Practicing Acceptance

Last year my mantra was: I can’t control anyone else.

As in, I can’t control my kids, my dog, my father, my wife, my neighbors… the weather, the world. I even know that sometimes I have a hard time controlling myself and what I’m doing. And, truly, this mantra was helpful in putting things in perspective. What I found, however, was that even once I recognized that I couldn’t control someone or something, it still left room for whining and frustration and sleepless nights.

This year my mantra is one simple, difficult word: acceptance.

This feels like the next step. To first recognize that sometimes I can’t control what happens, and then to accept it as what is. To not put the energy of fear, anger, frustration, and denial behind it. To not create stories about it. As Eckhart Tolle wrote in Stillness Speaks, “When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way. This state of inner nonresistance opens you to the unconditioned consciousness that is infinitely greater than the human mind. This vast intelligence can then express itself through you and assist you, both from within and from without. That is why, by letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better.”

If we examine Jesus’ actions and interactions, I believe we see that he practiced acceptance on a regular basis. One of the clearest examples happened, we are told, on the night Jesus was betrayed. After he and his disciples shared the Passover meal together, they walked to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus asked them to stay awake while he spent time in prayer His anguished, very human prayer was for God to take “the cup” from him, and yet, “not my will, but thine be done.” (Mark 14:32-36)

As a sidenote, let me be clear that I do not believe it was God’s will that Jesus be killed. What kind of sadistic God wants that? What I want to look at in this passage is Jesus’ cry to be strong enough to accept what is and to face it. You can almost feel the sigh and the acceptance.

Here are a few other examples:

• When Jesus calmly ate the Passover meal with his betrayer
• When he wasn’t accepted in his hometown as a prophet he didn’t get riled up, just moved on
• He consistently met people where they were: Zaccheaus, Nicodemus, woman at the well
• Jesus, though he told his mother it “wasn’t his time,” still turned water into wine when she told the servants, “Listen to him.”

Let me be clear. Acceptance does not mean giving up. I can be really unhappy about aging, disgusted with my saggy skin, lamenting the loss of my youth, fearful of what is to come. Or I can accept that I’m growing old and that has consequences. Accepting this does not mean I give up staying fit or healthy. It may just mean that exercising is not going to perform miracles!

What does it feel like to practice acceptance? It is calming, peaceful, a release, a relief. It also feels spacious to me, like there is now room and openness where all the negatives used to be. These feelings we experience when we practice acceptance is our ego letting go and our soul stepping in to bring us balance again.

So, what if we really don’t feel like we can accept something? Here’s a dialogue from Tolle’s book that I find helpful:

Accept what is.

I truly cannot. I’m agitated and angry about this.

Then accept what is.

Accept that I’m agitated and angry? Accept that I cannot accept?

Yes, Bring acceptance into our nonacceptance… Then see what happens.

This sounds like a conversation I might have with myself. And I find that my ego comes off sounding like a petulant child wanting to dwell in an unhealthy place of anger or fear or worry or disappointment. But I think simply accepting our non-acceptance brings us closer to the acceptance we seek.

Acceptance is a spiritual practice because it gets us out of the drama of the moment and into a deeper wisdom and grace.

Where in your life would you like to practice acceptance?

Love & Light!

Kaye