In my recent blog post, Restoring Peace of Mind During Crises, I said that we are empowered when we fully accept the circumstances, events and situations that we cannot change. This is because emotional resistance creates more suffering on top of any stress and anxiety that we may already be experiencing.
We may feel powerless when certain circumstances arise (like global pandemics or political crises) that directly impact our daily lives but there is a power in accepting things exactly as they are rather than yearning for the way we would wish them to be.
This is an act of surrender to what is, rather than passive resignation or giving up hope and it is an act of surrender that can actually reduce our stress levels.
“Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.”
Normally, we tend to be consumed by our personality-mind which is the part of us that is always hurt or stressed or worrying about something. But, as I said in the previous blog post, one of the ways we can attain or maintain serenity in a crisis is through our ability to connect with our Essential or Original Self. This is the Self that has never been hurt or wounded and who exists in a state of total peace.
The Loving All Method, as taught by spiritual teacher, Michael Langford, is a stepping stone towards being able to maintain a peaceful untroubled emotional state, no matter what sort of turbulent situations we may be experiencing in our daily lives.
The Loving All Method is an unusual “meditation” practice in that you can do it while you are engaged in other activities and while you are going about your business during the day. You don’t have to set aside a special time to carry it out. It is a living mindful practice.
In summary, the Loving All Method involves accepting and embracing everything you experience exactly the way it is.
This includes accepting, allowing and embracing all your thoughts and emotions exactly as they are.
However, accepting and allowing all your thoughts and emotions does not mean acting or making decisions from a place of fear, stress and worry. It is just giving yourself permission to feel exactly what you feel.
The more completely you accept whatever it is you are feeling, the easier it is to eventually let that feeling go.
The Loving All Method also includes accepting and embracing your body exactly as it is, whether or not you have a diagnosis or health condition and whether or not you perceive yourself as being overweight or too skinny or too tall or too short.
It involves accepting what you see and accepting how you feel whether or not you like what you see. And it involves emotionally accepting everything that happens whether it is pleasurable or not.
There is a certain emotional freedom in allowing yourself to feel your negative emotions completely. But once again, it is not emotionally freeing to react to others via your negative emotions or to make any decisions (big or small) from that emotional headspace.
In the beginning, if you can’t accept and embrace the good, the bad and the ugly things you may be experiencing in daily life just as they are, he says you can initially practice the Loving All Method by just emotionally allowing everything that you experience to be exactly the way it is.
After about a month, Michael Langford says that you can practise emotionally accepting everything you experience just the way it is.
Then after that, you may be ready to begin practising embracing everything that you experience exactly the way it is.
This practice involves being present to everything that occurs without trying to escape. In any case, our situations will still be there whether we emotionally accept them or not.
Practising the Loving All Method doesn’t mean that you don’t protect yourself when you’re in danger. It just means you accept and embrace the circumstances of having to protect yourself.
He says, “If someone were to try to punch you in the face and if you would normally duck, you will also duck while practicing the Loving All Method. Loving the fact that someone is trying to punch you does not mean you will not duck. You also love ducking to avoid being punched.”
“Acceptance is the initiator for change and the first step of transformation.”
Practising the Loving All Method doesn’t mean that you don’t change the things that need to be changed. When you need to change something, you embrace having to change it.
He emphasises that the Loving All Method refers only to our emotional responses to circumstances, not to our external behaviour. We emotionally accept what is happening rather than emotionally rejecting it. But if there is something we need to change or do and it is within our power to do so, we do it.
For example, if an injustice occurs, we emotionally accept that an injustice has occurred. But if it is in our power to rectify that injustice, even though we have emotionally accepted it, we still work towards undoing that injustice. We emotionally accept negative things that happen but if we can simultaneously put them right, we do so.
Energy that was once used to emotionally resist and reject circumstances can now be used to correct and solve situations or our perceptions of these situations.
You can get the full description and practice instructions of the Loving All Method from Chapter 12 of Michael Langford’s book The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss which is available at this link: http://www.damienboyle.com/page23/files/TMDMTEB.pdf