Allowance

Umm, no, I don't intend by "allowance" that I'm going to give you a dollar a week if you do your chores! We are working our way around our upside down triangle, and we've made it to the bottom point: Attraction, Intention, Allowance. This universe of ours functions on a principle of allowance. Allowance is the opposite of controlling. Our universe is not a controlling universe. It is an allowing universe. One aspect of this allowing character or principle or “law” of our universe is the range given in it to our free will by the source of all. We can do pretty much anything we can do. This is not to say we should do anything that we can do, or that it is a good idea that we do anything that we can do, or that it is morally right to do anything that we can do, or that we will not suffer enormously if we choose to do anything we can do. Yet the fact remains that the rains fall on the just and the unjust. We are functioning in an allowing universe.

For the last two posts I have been going on at length about intention. If we are wanting to operate in accord with universal law, and in so doing take advantage of its awesome flow and intellgence, once we formulate our deliberate intent, it is essential for us to allow the intelligence of the universe to step in and have sway with our intention. Once we form and charge our thought-emotions, we must take our cue from universal law and allow it some space to manifest. Allowance is a principle which, when we act in accordance with it, feeds back to us with a mighty torrent of support for manifesting our intention. You could call it the key to having your prayers answered, if you want to put it in such terms. Make your prayer and let go of any idea of how it shall be answered. That’s for G-- to figure out. Any christian has probably heard a sermon or two on the fact that it helps your cause little if you ask for help with a problem and then provide a long and detailed list demanding exactly how and where and when and why the solution should happen, and demand that it be so. Such sermons rightly come to the bumper-sticker conclusion, Let go, and let G--.

The conclusion is right because it is teaching with a different set of metaphors the truth of the universal law of allowance. We humans with our free will and all possess a certain kind of intelligence, the key characteristic of which is the ability to consciously intend something. One of my favorite teachers on this subject, who approaches the issue from a somewhat different slant than Daskalos, is Machaelle Small Wright, who has written numerous books, my favorite among them being Co-Creative Science (see her website).

Perelandra

(Footnote: In deference to my various teachers, who may or may not even know me, I site their works out of respect for those who have helped me build a set of ideas and experiences which I can share. I do modify their ideas considerably, however, and am not always conscious of how. Probably sometimes I modify them because I never understood what they were really saying in the first place and they might cringe to hear me say “I got this from you!” Sometimes I think I am modifying something when in fact I am just repeating it nearly exactly. And sometimes I am modifying an idea because when placed in the context of my synthesized position, it takes on new meanings which are also helpful. So whether I am paying tribute to the Pathwork Lectures “guide” or Levent or Daskalos, or M.S. Wright, or whomever else I may refer to in these writings, feel free to give them a read or listen yourself, and evaluate their teachings from your own perspective as well as mine. I have lots more to learn from many resources, and remain continually grateful for having come upon so many truly wonderful teachers in my life, whether through books, or schooling, or inner listening.)

In Co-Creative Science, Machaelle coherently identifys this intending capacity of human intelligence as our ability to give definition, direction and purpose, whereas nature’s intelligence is characterized by its capacity to implement through matter, means and action the order, organization and life vitality of a given intention. You’ll have to read the book to unpack that last sentence! Let’s just say for now that we are really good at intending, and nature is really good at organizing the means whereby our intentions manifest. Conversely, nature is not too swift at intending, and we are sorely deficient in the “how to” department when it comes to manifesting our intentions practically. The moral of the story is, stick to what your good at. When we attempt to control the manner in which our intentions are fulfilled, we place exceeding limits on the efficiency with which we manifest our intentions. When we allow nature to have its way with the manner in which our stated intentions are manifested, things happen with surprising ease in an order and manner and timing that may astonish us. Many of the problems which we struggle quite relentlessly to solve would resolve themselves with much greater efficiency under the auspices of nature’s intelligence, if we would just let go of our propensity to control things about which we really have very little understanding.

It is true, of course, that we will stumble forward in our progress, despite our propensity to control how everything will happen that we intend. We just make it so darn hard, by insisting on doing things our way, instead of the way of the universe. If you not only engage the laws of attraction and deliberate intent, but engage the law of allowance as well, the universe will step up to the plate to fulfill your intentions so fast it will make your head spin! Mostly, we attempt to control the manner of outcome of our intentions from the egotistical presumption that we really know best, and mustn’t leave outcomes to “chance,” as if nature falters forward itself in ignorance, and that the redwoods soar for a thousand years due to a bland combination of “survival of the fittest” and fortuitious genetic accidents. We overrate our own intelligence and underrate nature’s intelligence. We shut our eyes to universal law and close our ears to divine law, and then wonder where the mess came from, and blame god for not watching over us!

The fact is, this universe is set up so that we too can soar, if we would stop clipping our own wings. Beyond the fear that our intentions will be left unmanifest without our putting our two-cents in at every turn about how things should come to pass, and beyond our egostistical presumptions about our intelligence and nature’s lack there0f, there is a third reason that people choose a modus operandi, control, which is diametrically opposed to universal law (allowance).

When we consciously intend something which is contrary to the divine will pleasure, when we define starkly immoral purposes in the exercise of our free will, in order for such intentions to come to pass, we must swim upstream against the divine currents and the universal flow, and implement measures of control, because we are purposefully bypassing the natural order of things. Because nature is in constant alignment with the divine will pleasure, not having a free will with which to entertain contrary intentions, it doesn’t readily line up to support intentions which are contrary to that same divine will pleasure. But like a beaten mule, it will do the bidding of a misanthropic steward if sufficient energy is introduced on the part of the steward to force an outcome to its liking. Those who wander this planet consciously intending ill for its inhabitants, and those who formulate harmful intentions and undertake plans based upon intense greed and lust for power over others (history and the present have never lacked for such characters in the human drama), these ones must also implement vast schemes of control in order to accomplish purposes for which the universe does not readily align itself, being so utterly contrary to the divine will pleasure. This is actually good news, because the fact is that it is impossible to control completely a universe filled with free will agents, a universe structured by the principle of allowance, a universe where the divine will is always an active principle.

Control comes in many forms, and while it is true that there are those milling about this planet who have grand plans to accomplish chiefly centered around the need for control, control comes more commonly in day to day, garden variety forms with which every one of us is painfully familiar. We all buck the flow with our day to day attempts to exercise control where it is not our place to do so. At this point some might go too far and mistake the rightful exercise of our talent for generating direction and purpose as a propensity to control. When our willing is not checked by alignment with the divine will, it can become willfully controlling. The matter is really quite simple, though. When we intend, we must allow, if we desire to enjoy the full advantages of life in accord with universal law.