Do you struggle with acceptance?

Do you struggle with acceptance?  

If so, you’re not alone. 

Maybe it feels flakey to you, weak, or like being defeated? 

Or perhaps you’d like to accept, but as hard as you might try, you still feel really frustrated, unforgiving or irritated…? 

So often, I hear people saying in a resigned tone of voice (sometimes as though through gritted teeth, or with a shrug of the shoulders) “well I guess I should just accept it, I can’t do anything about it, I can’t change it, so I might as well accept it”. 

Sound familiar? 

Over the years, I have come to see acceptance is far from passive, but actually a place of immense power and potential.

However, it is frequently confused with passivity, resignation or suppression.  

To explore this some more, perhaps it’s easier to contemplate… resistance! 

I’m sure we can all relate to that sense of struggling or tensing against what IS.

I know I can. 

Resistance refers to the struggle that happens when we believe that our present moment experience should be other than it is. 

Quite naturally then, we often think of acceptance as the opposite to resistance.  

We might have some idea that resistance is bad, and acceptance is good, so we set out to be a good practitioner and start acting as though we have accepted, talking as though we have accepted…but inside we are full of resistance!  

In this way, we begin to make resistance bad or wrong and unwittingly add yet another layer of resistance on top of it, which is just another way or turning against ourselves.  

But what if acceptance was more about stepping off the battle ground? 

What if acceptance means leaving the world of good and bad, right and wrong altogether and simply allowing experience to be as it is, in this moment….? 

Because this moment is already here, right now! 

Acceptance doesn’t say that you need to like, approve of or be happy with your experience. 

It certainly doesn’t say that you need to accept any harmful behaviour.  

It is simply an invitation to bring our wholehearted attention to whatever is arising, to hold ourselves and our experience with gentleness. To not make our experience wrong.

So if I am feeling resistant and tense, then I hold that with care, I give it my attention and interest. I give it space.

In this way, inner rejection can begin to fall away and our soul can begin to relax as it feels the arising of acceptance.

When this true acceptance for whatever is arising is felt (from ourselves or from another), it is incredibly healing and life giving.  

Tension can begin to melt away as we are relieved of the burden of struggling against ourselves.  

We settle back into the flow of life and can feel our inherent belonging to life once again, each cell of the body can begin to open and breathe with the space to simply be itself.

And it is from THIS powerful place that we can really begin to make conscious wise choices that are in alignment with our deepest values.