While I was preparing to facilitate a Radiant Mind weekend here in Nelson, a man called me up one day and asked, “What is Radiant Mind? What is this thing called unconditioned awareness?”

I never know what I’m going to say in response to that question. In that moment, I replied, “A lot of the Radiant Mind work is about learning how to be with what is.”

“Really?” he responded. ” Just being with what is? It sounds so simple.”

“Yes,” I said, “It’s incredibly simple, and our willingness to be with what is lies at the heart of our capacity to access non-dual or unconditioned awareness.”

Later on that day, my daughter came over after school. She is taking a program that has nothing to do with non-dual awareness. “What are you learning right now, in your course?” I asked her. “Oh, she said, “It’s amazing what we are doing. We’re learning how to be with what is.”

That was quite a moment for me, because my daughter, up until now, has not been at all interested in any kind of spiritual practice. I realized that ‘being with what is’ is at the heart, not only of non-dual awakening, but  of all healing and transformation. Until we can be with what is, we live in a state of conflict, struggle, and sometimes, violence.

After that moment with my daughter, a question bubbled up inside me and wouldn’t go away. I started to wonder about willingness. Where do we find the willingness to be with what is, when what is can be so uncomfortable, terrifying, and painful? Our whole survival system is designed to move us away from pain. It seems so counter- intuitive to just rest in what we have been trying to avoid, suppress and deny. Where do we find the willingness to be here, just as we are?

I was working with a woman recently who was really struggling with anxiety. I’ll call her Sara. The first time we met I asked her what she had already tried. “Well,” she said,  “Here we go: I’ve tried meditation,  I’ve tried hypnosis, I’ve tried therapy, I’ve tried medication, I’ve tried past-life regression, I’ve tried Emotional Freedom Therapy, I’ve tried yoga and deep breathing, and I’ve tried alcohol and cocaine.”

“What a  great list, ” I said. “How did all of those things work for you?”
“They didn’t” she said, “They worked for a while, and then they stopped working.”

“Now you know.” I said. “You don’t need a book or an expert to tell you this–you can speak from your own experience. This is the secret that most people don’t want to know: we cannot control our experience in the way we would like to. We can’t get rid of things that way. It’s not that there’s something wrong with us-it just isn’t possible. The more you try to control anxiety, the worse it gets.”

“Then what do I do?” Sara asked. She was a  beautiful young woman, a singer, who wanted to be able to sing in front of people without being crippled by anxiety.

“You stay with what you already know, ” I told her. “Your anxiety is not going away, and neither, obviously, is your desire to sing. So you have one possibility before you: learn how to get up in front of these people, and be with your fear. Change the demand that you are carrying, the part of you that says I have to be in a perfect state before I do what I really want to do. You’ll wait forever if you believe that part of your mind. ”

We spent a few months together, working with her willingness to be with her anxiety, not to push it away, but to welcome it, and allow it to move, flow and vibrate as she sang. Again and again she bumped up against a place of hopelessness in relation to her anxiety, a feeling that she should really be able to control this thing, get a handle on her fear. Whenever she reached that hopeless place, we would sit there together.  It was clear to me that this hopelessness was not a bad thing. It was a potent reminder that everything she had already tried has not really worked. She would encounter the hopelessness, and then move through it to a place where she was once again willing to be with her fear.

I noticed how much easier it was for me to work with her whenever she remembered that controlling and managing her own experience had not helped at all. I started to feel this living, breathing energy emerging through the hopelessness. It was as if some part of her was emerging, some aspect of her being that was truly willing to be with herself, just as she was, without fighting and struggling to get rid of anything.

Along with this rising energy, I noticed a lot more kindness, a tenderness in the way she was relating to herself. Whenever we are focused on changing what we feel, there is a basic antagonism in the whole field of our energy, because we are at war with our own experience. For Sara, anxiety had been the enemy for a long time. Now she was learning how to welcome it, in spite of everthing her conditioned mind was trained to do.

I started to experience this hopelessness as something creative, authentic and empowering. It’s an edge that we all meet, in our learning and evolution-a place we normally want to avoid. But until I can really see what is not working, until I can allow myself to feel the cost of what I have been unsuccessfully trying to do, I’ll keep on doing what I’ve always done.

When Sara finally gave her performance, it was the best one of her life. She spoke of what is was like to be up there in front of a group of people,  knowing that she could be fully present and sing from her heart, without having to make the fear disappear.

When we start to recognize in our bones, in our hearts and bodies, that there are no enemies within us, everything starts to change.  We can pull out the white flag and wave it, we can release our ongoing need to fight and struggle and judge. We actually start to trust the healing, liberating power of awareness.

This is good news. Another way is possible. A way of gentleness, non-violence and deep friendliness.

When I was much younger, living  in an ashram in the Himalayas, I put myself through all sorts of austerities and self-torture in the name of  awakening and healing. I really believed that’s what I had to do. I probably would have slept on a bed of nails, if I could have found one.

After many many years of this, I encountered a great deal of hopelessness and defeat. And I realized there was another approach. In those days I called it “The Soft Way.” I didn’t really know what it was, but I could feel it calling to me. I couldn’t open to it for a long time.  It took a lot of defeat and hopelessness before I could really enter the soft way.  It stills feels like a miracle to me, after so many years of the hard way.  I’m so grateful that I discovered this way, even though it took me most of my life. Some of us are slow learners. I’ve had students and clients who were much quicker than I was to fall into the soft way.

Of course we still slip back into struggle and control, but that’s okay. In every moment, the possibility is born again: to remember the truth– I am not in control, and all of my power and freedom lies with my willingness to be with what is.

love
Shayla