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The Art and Heart of Allowing - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 01, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Good evening, welcome, welcome everybody.

The Art and Heart of Allowing

Tonight I want to talk a little bit about this idea that mindfulness practice is about allowing. But when I was thinking about it, I was thinking, "allowing, that doesn't sound so interesting. It doesn't sound so much fun. It doesn't sound like this is something that's going to make me happy and make all my life run perfectly or something like that." Whereas mindfulness, at least it has that potential for something new and different.

It turns out that mindfulness is so much about allowing, not so much about going out there, manipulating, and making everything be fine and perfect so that our life runs perfectly. Because if you could do that, you would not be here on a Monday night, right? You would be out there making your life run perfectly.

There's this way which we don't even notice, and certainly I didn't notice, that we are so often, maybe even most often, in a subtle or an obvious way, saying no, no, no, no, no. The air conditioner is too cold, it was a little bit too warm earlier, or it should be quieter in the hall. "Nope, that should be, we should have a longer sit, we should have a shorter sit," or whatever it is. There's this little way in which we're always saying no to whatever we're experiencing. It somehow needs to be different. And I mean, of course, this is in obvious ways, but also there's so many ways in which this is really subtle.

When we start noticing all the ways in which we're saying no, and instead we allow—I'm not going to say that we have to say yes, but just the kind of softening the no—things really can transform and can change, will change, will transform in ways that can really make a difference for our lives, move us towards greater and greater freedom and ease.

So mindfulness practice is asking us, can we in some ways kind of align with the present moment? Can we align with the reality of the present moment? What's happening is what's happening. It doesn't matter whether we like it or don't like it. It doesn't matter whether we are obviously or very subtly trying to say no or "yes, I want some more, I hope this doesn't end ever." What's happening is what's happening. And it turns out that whether we allow it or not doesn't make that much of a difference. I'm saying "that much of a difference" because there's a way, the stronger that we're saying "no, please go away" in regards to our experience, the experience that we're having, the longer it'll stay. We've heard this expression, right? What we resist persists. It turns out this is true, much to our chagrin. That's exactly what we don't want.

I'm going to talk a little bit about this, but this idea of mindfulness is, I like this kind of expression, like aligning with the reality of the moment. When it's put that way, it sounds like, "Oh, okay, of course. Why wouldn't I align with reality? I don't want to be hallucinating. I don't want to be completely delusional. I do want to align with the reality of the moment." But there's this way in which we are so often, maybe we could say hallucinating—that's a strong word—but there's this way in which we have an idea about how things should be. This notion, completely in our mind, 100% in our minds: "it should be like this." And how it should be usually is related to the word "comfortable." It should be comfortable in some kind of way. And then what happens is we take this idea and we overlay it on top of the actual experience, and it never fits perfectly. And then we're like, "no, no, no, it should match this thing that I made up," rather than how things actually are.

This idea of allowing is to soften this idea of how we think things should be and tune into, become sensitive to, how things actually are. And you might think, "Well, wait, I'm doing that all the time. Of course I am." Are you really? Are you really tuned into how things actually are? Maybe there's so much of this subtle "yeah, but I don't want to." So mindfulness practice, and I would say we could even maybe expand this so much, we would say Buddhist practice is about allowing, because that's related to not clinging, which is related to freedom. Suffering is clinging.

So there's this way, can we like this allowing the present moment is just this simple, simple recognition of what is here, what's happening. This non-judgmental openness to the experience, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. Just this way of non-judgmental openness, like instead of a barrier, like "I want things to be the way that I want," having some openness. Maybe we might even say just welcoming experiences instead of slamming the door in their face. Like, "Oh, okay, here's what it is. Come on in, join the party," you know, that kind of an experience.

Allowing the present moment is also this way in which we're relaxing resistance. In fact, resistance might be so familiar to us that we don't even notice that we're doing it. We just notice that we're exhausted at the end of the day or that we have so much tension, because there's this way in which we are saying no. Maybe the body is saying no, even if the mind isn't overtly saying that.

We could say that allowing the present moment is a way in which we're creating space. We're allowing the present moment to be the way that it is and for it to unfold the way it's going to unfold, instead of us kind of pushing and prodding and manipulating and trying to make it be something. Instead, we're allowing it how it is. This means that we're putting down the urge, at least for that moment, to manipulate things and to make them different. We're like, "Oh, yeah, it's like this."

