UK Course Module 7

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Keywords for Yes

Permission
As a birthright, it is rather to be assumed that an individual has a certain authority to forbid. The rights given and protected both by law and common practice have to do with not being violated, and not being denied access to what is needed for survival. If there exists the authority to forbid and it is relaxed, there is permission. Permission suggests allowing. Someone, perhaps in authority or exercising the individual’s birthright, suspends the right to refuse and is willing to allow the request of another. In response to the application of a person who wants something from us, the process by which we come to relax our attitude from No to Yes can be called negotiation.

Acceptance
Often what we are asked to accept will go against what we have come to believe in or expect. Of course, otherwise there’s nothing to accept, because we agree. Our suspicion of change and the inertia of our love of the familiar are often very strong. Acceptance suggests the need to be more open than we were before in order that our awareness of possibilities is expanded. Without such openness we are constrained within what is available and we would therefore be limiting not only the scope but also the likelihood of our vision-fulfilment. Surely it is clear that in order to change our circumstances we have to change ourselves? This inevitably requires us to accept new factors into the equation of lives.

Agreement
Agreement is harmonious alignment. I want what you want, we both want the same. An exchange that takes place under these conditions is rather special. Each party is inclined towards saying Yes, they seek opportunities to agree, they actively promote harmony out of an inner sense of being harmonious. An obvious example would be two innocent lovers, rapt and in the wonder of love, each trying to meet every need and desire of the other. A less fanciful version might be the constant mutual cooperation of two or more people who are working towards a shared goal using methods that are clear and settled.

Surrender
Beyond other levels of Yesness, there is a level of acceptance that has a spiritual quality that we can call surrender. What is surrendered is the sense of self-importance, in the realization of the Unity that is all-embracing and all-pervading. If all comes from God, if all is God, then why resist or refuse anything? Yes is a response indicating the giving up of personal resistances. It is responsive in its nature and therefore feminine; its mystery may be beyond the understanding of the more masculine thrusting types that tend to dominate most fields of human activity.

We can know of God through books and conversations. Is that enough? To know of God is about as delicious as knowing of chocolate. There is written throughout the ages, stories of women and men who wanted more intimate relationship with God, so they reached out and they put all other things aside so that their reaching out was primary. These mystics sought knowledge of God, they sought knowledge in God and they found knowledge as though through the eyes of God. They exemplify the principle of surrender. 

Workbook notes

The wisdom of YES

Yes acts as a guiding light or beacon, towards a path that is available to us, and good. In whatever we do we always encounter a degree of resistance, because it is a condition of life to have to overcome inertia, yet we can generally say that the right path is the one illuminated by green lights—the Yes sign for motorists. If our life path is mostly punctuated by red lights, delay, restrictions, problems, illness and trouble, perhaps we need to check again whether we are pointed in the right direction. There is value and importance in rising to meet and overcome occasional challenges, and yet a life lived only in conflict is ceaseless struggle and is unlikely to offer a peaceful heart.

Yes relaxes tension and leads to peace. Isn’t this the word that we all long to hear—and the one that we want to say? It indicates that we are allowed and that we are accepted. Because no one wants to resist us, we can relax into a feeling of expecting to get what we have applied ourselves to having. The door opens to us, horizons expand and we are free to follow the direction of our desire. Something about us is right, we are receiving recognition for being good the way we are—and perhaps this is not always what we have come to expect. The fact that we need permission indicates the existence of a force that could deny. Equally acceptance implies that we have been, or could be, rejected. Indeed, this is true and will always be a real possibility living in the material world, where competition and limitation are seen as normal aspects of reality and lead to denial and rejection.

We need to be clear that Yes is chosen in preference to No by someone able to exercise choice. Put differently, a disempowered victim repeatedly abused, and so surrendering to the inescapable reality that they are suffering, cannot truly be seen as saying Yes. Such a person is simply expressing a weak No. So if one is weak in No, then one is unlikely to be truly strong in Yes. Yes is the suspension of No.

q21 - 3 questions 

Do you usually wake up feelings enthusiastic?
Typically a child is actively involved in the experience of joyful curiosity within the very first moments of waking. That’s the natural state, free of fear. In contrast, so many adults are resentful at having to get up and go to work. Each awakening is troubled immediately with anxiety or a depressed mood. Those first feelings are eloquent testimony to the expectations we have for the day ahead and so let us know whether we have a relaxed acceptance that whatever comes will be fine.

Do you like life as it comes with easy acceptance?
As time goes by, more and more we come to see that we somehow survive even worst-case scenarios. Our expectations often go unfulfilled, and instead our fears are realized, yet still we manage to pull through. It’s true that occasionally we often get almost exactly what we want, yet truer that actually we get something else, and truer still that the something else actually becomes the better option.  So why not relax then?  Why resist what can’t be changed?

Are you using you talents well?
It is surely obvious that we all have amazing talent? All that we need to do is to trust our ability, and then we find ourselves to be supremely resourceful and capable of unthinkable achievements. Nothing is to be gained by believing in our limitation – except limitation itself. By surrendering to the highest within us we allow a greater life-force to operate through us, which expresses itself in the form of knowledge and talents. These need to be used in order to claim them, and therefore our full magnificent birthright to be wonderful people!

LINKS:  

Module 1    Module 2    Module 3    Module 4    Module 5    Module 6    Module 7