There is a beautiful complementarity between allowing and owning whatever arises.

As awakeness itself, we already and always allow whatever arises. Shifting into finding ourselves as awakeness, there is a release of identification with whatever resistance there is to it. We can now hold whatever arises and the resistance to it, without blindly taking ourselves as either one. There is a passive allowing of it all. It is just a noticing of what is already and always here. (Although the shift into noticing it is often active.)

Yet at our human side, it is also important to actively own whatever arises. To actively become familiar with it, see that it is part of me, widen my conscious identity to include it, explore how it already shows up in my life, explore what it asks of me, discover how it supports the life of this human self, bring it into the active repertoire of how this human self lives in the world. This includes noticing a part of this human self that was already around, actively bringing it into my conscious identity at my human level, and actively exploring it in and bringing it into my daily life.

And as so often, there is a mutuality between the two. One supports the other.

Allowing whatever arises helps me more easily actively own it. I can release identification from any beliefs and identities that stopped me from seeing it as part of my human self, and I can now more wholeheartedly embrace it and find its gifts.

And actively own it helps me release identification with old beliefs and identities that previously kept it as “other”, which in turn makes it easier for me to find myself as awakeness itself, already allowing it all.

The allowing is the enlightenment part, finding myself as awakeness and everything arising to and within awakeness as no other than this awakeness itself. And the owning is the self-realization part, the healing, maturing and development of this human self.

Or we can say that the first is the Self-realization, and the other is the self-realization. It is the realization of the Self, as Big Mind, Brahman, the divine mind, or whatever fancy name we have for it. And it is the realization of the self, of the wholeness of who this individual self is and can be.

There are as many examples of this as there are experiences.

Anger arises.

If I have a belief that anger is bad, and an identity as someone who is not angry, I may only allow myself to see it in others. I am caught up in the identification with this belief and identity, and it creates a split that runs through me and the world. I own some parts of me and disown other parts. I belong to us, the people not angry, and see people who are angry as other. And by identifying with some and disidentifying with other content of awareness, my identification is solidly within the realm of content of awareness. I am unable to find myself as awakeness, already allowing it all. At my human level, I am unable to draw on anger in daily life, and it may also come out when I lose control, when I no longer can hold it back.

I can then find anger in myself. I see it out there, and that becomes a mirror for what is already here. I actively work with my beliefs and identities around it, making it OK for me to have, experience and express anger. And whenever it arises, I can actively allow it and bring the qualities and energies of it into my life. I can find the gifts of anger and how it helps this human self function more effectively in the world, when it arises. It becomes an active part of my repertoire at my human level.

This releases identification with certain beliefs and identities, which makes it easier for me to find myself as awakeness already allowing it all. And finding myself as this awakeness, already and always allowing it all, makes it easier for me to actively own anger at my human level.

And instead of anger, it can be beauty, gentleness, crudeness, ugliness, wisdom, stupidity, laziness, engaging, sitting back, compassion, cruelness, and so on. Whatever we have a word for, it can be allowed and owned. And whatever arises that we don’t have a word for can be allowed and owned too.