In this way, we're shifting our relationship to experience, shifting our relationship away from one that is trying to make sure that we're comfortable at all times. Which, you know, is not... of course we are, I want to humanize this. Like, of course we want to be comfortable. Of course we do. But it turns out that just chasing comfort isn't going to lead us to greater and greater freedom. Instead, it's going to lead us to just following our ingrained patterns more and more and more until they get more and more ingrained. And then if that doesn't bring you ease and freedom, then you're going to be going more and more away from ease and freedom.

So we're shifting our relationship. So rather than tensing up or contracting or trying to get more or less, there's this kind of opening up and just noticing. And maybe we're noticing with a flavor of kindness, like, "Oh, hello," or noticing with a sense of curiosity, like, "What really is going on here?" It doesn't mean that we're pretending like things aren't terrible when they are terrible. I mentioned this, I think, was it last week? I don't remember. I heard somebody say this and I thought it really caught my attention, this idea of the ways in which we gaslight ourselves. The way that we're like, "Oh, it's not so bad, get over it," when it is bad. We're not trying to pretend like things sometimes aren't awful. They are awful sometimes. This is the truth of the human experience. It's also the First Noble Truth, right? There is suffering. There is Dukkha¹. And sometimes there can be a relief, like, "Yeah, this sucks. This is not what I want. I wouldn't want this on anybody." Sometimes there can be a relief of just acknowledging what it is for just that moment.

It doesn't mean that we're not going to take care of things. And I'm also talking about allowing in the present moment. I'm not saying that we're just to be passive and to allow all the terrible injustices and oppression and all the awful things that are happening in the world. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just allowing this moment, this moment, our present moment experience. I'm pointing to the experience that we are having.

And when we do this, there's a way that we're bringing an attitude or quality of freedom into that moment. This is what freedom is, right? Freedom isn't that you ride a unicorn on a rainbow cloud or something silly like that. Freedom is still living a life, still having a human body, and yet it's not a problem. All the difficulties that arise, all the seemingly barriers or things like this, they're not problems. They're just what's arising next.

So there's a way in which allowing is bringing a flavor of freedom, an attitude of liberation, into this experience right now, instead of having this idea like, "Okay, yeah, there'll be liberation, you know, I don't know when, but it'll be later, sometime later." This activity of allowing is to bring it into here and now, because freedom is not being pushed around by our experience. Liberation is to stop making problems out of things. I didn't word that quite right. Liberation is where things aren't problems, they just are. They just are.

And so there's this way in which allowing allows us to not only bring this quality of liberation into our experience, but it also allows this quality of ease. We often don't notice how much we are resisting, as I said earlier, but that resisting shows up as tension. It shows up as a contraction in the mind and in the body. In the mind of like, "Oh, I got to get this, you know, go away, I'm trying to get this thing here." And that shows up as, you know, when I'm talking about it, my shoulders go up and my hands come together. This is how I kind of experience it when I'm really trying to get something and make everything go away. There's this feeling of tightness. So allowing is allowing a, "Yeah, okay, I can just be. I don't have to brace myself, I don't have to armor myself about what's happening." And so this way, there is less and less agitation, which is just a more pleasant experience.

There's this way in which if we have this idea, "Okay, allowing the present moment experience," it highlights how much we are not doing that, as I've been talking about. And then noticing how much we are not allowing the present moment experience to be just as it is highlights how much we are identified with wanting things a particular way. Our sense of self, our identities, is intimately tied up with how we want things to go.

There's a way in which, I talked about, we have these expectations that we overlay on top of our experience. These expectations, they arise out of a sense of ourself, who we take ourselves to be, how we understand what it means to have a good life, how we understand our interpretation of what it means to be anything: to be a parent, to be a sibling, to be a caretaker, to be an employee, to be an employer. All these types of things, they get tied up into our expectations, which then translate into our not being present for whatever is arising. Instead, we're trying to express our sense of self and make something happen in a way that aligns with our ideas.

