For many years I’ve been directed to witness and welcome objects as they appear in awareness . “Welcome them as they are, without trying to change them, without becoming involved”. And for all this time, I was sincerely convinced that I was completely welcoming all of my thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions as they appeared.
Turns out, I was wrong. I wasn’t doing this at all. I was witnessing my experience but I definitely wasn’t welcoming it.
True welcoming is different than witnessing. True welcoming consciously merges with and becomes that which arises. We have a choice to go along with life or go against it. Ego/separation is against life. Love/awareness is with life. Merging (or, “allowing”, “welcoming”, “going with”) with what appears doesn’t change what appears, it simply changes our relationship to what appears. For most of us, there is a very subtle, almost imperceptible (at first) rejection of life as it is. That is separation.
I just recently noticed how much I don’t want things to be as they already are, especially on the level of bodily experience. My mind would fixate on “allowing” and “being okay with” the discomfort of bodily experience while energetically, I was rejecting it completely (sounds like… I DO NOT WANT THIS). This noticing brought about a massive shift in my experience. For a moment, I was able to simply sink into, go along with, merge with, the deeply unpleasant experience in my body. This very quickly brought about immense peace and happiness… a strangely joyful state that I don’t think I’ve experienced before. The sensations remained exactly as before but my rejection of the experience vanished & this changed everything.
Yes, all these years I imagined I was welcoming and allowing. What I was actually doing was using spiritual language to continue rejecting my experience of life and justifying it. Now, there is a dance taking place. A dance between an unconscious pattern of rejection (attempts to maintain control over what IS) and a more conscious letting go and trust that I can move freely with life.
Scott has been sharing many tools lately that point to this crucial aspect of our work & I encourage everyone here to really look into this. This level of resistance/rejection is very sneaky. It doesn’t want to be found out! It’s the well-kept secret that keeps us locked in suffering and separation.