Is acceptance a gateway drug?

Like most people on this planet, I have experienced unexpected disruptions over the past year. For perspective, I feel the need to say that I would not want to scale my problems too high given how much genuine devastation the world can offer up.

 And yet some of it is hard. It brings up difficult feelings. When we are faced with the fact that so much in this world is out of our control, it just feels…bad. All our human frailty is thrown right out into the open. And who likes looking at that?

 When things arise in myself or my life that I do not like my first instinct used to be to fight like hell. Do more, do it better and do it harder. 

 I think most of us lucky enough to have the resources to pursue that strategy do so. At least for a while. Our health, our energy, our privilege, and the cultural tolerance we have for addiction and distraction might even let us pretend that it works. We often have the resources to move ourselves away from our suffering, over and over again. But at some point, those resources can run out. 

 Our fighting and fleeing reality was only ever an illusion created by our industrious and busy minds. At some point, the burden of creating that illusion becomes too heavy.

 I don’t think I could live if I believed we are just here to suffer and then die. I am inspired to live my life fully by the promise of learning and growth inherent in the challenges we face. 

 I don’t know if this is actually true. Perhaps it is just my privilege that affords me this belief in the opportunity for growth in my suffering, but it works for me. It gets me up in the morning. It inspires me to get into my life, look around, and be fascinated by the experience of living in a meat suit on a rock that revolves around a great fireball all held together by invisible forces.

 I think there are some schools of spirituality and self-development that treat this sacred idea of life lessons as a strategy to bypass suffering. 

 They use the promise of lessons and growth as cloying incense to cover up the stink and the rot of life. But the very nature of our meat suits and the planet we live on is that rot and decay are a part of the cycle of life that sustains us all. 

 Using spirituality as an avoidance strategy can lead to some toxic and harmful beliefs, like telling people they are responsible for attracting the tragedies or difficulties life can offer up.

 I believe by facing our difficulties fully we can sink through them into the spiritual teachings that life constantly offers. These lessons may not fit with the expectations we have of our material world, but they feed our soul in deep and mysterious ways.

 When I sit and contemplate the challenges I face, they all seem to initially offer the same lesson: acceptance.

 There is a whole layer of my suffering that is based on the premise that things SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY.

 I am particularly good at making this argument. I spent years cultivating excellent skills of reasoning, analysis, and deduction. I have been crazy enough to believe I could somehow control the universe by just being strategic, smart, and thoughtful enough. When unwanted circumstances arise in my life, I first offer the universe a well-argued doctoral dissertation on how it is bringing THE WRONG things into my life.

 Now, acceptance with a capital A seems like a pretty tall order. There are such terrible things that happen to people in this world, I would never want to suggest that there is some grand truth here that applies to everyone, no matter their circumstances.

 For myself, I don’t expect myself to immediately accept my unwanted circumstances. However, I do seem to be able to start by accepting my response to what is happening in my life, no matter how objectively nuts those responses might be.

 This might start with accepting that having the belief that things should be different is as human as human can be. I like to comfort and pet and talk to that desperate part of myself. Often it feels so young, so indignant and so hurt in its innocence by the fact that bad things, do indeed happen and that I do, indeed make mistakes.

 Sadness, grief, anger, rage, depression, fear, and anxiety are ways we not only respond to loss or difficulty, I believe they are the energies that carry us safely through them. Our feelings are the immune system of our psyche. When we disable ourselves by not accepting any of our normal human responses, we hobble ourselves in our ability to move forward.

 When I accept my argumentative thoughts, my feelings, my fears, something rather incredible happens. I seem to bring online a part of me, or a connection to something that can accept me just as I am. 

 It feels expansive to me. Something that can hold and contain whatever it is that I am going through. I sometimes have this image of sinking into the most beautiful deep lake where I am held and safe.

 My little fists that I have been shaking at god (or my husband, and who is to say they are not the same thing) start to open. I begin to let go. My mind starts to soften. My thoughts slow down.

 There is nothing more comforting to me than the feeling of accepting myself as I am. This seems to start with accepting how I feel and what I am thinking.

 This acceptance of my responses connects me to an acceptance of self which connects me to the consciousness that at that moment, I can accept my whole world as it is. I don’t need to like what is happening, I don’t need to want it but that resource of self-acceptance stops my conflict with reality. It brings unity and communion. 

 Reality is life, and life is sustaining. Life is constantly in flux, so when we align ourselves with reality we start to harness that energy for forward motion.

 As I accept reality, I get into the flow of life, which has the power to carry me forward.

 Often as I feel that flow my body softens and tears fall down my face. It is as though I instantly become more fluid, water moving through me.

 How can we possibly move forward or find appropriate solutions in our life if we are not fully present to the reality we are in? I truly believe that whatever this force is that brings baffling circumstances into our life, it also holds the secrets, the mysteries, the solutions, and the resources to face those circumstances.

 This initial, small acceptance of my human reactions to life seems to be a gateway to other enriching experiences. As I accept reality and stop an inner divide, an inner war, I immediately become more peaceful. This peace breeds compassion, gratitude for what is, the humility of how little I really can control, and the inspiration, curiosity and courage to get in the stream of life again and explore what gifts might be there for me.

 All I ever really want to be is the peace of being a leaf in the stream of life. To be in harmony with the awesome, incredible, magical, and mysterious force of life. What else could I ever desire?

I don’t have wild desires

or

fabulous dreams.

I just want to

be

a leaf in the stream.