For example, somebody in the role of a meditation teacher could sit down to meditate in front of a room of people and they might discover their mind was trying to solve something that happened earlier that they got to take care of. And then there's this idea like, "Oh my goodness, I'm supposed to be a meditation teacher. I shouldn't do that. This is terrible." And there's this way in which just something that naturally arose all of a sudden becomes a big problem. It has to go away. It would be something very different than, "Oh, yeah, okay. Of course the mind's busy because not too long ago there was a lot of trying to solve something that needed to be taken care of." There's this way in which we don't even notice how these different roles that we have influence our relationship to what's happening.

But there's this way that I also want to highlight that allowing present moment experience is transformational. It's not just a way to have greater ease, it's transformational. And when we are allowing the present moment to be just as it is and we're observing, watching, allowing, it allows that experience—whatever it is, racing thoughts, difficulties in the knee, trying to remember what was the fourth thing on the grocery list, whatever it is that's showing up—it allows it to transform. That experience will transform. If we're not tangled up in it, then it's just going to unfold and do what it's going to do next. When we get tangled up in it, then we're trying to manipulate it and massage it and manufacture it to be some particular way. But if we are able to just allow it to be, then it will unfold and transform itself. It will evolve, it will change, it will be different. The intensity will maybe get greater, maybe get less, maybe it will completely disappear. We don't know.

And there's something about just being present and noticing that change, that transformation of experience, that highlights a few things for us that we viscerally understand. It's not an intellectual understanding. One, we realize, "Oh, that experience wasn't as substantial as I thought it was." It has some insubstantiality. It just changed. Whereas perhaps we were thinking, "No, it's this big, heavy, black box that we can't see into," or something like this, right? Or it felt like it weighed us down. But then when we start to see it change, we realize, "Oh, it wasn't as solid as I was kind of relating to it as. It wasn't as fixed as I thought it was. It wasn't as impenetrable." In fact, it's different now.

And there's this way in which noticing the insubstantiality of these experiences—they are coming and going, going and changing—really changes our relationship to them. But not only to that, to everything. When we start to notice, "Oh, yeah, this sense of self is insubstantial also. It's always changing, just like those experiences are always changing." And when there's this noticing of the insubstantiality of it and the way that it's always changing, there's just a way in which there's naturally less clinging, less holding on, because it just stops making sense to hold on to something. Because things are like slipping through our fingers. "Wait, I want that experience," but that experience has already changed. And then we're trying to make it be that experience again, or we want another experience that we're not having and we can't quite grasp onto that either.

So allowing provides the opportunity, permits the observation, the witnessing, the seeing, the experiencing of how experiences shift, change, evolve, and have a quality of insubstantiality to them. And it also helps us, if we're allowing and seeing how experiences are shifting and changing and evolving, it also highlights, "Huh, we don't have to control everything. Things will do what they do, whether we're there or not." And there's something about seeing this again and again. "Oh, we don't have to control it. Things actually will unfold in the way they're going to unfold."

Humans, we want to control things. This is another way our sense of self shows up, as wanting to control things and make them go a certain way. That's related to this idea of laying expectations on top. But when we start to allow things to be, we notice that they start to change. That's the nature of everything, to change. We'll see it happen. We also realize, "Oh, yeah, actually the way it changed, I didn't imagine that, but maybe it's even better than what we were thinking." And so it allows us to step away from this secret desire to be the master of the universe. It allows us to maybe put down this sense of, "It's up to me to make everything right." Instead, we're just noticing, "Oh, yeah, okay, I don't have to be in the middle of it." Sometimes we want to be in the middle of it, thinking that, in fact, we're at the center of everything. But it can be a relief, like, "Oh, yeah, I don't need to make everything happen just the way that I want them to be." And there's a way that when we are trying to make things be a certain way, it's because we are looking at them as problems that have to be fixed. But if we're just allowing them to be, they're no longer problems. What a relief it is to not have so many problems.

I want to talk a little bit more about this, but before I go there, I want to say what are some of the pitfalls of this idea of just allowing the present moment. One is we can have this idea of, "Okay, I'm supposed to allow things to be," and then there's this cold detachment, like "I don't care." It's a way of kind of, it's a slight type of aversion. And that's not what's being pointed to. What's being pointed to is to be there, and maybe with some kindness and some curiosity. But there can be this way in which we might think, "Oh, I have to be cold, I have to be completely detached." That's not what's being pointed to here. It's not about detachment. Maybe there's no clinging, but that's not the same as detachment.

