Gateway To Grace

by Adrian W. Hall, MFT, ATR


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“We ask less. ‘What is my goal?’ and more, ‘What is my destiny?’ (p. 194).

For the last several weeks, I have been posting about what David Richo says about our power and being assertive.  I love how he designs the flow of When Love Meets Fear because topics build so beautifully.  This week, I want to talk about what he is saying about the other side of being assertive, which is allowing.

There are a lot of beliefs and dialogue in our society about having goals and making things happen, which is a real and true power of our humanity.  There is a lot of reinforcement and reward for people who “get things done” and work really hard to achieve their goals.  This is fantastic.  However, focus on just achieving goals and asserting our human power of thoughts and will is only half of the game.  There are forces at play that are a lot larger than we are. 

David Richo begins talking about allowing as “spiritual receptiveness” and describes it as the place “where happening completes doing.  It is the other side of the assertive style that uses new awarenesses as the means for reaching goals” (p. 193).  In my estimation, the idea is that our lives are a co-creation.  It is important to have a direction and motivation for what we want to do and where we want to go in our lives.  It is important for us to get the ball rolling.  AND, we need to cultivate our receptivity and awareness of the forces around us that are guides.  This is where we create space for synchronicity to occur, for our heart's desire to present itself and for things to align around us to support our life’s path in ways that are more elaborate and perfect than we could ever consciously conceive.

David Richo talks about one of the ways of cultivating our receptivity is to allow ourselves to “be present to whatever may surprise [us] next” (p. 193).  It means that we open up our vision, senses and awareness to receive information that will guide us toward what there is for us to do or be in this life.  It means not becoming blindly focused on forcing something to happen just because you may have decided at some point in time that you wanted that (maybe even arbitrarily, in response to fear or in response to what seem like dictating, outside forces).  It means tuning in to all the information and power available to you, some that is beyond your control and, most likely, wiser than just your human or ego consciousness.  The information can come through dreams, sensations in your body, through repeating images or waves of feeling in response to the outside world or synchronistic events.  Our job is start by having intentions and interests, to be receptive to guiding information, then to act on that guidance.  That is the co-creation that utilizes the power available to us in this life time in order to live in alignment, be at ease, appreciate the beauty of this existence and grow as much as we can. 

*This post is written in response to a section in David Richo's book "When Love Meets Fear: Becoming Defense-Less and Resource-Full".