The New Consciousness
Allowing, Not Pushing
Question: "Ishvara, some spiritual teachers make it a point to push their students toward enlightenment, and to expose their ego so as to root it out. Yet it seems that you don't do this. Why is that?"
"I don't find that it is effective to push people, or to try to root out the ego. When you do that you make the ego seem real. The ego is not real. It is an illusion.
In our community we find that simply by allowing, people's conditioning rises to the surface. Suppose, for example, that someone in the community has an emotional outburst about something. The outburst comes from some past conditioning. If other people in the community see that outburst and react to it, the conditioning is given more energy. It is made to seem real, and a drama is created. But if the other community members do not react at all, the drama is cut off. The outburst has no place to go except directly back to the person who initiated it. And then that person is left with the stark awareness of the conditioning as it is, with no energy or reaction given to it. The person can now see it for what it is: an illusion.
If I were to try to push people toward enlightenment, that would be an agenda. It would be cause-and-effect thinking. I would be trying to manipulate them in order to achieve some result. That would be an exercise in conditional thinking. It would be the intellect trying to root out other people's ego, which usually doesn't accomplish much except to make the illusion seem more real.
Now, when I say that in this community we allow everything to be the way it is, and that we don't react to illusion, that doesn't mean that we enable the illusion to continue. Instead of reacting, we respond. If someone is standing in front of you screaming with rage, the most appropriate response might be to walk away. You don't help people when you enable their illusion to continue. So allowing includes allowing yourself to respond to the situation in the moment it is taking place. But allowing does not involve a reaction. A reaction occurs when you judge what is taking place, or when you get emotionally triggered by it. In a response, however, there is no judgment or emotional edge. There is just present-moment awareness, and out of that awareness the appropriate action occurs by itself.
Life is a synergistic process. Everything in Life is continually connecting and, unless we slow it down with beliefs and concepts, continually moving to higher and greater levels of connection. In this community, there is a pure knowing, or feeling-knowing, of this ever-expanding connection. This knowing is who I am. Because of this knowing, beliefs, concepts and doubts cannot take root here. Because of this knowing, the synergy is continually allowed to move to its highest level. And so when you have community members who are committed to an authentic surrender to The Consciousness, the synergy will constantly surface people's conditioning and programming. This is not something you have to try to do. It will happen on its own. Every illusion will be brought up and exposed. But in the synergy, this will always occur in the right place and at the right time. It's not something you can predict or manipulate, but you can allow it. And when you allow it, a most marvelous process of transformation unfolds. That is what occurs in this community.
The Consciousness is allowing-ness itself. It is pure allowing, from moment to moment. When we surrender to this allowing, we are transformed. Like a jigsaw puzzle, everything fits if we allow."