Or there might be this "good meditator syndrome" that might arise, this idea that we have an idealized idea of what a good meditator should look like. And then there's a way in which that creates this unnecessary pressure and creates criticism of ourself. And then we start to become not so interested in what's actually happening, but become interested in how we look, how we look to ourselves or how we look to others. And then we have a whole different relationship or a whole different orientation towards what's happening. So there might be some of those pitfalls.

But what are some of these supports for allowing the present moment and the way that it is transformational? Courage. Courage to move into the unknown. Often we're not allowing things because we don't know what's going to unfold. I'm talking about allowing things to unfold, but that means we have to recognize it may unfold in a way that we hadn't anticipated, that we hadn't imagined yet. And this requires a certain amount of courage, which often we don't want to do. Often we have this, we don't want to recognize the unpredictability of things. We want to think like, "Oh, yeah, okay, I know how this is going to go," or we want to be with the familiar. And there's a certain uneasiness that shows up if we're just going to allow things to unfold the way they're going to unfold.

So this requires some courage and some trust that if we're not in there trying to control things, that somehow everything isn't going to explode or implode or disappear or, I don't know what's going to happen. It requires a certain amount of courage, which maybe it also requires a certain willingness to be uncomfortable. If we're going to allow the present moment to be, the present moment sometimes is uncomfortable. Can we be okay with that? Can we be in a body that's uncomfortable? It's the reality of the moment. And this, sometimes we feel like, "No, no, no, no, no, I can't do this." But any spiritual practice, any practice actually that's going to point our life in a little bit different direction than just following our preferences, by definition has discomfort as part of it. So this idea of allowing is going to require some willingness to be uncomfortable.

It's also going to require that we cultivate some spaciousness. Cultivating some spaciousness, like observing experience without immediately jumping on it and identifying with it or judging it or something like this. Can we have some spaciousness, which we might also say is a type of equanimity, a type of ease? Maybe there's a way that we can cultivate this approach to uncomfortable experiences or to whatever might be happening in this present moment, this approach away from this idea, "Okay, I got to get rid of things that I don't like, or I got to get more of the things that I do like." And instead, to shift our relationship. What if we think about it as just shifting the relationship, rather than getting rid of and getting more of. No, we're just shifting our relationship to the present moment experience.

Allowing is a way in which, just for this moment, we're going to allow. So it's not a forceful elimination of any attachments we have, but instead, it's maybe just loosening any grip we have on our preferences. So this idea of maybe befriending our experience, instead of turning the present moment experience into the enemy. Is there a way that we can befriend it?

This allowing, it turns out, if we're able to do this, things move towards greater freedom and ease. It may not be the way that you prefer, it may not be in a way that's immediately clear how that is, but there is this movement towards greater freedom that can start with us just being tuned into what's actually happening in this present moment. And again, I'm talking about just this moment. I'm not talking about allowing all the terrible stuff that is happening in the world. I'm talking about your experience that you're having right then. Your experience. I'm not talking about ideas we have about how the world should be. I'm just talking about feeling the pressure of whatever you're sitting on against the body, the experience of the body breathing, the experience of having sounds, the experience of feeling the cold air coming out of there when the air conditioner is on. Can you allow that experience? Which is this way of allowing this sense of freedom into this moment.

And then of course, you might ask, "Okay, Diana, that sounds nice, but how do we even do all these types of things?" Mindfulness practice and loving-kindness practice. These are ways in which we just again and again return to what the experience is with some warm-heartedness. That's all that's being asked for us. This is the way in which we can allow freedom to arise, can allow liberation, peace, and ease to arise in the present moment.

So I'll end there and I'll open it up to see if there are some questions or comments. Thank you.

Q&A

Questioner 1: So for someone like a recovering alcoholic in a 12-step group, couldn't kind of a heartfelt "no," you know, couldn't that come in handy like to keep from losing his sobriety, for example?

