Welcoming What Comes

People often ask me what the secret to my positivity is. When they do I share this with them. It’s probably the most simple and least known practice around. It’s so simple that it involves nothing less than being with and welcoming what comes, without judgement or any effort to change it.

When we welcome whatever it is that is arriving in us, without judgement, when we let ‘what is’ exist absolutely in our space, our being, our consciousness, then we begin to travel to the core of what is arising in us, and in doing so we initiate a very powerful process.

This process is very simply the process of letting go.

At first this appears to be a paradox. We welcome what comes without effort to change it in order to let it go. However, upon closer inspection, we can see that welcoming what comes is actually an integral part of the letting go process.

There are two other responses to what is arising in us that work to block the letting go process. The first is resistance and the second is identification. These are actually two sides of the same coin – the egoic mind’s attempt to grasp or push away – and they are based in fear.

Resistance usually involves judging something – some feeling, thought, emotion or experience – as wrong, and using our will or power to disallow it into our reality. I don’t want to feel sad, so I’ll drink more coffee, alcohol, or smoke another cigarette in the hopes that this might pull me out of my sadness. Or I’ll just push the sadness down, hoping it will go away. However, one of the basic laws of the universe is this: what you resist persists. This is true simply because whatever comes up in you comes up for a reason, and until you open to it, welcome it, it will continue to knock on your door.

Identification works to keep us stuck in modes of being that we think describe us, but ultimately do not serve our growth. In identification, we attach ourselves to an experience and seek our identity in it. Failing to see all things – thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences – as transitory, as simply passing through, we latch onto our experiences in an attempt to define ourselves. In doing so, we keep ourselves stuck in that experience.

When we open to and welcome what comes in its momentary totality, when we move to the core of our experience, our welcoming opens up a space in which this experience is allowed to move through, to pass. It is experienced fully, and then it is let go of.

Our natural state is one of open, joyful wonder. Just watch a baby or small child that you’re not related to for a while and this becomes apparent. Babies and small children are still in touch with our innate tendency to open fully to whatever is arising in us, and then let that pass to return to a state of open, joyful wonder. It is only as we get older that we learn to resist or identify with whatever comes.

Welcoming what comes is the practice we recommend on a detox retreat. As you are detoxing, as the body lets go of its toxic reserves, they come to the surface and are experienced as ‘symptoms’. The more open you are to welcoming and experiencing these symptoms in their totality, the more quickly they will pass, leaving you clearer, cleaner, fresher, and ready to receive new inspiration.

So it is with everyday living. Open yourself fully to whatever is arising in you today. You will find that it passes surprising quickly, and as it does some of that childlike wonder that you used to live in will return.