Folks who learn NPA – and consistently practice it – report that all those sticky, awkward, interpersonal blocks just slide away and the quality of their personal interactions with people, across the board, improve dramatically.
In case you haven’t yet heard of NPA, it stands for ‘Non-Personal Awareness’ and is a really simple 6 line, spoken word process that helps you let go of the yucky stuff and let in the yummy stuff of life. It does that by helping you touch into the awareness that everything is energy and fundamentally non-personal.
So, how can this be? How can an approach that helps you focus on the ‘non-personal’ nature of reality improve your ‘personal’ interactions and relationships?
In common language use, making relationships more ‘personal’ generally refers to offering more of yourself; being more open, more authentic and more available.
However, what present themselves as obstacles in the space between people is our seemingly immoveable, pervasive self-identities.
NPA works to dis-identify you from your ‘stuff’. Somehow you just realise that your ‘stuff’ is not ‘you’, it just ‘is’. And the personal investment in the story of you, or the concept of who you are supposed to be (or not be) lessens. Ultimately, your hand-me-down survival strategies and ego games become meaningless. What you are left with is the freedom to Be!
And what is ‘The freedom to Be’? Well, on a practical level, there is no image to protect when you interact with others; no false walls between you. Who you are in the moment has space to breathe and live and express itself. Self-consciousness dwindles, and radical self acceptance emerges. This is where true self-discovery begins. Or, you could say, this is where True-Self discovery begins.
It’s the wonderment of discovering who you are in this environment or that environment, with this person or that person. The unconditionally loving witness is awake and aware, resting as the foundation of wellbeing, at the heart of your life experience.
On a very down-to-Earth level, what emerges from this is a much more open, authentic and available inter-personal experience.
Gill and John are a couple who came together to an NPA event and decided to use their process time to work with each other. Gill had told me that she and her husband were working to improve their relationship. She had done a lot of this sort of thing before, and he really hadn’t. An identity gulf and a lot of frustration had built up on both ‘sides’.
In the morning, where we use NPA to ‘let out the yucky stuff’ – in other words, let go of our attachment to painful false self-identities that are so often fiercely protected – I watched as Gill and John’s walls came down.
In the afternoon, where we ‘let in the yummy stuff’ – in other words open the doors to our authentic, natural expression – I watched Gill and John opened to the real heart of each other, and melted into the love that had always been there between them.
At the end of the event, I found a testimonial penned by John. It described NPA quite simply as: “A Gateway to Intimacy.”
The NPA Expansive Weekend, Dublin.
October 8th & 9th
Use discount code ‘positivelife’ to get €100 off!
Contact Sarah Bird at sarah@sarahbird.ie or +353(0)872193343
www.NonPersonalAwareness.com
The NPA Process
Answer Q1 or Q2 (as feels appropriate).
Q1… What are you experiencing that you would like to allow to pass?
Q2… What are you not experiencing that you would like to allow to come?Say the following sentences out loud, using your answer to Q1 or Q2 to fill in the blank. Stay present to your experience as you say the words…
This _______
This Energy of _______
This Pure Energy of _______ is not personal.
This Pure Energy of _______ is not personal.
This Pure Energy of _______ is not personal,
And I am willing to experience it.Now be inwardly still. Let go and give yourself space to simply be with your experience. Whatever emotion, sensation or thought arises, be still until you feel a natural completion.