Diana Clark: Yes, and especially if they feel, they allow that experience of a no, right? Yeah. So you're right. I'm pointing to allowing our experience in the present moment. And there is a way in which if they are in sobriety, they really don't want to [lose it] also, right? They don't want to lose their sobriety. There also is a way in which they have this addiction as well. But yes, of course we need to... I'm not saying say yes to everything. I'm saying allowing whatever our experience is.

Questioner 1: But I mean, if the experience is a pull toward the drink, and to just say, "no, no, no," you know, is that what you're talking about?

Diana Clark: It's... I think we're very close on what we're talking about, but something's a little bit different. It's maybe like to allow, "Oh, yeah, okay, here's that experience. I really want to drink. I really want to drink," and to feel that "really want to." And then you'll see that, that "Oh, I really want to," and allow it to arise and go away. This is not easy. I'm not saying this is easy. But it's a way in which if we're saying, "No, I don't want to," then we start to kind of deny our experience. And then as soon as we start to deny our experience, it starts to get easier and easier to get disconnected from ourselves and then go do things that aren't helpful. So there's a way in which to feel it, best we can, to feel the urge and notice how it gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and then it will eventually dissipate.

Questioner 1: But I'm thinking in terms of like damage control, right? So, you know, couldn't that "no" be the difference between having the drink and not in that moment?

Diana Clark: Just, yeah, of course, of course. Right. Damage control is important too. But I think what allows one to say no often is just to feel like, "Oh, this urge is here. And I don't want to do this. I'm working on my sobriety. And so here's the urge." And one way to be with the urge is just to acknowledge it and not act on it.

Questioner 2: Thank you. So one of the things I struggle with is physical pain, you know, and the act of being in the body can both accentuate that pain, but give me a means to feel it and and kind of let it go, right? So I think the Buddha suffered from gout, or I've heard that before, I don't know if that's true. And he had a bad back, he talked about his back hurting. Yeah. So I'd love to, you know, hear more about that and how this idea of letting whatever it is that we're feeling, of being whatever, spiritual beings going through a human experience or whatever, can help us with that. Because I certainly, you know, I wake up some days and it's just like, "Oh my God, this is miserable," right? But I don't want to let it just stop me. And so, you know, sometimes I sit here and I will go through and during the meditation, you know, stretch my foot, deal with whatever it is, you know, try to just kind of see, almost kind of meditate not on the pain, but, you know, meditate on how I can feel it and let it go, feel it and let it go. So anyway, just, you know, would love some thoughts on that if you know, others go through the same thing.

Diana Clark: Yeah, I would say there's a few things that we can do when there's a lot of physical pain. And to allow it to be there is... sometimes I like to talk about it and we can zoom way out. And that is to have a sense of, like, for example, there's a pain in the foot and there's, I can feel the pressure of the chair or the cushion against the body. I can hear the sound of whatever sounds there are. So, to kind of open up our awareness to notice a number of things. That can be a little bit hard because when there's a pain, there's a way in which we kind of tend to collapse into it and it becomes the only thing that we're focusing on.

So then I would say to, like, one way we might be allowing that experience is we then notice, for example, I'll just say pain in the foot, and we can bring some kindness and curiosity. And the curiosity can take the form of, "Is this like a stabbing, or is it a throbbing? Is it moving around, or is it just in one place? Is it a diffuse area, or is it a really precise area, you know, like a prick or something?" So just bringing some curiosity to it. And then this becomes our meditation. And it's not that we have to find all the answers, it's about kind of like shifting our relationship is to bring some curiosity to it, because that is the reality of the moment. There is this uncomfortableness. So you can zoom out, notice other things besides that experience. Zoom in, just get curious about the particulars and use adjectives that are descriptive, not necessarily mental words. Just focus on the adjectives.

And a third is, if it feels... this sometimes works for different people at different times, is to intentionally bring your attention to something that's neutral again and again and again. Neutral sometimes is like maybe the lips touching, or what the hands are touching, or maybe what the feet are touching. And sometimes even to just notice, you could even just like, "lips, hands, feet, lips, hands, feet." Sometimes maybe the pressure against the body can be a good one too. And maybe even at that speed, just to go from one thing to the next. Those are the reality of the present moment as well, but it's a way to give the mind some breather because it can be really hard, it's very taxing, right, to be with discomfort. So those are some things I'm offering of how to kind of be with the reality of the moment when the reality of the moment is a lot of discomfort and pain.

