Permission
What does giving myself permission mean?
The verb permit apparently arose in the early 15th century from Old French permetre, directly from Latin permittere.
"let pass, let go, let loose; give up, hand over; let, allow, grant, permit," from per "through" (from PIE root *per- (1) "forward," hence "through") + mittere "let go, send"
The Usual Pressure
When I awoke this morning, my neck was tight and I had a headache. The latter was gone after Tylenol and meditation. But all the muscles being held tightly had had the effect of the discomfort and pain. Dreams had been troubled, perhaps as a result of watching before bedtime the last two episodes of Blue Lights and a spirited discussion with my husband about some of the downsides of police hierarchy.
That wasn’t all. There is a lot running around in my head at the moment. Work-related concerns, choir songs, Being With organising, thinking of family and friends.
The usual pressure. The usual stress. Leading to a troubled heart, mind, spirit - and stressed body.
Another Way of Being
I found this yesterday on Rupert Spira’s Substack:
In meditation, we don’t try to get rid of or even change the content of our experience. Rather, we just relax the focus of our attention. We cease being exclusively interested in the content of experience.
What happens to the content of experience, to our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so on? It doesn’t matter; they just carry on doing whatever they have been conditioned to do. We just cease giving them our love and attention. We give our love and attention to our being instead.
Staying Home in the Heart of Being
Nothing has gone anywhere. Thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and other parts of the usual pressure just continue doing the things they do. What changes while we meditate or otherwise let go is that the love and attention we normally provide to them stops, in favour of loving and attending to our being.
That sounds to me like permission, at a deep level. Allowing myself to be precisely as I am today, the thoughts and some song or another running around in the background; ambient sounds like the hum of the refrigerator or the snoring of the cat at the periphery of my attention; muscles tentatively letting go and automatically re-tensing and being let go; and whatever feelings that come and go, impatience, relief, acceptance.
The main event though is being itself, residing peacefully under all the layers of thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc.
Permission tastes like freedom.
Am I Free?
Over the years I have had lively discussions with a number of friends about whether humans truly have free will. One friend in particular I am thinking of at the moment usually argues that no, everything is pre-determined. Freedom is an illusion.
There are certainly a lot of limitations on the human being. I cannot fly. At this age and physical condition, I cannot skip, or run fast. I cannot do more than one thing at a time or be in more than one place at a time. There are emotional, psychological, and spiritual limitations in addition to the physical.
I do not know whether or not he is right, and I am truly unfree. But I do know the feeling of freedom in letting go, even just seconds or minutes at a time, of the thinking and doing that mostly has me enthralled.
Complete Guide to Five Levels of Human Motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Another discussion I have often had with that friend is how all these explorations of being and meaning are predicated on the privilege of having physiological, safety, love/belonging, and esteem needs taken care of.
This is not true for billions of people on the planet who struggle daily for food, clean water, a place to live, enough sleep to function, safety, love, and to feel ok in themselves.
Privilege means assuming as given that the bottom four levels of the pyramid are taken care of so I can blithely pursue my self-actualization and wellness goals on a daily basis.
What a beautiful life I live. How often do I forget all this wealth of choice at my disposal.
Great Responsibility
Many today are more familiar with the concept of great power meaning great responsibility through the Spider-Man Marvel franchise. However it is an ancient concept, going back at least as far as the first century legend of the Sword of Damocles and the words of Jesus in Luke 12:48b:
παντὶ δὲ ᾧ ἐδόθη πολύ, πολὺ ζητηθήσεται παρ' αὐτοῦ, καὶ ᾧ παρέθεντο πολύ, περισσότερον αἰτήσουσιν αὐτόν.
To whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked.
Complexity
How did I start with permission and letting go and freedom but end up with all this responsibility?
Nothing is unmixed.
I come full circle to where I began, and enjoy the sense of being “seeping through”, something like what Paul Simons sings of music seeping through in this old song.