Acceptance is first and foremost being at peace with what is.
And when you really get into the groove of ‘what is’, you see that there is no judgment there, no opinion, no argument, no preference, no attachment or aversion, no rejection.
‘What is’ is life in all its forms and formlessness, all its possibilities, some of which you may be aware of but most of which you aren’t.
So, you can see why it’s important to accept ‘what is’ and although you may find it difficult at first, it does become easier once you get used to being with ‘what is’.
In fact, it becomes clear that if you do not accept ‘what is’, you are at odds with life. You may not be at odds with the world i.e. most people, because most people are not very good at accepting ‘what is’.
Actually, it’s more correct to say that most people are not very good at recognizing ‘what is’ because they are too busy with and too impressed by their own and each other’s views and opinions and judgments about other people and their actions rather than on the people and actions themselves.
When we are at peace with ‘what is’, we have no resistance to life, which, in a practical sense means that we have no resistance to anyone or anything.
Now, I know that that can feel frighteningly crazy. Should I not resist the murderer or the act of murder? Should I not resist child molestation? Should I not resist bullying? Should I not resist dishonesty? Or, put another way, why should I be accepting of the murderer or of murder? Of child molestation? Of bullying? Of dishonesty? That would be insane! Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me I should go and do these things myself!
Acceptance does NOT mean agreement with a person’s opinions or beliefs or with their actions. Rather, acceptance is a peaceful acknowledgement of ‘what is’, which as I said before is the expression of life’s possibilities of which murder, dishonesty and bullying are some.
The wonderful thing about acceptance is that it is in its state of peaceful acknowledgement that we are most predisposed to a loving response.
On the other hand, it is when we are not in such a peaceful state, when we are in a quarrel with ‘what is’, that our ability to respond most freely, most lovingly and most peacefully is severely hampered.
As Eckhart Tolle so rightly says:
Whatever you accept, you go beyond. Whatever you fight, you get stuck in.
You see, that state of peaceful acknowledgment, of acceptance of ‘what is’ is the state where we are most consciously connected with infinite intelligence, with god, with love.
It is the source of all that is great and good. It is the garden of inspiration. It is the state of ‘wise ignorance’ as Alan Watts calls it, free from the burden of assumed knowledge, judgment, opinion, belief, history and projections into the future. Free, instead, with infinite possibilities and the means to realize or manifest these possibilities.
Can you think of a better place or a better state from which to respond to some of the less desirable or more grotesque expressions of life’s infinite possibilities? For that matter, to respond to any of life’s possibilities, whether we deem them ‘good’ or ‘bad’?
You will find that your response from such a place, such a state of peaceful acknowledgement, of acceptance, is one of true power, one of creative action, one of loving possibility, one that is consistent with the advice of Buckminster Fuller:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
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