,
Renee
The Great Allowing (and a short guided practice)