The first six stages of the Serene Empowerment process for alleviating anxiety and managing stress deal with our most important relationship – the one that we have with our self.

It’s our most important relationship because the way that we perceive our self influences and affects the way that we perceive other people in our life, our society and the world.

Additionally, the way that we perceive our self affects everything we do, every decision we make and influences what we think is possible for us in life.

The way that we see our self can increase our anxiety and stress or it can enhance our power and maintain our strength.

The overarching theme of the first six stages of Serene Empowerment process is serenity – that state of being peaceful, calm and untroubled.

Each stage has a truth statement. They also each have a quality that we can cultivate or embody. So here is a brief overview of the first six stages of the Serene Empowerment process.

Stage 1

Truth Statement:
We accept that there is a powerful Source within us that can provide us with guidance, wisdom, comfort and peace.

Quality:
Awareness

Summary:
We are never alone because we have a Source of Wisdom within us that can guide and help us with the stresses that we encounter in our daily life.

We learn to become aware of and connect with this Source of Wisdom through relaxation and through accepting our negative feelings exactly as they are in order for them to be transformed into resources that can help us.

Stage 2

Truth Statement:
We turn our daily life over to the care and direction of this Source of Wisdom.

Quality:
Trust

Summary:
Once we have become aware of our Source of Guidance and Wisdom as a Living Presence in Stage 1, in Stage 2, we learn to cultivate the habit and practice of turning our daily life, our decisions, our problems and our worries over to the care and direction of this Creative Intelligence and Healing Source of Wisdom. We learn to allow our life to unfold under its direction.

Stage 3

Truth Statement: We accept that our Original Authentic Self was created in the True Nature and Spirit of this Source of Wisdom and that we are still this Original Self, no matter what we have done or what we have failed to do as an ego personality.

Quality:
Self-Recognition

Summary:
We have made an image of our self that is based on what we believe to be our core identity.

This identity could be based on our physical appearance or a health condition or our religion or our nationality or our job title or a mental health diagnosis or a relationship role such as a parent or spouse.

This self-image is also composed of all the things that we think we’ve done wrong or the things that we think we have failed to do. This self is a cluster of beliefs, perceptions and judgements about who we think we are.

However, in Stage 3, we become aware of our Original Self that was here before we were born and that will continue to be present after our body has expired.

This Original Self is not the same as the ego personality that we think we are. It is a source of power and freedom from the limitations and suffering of the ego personality.

Stage 4

Truth Statement:
We recognise that what we think creates our perception and, therefore, our experience of reality.

Quality:
Non-judgement

Summary:
Thought is the vehicle through which we experience life. We only see what’s going on in our own mind.

We don’t experience reality; we experience our judgements, opinions and interpretations about reality.

Our thoughts are the origin of our anxiety and stress and thus they dictate our responses and behaviour.

Stage 5

Truth Statement:
We commit to continually forgiving and releasing our self from our past errors knowing that our power and healing lie in the present.

Quality:
Self-forgiveness

Summary

This stage involves releasing our selves from guilt and setting ourselves free from the prison of the past. We focus on conscience (another word for wisdom) rather than guilt. We also explore the four universal laws of inner peace: surrender, release, gratitude and love.

Stage 6

Truth Statement:
We make a joyful inventory of all the blessings, gifts, abundance and miracles that we receive in our daily lives.

Qualities:
Gratitude and receptivity

Summary
This stage is a celebration of all the good that we have received. It is also a celebration and an acknowledgement of all the insights and inspirations we have received during this process as well as throughout our life as a whole.

What we focus on expands so the more we focus on being grateful, the more we are gifted with things, people and blessings to be grateful for.

The Serene Empowerment process is a gentle and positive pathway.

The book, Serene Empowerment: Spiritual Solutions for Managing Stress is currently available at Amazon and in other online bookstores. The book provides an introduction to all 12 stages and some practical exercises to help to reinforce the understanding of each of the stages.

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.”

— Aldous Huxley

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.”

— Diana Whitmore

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