Questioner 3: So where I struggle with the idea of allowing is... oh, can you hear me? Yes. So the struggle I think with allowing is when a difficult thought or a difficult sensation or difficult emotion arises, I'll put on a smile and say, "You're absolutely allowed to be here," and I'll generate some feelings of kindness and perhaps fake the appearance of allowing. In the same way that if a guest arrived at my house and I said, "Welcome," and I'm holding a baseball bat behind my back. Um, there's still a deep-rooted "no," even when I pretend that I'm kind and compassionate and welcoming and allowing. And you know, I'm trying to allow, but really, really deep, that real subtle sense is, "I'm only doing this to get rid of you."

Diana Clark: Nice, nice that you recognize that.

Questioner 3: And so that's not... that's not budging.

Diana Clark: So this is fantastic that you recognize this. This turns out to be so common that we don't even know that we're doing this. So can you allow not allowing?

Questioner 3: Not allowing feels like this. It feels like holding a baseball bat behind my back while I'm saying, "Come on in," but I really don't want it to be here. Can you allow not allowing?

Diana Clark: Yes, but that seems like business as usual. Allowing not allowing might be what I'm already doing had I not been practicing any of this. Not allowing might be my default state. And so if I allow not allowing, that's just my baseline in the absence of any practice.

Diana Clark: I see. I think the difference is that without a practice, that's maybe what we're doing, we're just not allowing, but we're not aware that we're doing it. And what I'm pointing to is just being aware, "not allowing feels like this." Not allowing is, I can see, I've done certainly a lot of this, this sense of like, "I'll be mindful of this," and then not recognizing it's in order that it'll go away, right? This kind of thing. But instead just to recognize, "Oh yeah, there's that little thing underneath that's wanting it to go away," just as you're describing. So maybe what I'm pointing to is the recognition that you're doing that is helpful.

Questioner 4: It's almost like embracing that you have the bat behind your back. Acknowledging it. "There's a bat behind my back and it feels like this." And that's the allowing. Yeah, but and this part, "and it feels like this." So just notice.

Diana Clark: Yeah, and I think the feeling is the part that maybe we want to go away, and that's the part that you're allowing. And you have to embrace that. And like, one of the things I do is when that's coming and it's too strong and I don't want to feel that pain of the emotion or whatever is going on, I think to myself, "Oh, this is a pity party for one." And go, "Yeah, but this is real. This is what I'm feeling." And so being in that present moment, but not then judging it. Does that make sense?

Diana Clark: So you're saying when you notice that you're not allowing, is that right?

Questioner 4: No, when I notice that I am allowing, but then I want, like he was saying, to make it go away. Okay, I'm allowing it, but that's enough, number one, because now I'm feeling sorry for myself, or this is not helpful, right? But it is, because the pity party is the part of the allowing. Does that make any sense?

Diana Clark: We on the surface, it looks like we're allowing, we're trying to convince ourselves that we're allowing, but we're not really. I think this is what he was pointing to. We start to notice, actually, we're not allowing. And that's the present moment experience: not allowing. So I didn't quite understand the pity party part.

Questioner 4: You could get stuck there without allowing that it's not allowing, though.

Diana Clark: Oh, I'm sorry. So allowing the non-allowing. So if I am allowing all this emotion and I don't have the pity party part, it feels as if I'm, "oh, woe is me."

Diana Clark: Oh, so maybe the sense, if we're going to allow something that's very uncomfortable, an uncomfortable emotion, maybe there's a feeling like, "this is too much sadness or grief or anger or whatever." Here's the thing, things like this, if we are just allowing, they arise and pass away.

Questioner 4: But they come back.

Diana Clark: They don't come back exactly the same. They come back a little bit different. You are a little bit different because now you have a little bit more confidence because you've seen that happen. And it's never exactly the same. It's just the mind that's telling you, "No, don't go there. You've been there before." But it turns out it's the way forward. It's absolutely 100% the way forward. Things unfold on their own. They want to. It's only when we're tangled up with them that they, and we slap a label on them, that they seem like they're the same. But I'm not saying this is easy. And I'm not saying this is fast, that you just do it once and then these emotional difficulties go away. I am saying this is a way for transformation, absolutely.