Beginner's Allowing

In 1978, after my freshman year in college, I toured in a summer music group for Oral Roberts University. My participation became entangled with feelings of hypocrisy.

Fulfilling family expectations clashed with the reality that I did not want to be there, having already grown weary of the religious dogma that saturated my entire upbringing. Yet, the opportunity to reduce my mounting tuition with the accompanying scholarship money won out over any remorse I might collect from proselytizing and luring unsuspecting youth to consider coming to ORU.

In spite of being a mere freshman and competing against scores of upper classmates, I got accepted, placed into one of several tour "bands", then was whisked away on three months worth of one-nighters. It was a summer filled with innumerable concerts and innumerable casseroles, driving from one scheduled church stop to the next. Long hours became long days as my bandmates and I crammed inside a mini tour bus, covering six states throughout the Southern region of the country - singing about the glories of God, Oral Roberts and recruiting for that space-aged looking university.

I was miserable and hot, yet I learned how to eat around gnats when given a cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich outdoors in the middle of an Arkansas summer church social.

Jerry Florence, who later become one of my singing partners in the 80′s trio Alliance, was in charge of these ORU music groups. He was a new graduate and worked for the university overseeing tour schedules, bookings and accommodations.

Jerry and I bonded during that summer when he would make surprise "spot checks" on each band. I marveled at his musical genius and business savvy and I'd placed him high upon a hero's pedestal. But the University thought otherwise and about halfway through the summer, he’d become privy to the fact that he was getting fired at the conclusion of the current tours . I lamented over how I would survive another 3 years there without his friendship. The news wrecked all my 19 year old plans.

Jerry talked of doing something wild and crazy the week after the tour ended and before school resumed. He asked if I wanted to participate and I responded as any pedestal projecting, hero-worshiping teen would do to their newest idol. I screamed, "yes!"

Jerry came up with the idea of deep sea fishing in Aransas Pass, a port somewhere off Padre Island in South Texas. It wasn’t a particularly “wild” choice but neither of us had ever been and it sounded like one of those rugged things you would have on your lists of 100 things to do before you die.

We took Dramamine for 24 hours before our departure and yet, as we bounded out to sea, I still felt as though everything I had ever eaten might revisit me. As the boat rocked and hurled from side to side in the pre-dawn darkness, traveling miles and miles out on the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I breathed deeply and bargained with the equilibrium gods to intervene.

After sunrise and closer inspection of our fellow journeymen, I observed that Jerry and I were the only ones on the boat who were not fishermen by trade. We were faux fishermen surrounded by seasoned pros wearing caps with hooks and carrying extra lures in their moist pockets.

It became apparent, after leaving the dock, that Jerry had gotten us onto a commercial charter, not a tourist charter, not an "oh let’s just cast a line out and enjoy the day charter." No, this was one where each man looked at the other with a sense of distrust, wanting to taint the others bait buckets with some homemade, concocted fish repellant. This was competitive fishing. This was ESPN fishing. The crazy part of the wild and crazy intention had surfaced.

I decided to pretend I knew what I was doing. I baited and cast my line.

The next hour became a salty sea air blur.

No sooner had I settled in for some ripple watching when I got a hard jolt on the end of my line. The reel began to swiftly spin, dispensing the line so alarmingly fast that I froze while the nylon cord emptied out further into the choppy water.

"Nothing happens on the first cast," I remember thinking, yet, in a matter of seconds, the shouting of the others on board snapped me out of my daze and I began pulling back and bucking the line, gripping harder on the handle and watching the pole arch and bend as I strained to hold on. My knuckles were white from lack of blood flow and the mystery on the other end seemed hell-bent on rebelling. Grunting and gasping out, "Excuse me," I started crawling over and under the rest of the fishermen that encircled the deck. Round and round I went, and every time I got to starboard, they would all shout Three! then Four! Five! Six! Six times around the boat as the remained-to-be-seen fish drug me around in circles.

On that sixth round, several sympathizers had gathered around me with a net and a bunch of extra hands, offering assistance in raising my catch out of the water.

There it was, the results of my efforting - a 47lb King Mackerel.

The weigh station attendant on shore commented that it was one of the largest caught in those waters all summer.

Some high-fived me, saying “Congratulations,” but the majority of those men simply gave me the hard stare, muttering under their breaths, "Beginner’s luck."

Beginner's luck.....

Now, as a metaphysician, I've learned to let go of the notion of luck. There is no randomness involved in creation. Creation is deliberate. I understand that everything unfolds according to consciousness. So it stands to reason that this anomaly seen as beginner’s luck may be more accurately defined as beginner’s allowing.

As beginner’s in anything, we haven’t yet developed our muscles of cynicism, disappointment or the resistance accompanied with doubt. With beginner’s, there’s still a sense of optimism - a child-like clean slate of acceptance where all kinds of possibilities stand on tiptoe - a natural expectancy of good that seems to whisper to us, of course - of course you caught the fish - of course you got the job - of course you made a perfect score on your exam. It is our BEING on COURSE, unencumbered by the jaded perspective that sometimes accompanies those who’ve been around life's block. As a beginner we are in a much greater state of natural allowing. Consciousness responds to that, creating demonstration the way it always can be - swift and yes, natural.

When we look at our relationship to what we expect, so many of us plant seeds of futility, disappointment and judgment based on our collective history.

How do we go back and allow - allow without the attachment of futile conditions, allow with the zeal of a child at Christmas, allow because we understand that nothing is separating us from our good but our directed thought? That state of purity still exist within each of us and it waits for recognition. Are you willing to recognize it and welcome it into your immediate experience? Doing so does not require us to have the "how" figured out. In fact the "how" is really none of our business. The simple requirement of returning back to beginner's allowing is letting go of the need to control and opening the door of our lives to that steadfast creative energy. Steadfast means it never left us. That innocent welcoming from our childhood is still very much alive inside us today.

Strengthen your allowing by beginning to simply breath in, saying to yourself, “I Allow.” On the exhale say, “I Release All Resistance.”

Inhale ”I Allow."

Exhale - "I Release All Resistance."

I go for weeks using this simple breathing mantra as my entire meditation. My aim? To become more and more a vessel for conscious allowing - more and more to look at the "big catches" in life and naturally say, “Of course.”