Acceptance

Acceptance is where we are trying to get to, it is our destination. The issue of ACCEPTANCE is tricky and is a issue of BALANCE. If there was a better word I would use it, but acceptance is the only word that describes what I am talking about here.

1. We need to agree on the use of "ACCEPTANCE". When I am talking about our need to accept some issue we are dealing with, I do not mean that the issue is "okay or acceptable". I do mean that we need to accept the issue for what it is - be it acceptable or not. We can accept it as being unacceptable.
2. The issue of BALANCE is a issue of WHAT we are accepting. The best way to describe this is with an example. A medical doctor broke his lower back in an accident and was paralyzed from the waist down. He knew the prognoses as being in a wheelchair for the rest of his Life. The doctor accepted the fact his back was broken - he did not accept the fact that he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his Life. His belief in LIFE overcoming difficult situations meant that he believed that if he kept sending the message from his brain to his legs to move, that LIFE would find a way to get the message through. It took him 2 years of sending the message, but he was walking again. This is the BALANCE I am referring to - accepting his situation, not accepting his limited future.

The issue of acceptance is important when we are struggling with an issue or dealing with our suffering. When we are struggling with a issue or an experience we are having, we often have difficulty coming to terms with what we are experiencing. The struggle often results from our denial or judgments of the experience we are having. It is these denials and judgments that we attach to our experiences that causes our struggles and our suffering.


Often this process of ACCEPTING OUR ISSUES is seen as succumbing to fate or some other way of passively accepting what happens to us, with little or no control over our Lives. This is the farthest from the truth, acceptance gives us our power back to us - we are not controlled by our experiences. When we accept our issues for WHAT THEY ARE, we are much more able to deal with them in a productive manner and we are free to have new experiences.


Why ACCEPTANCE is important:


When we are struggling with our issues, we are living in our past, as we are struggling with issues that we have already experienced. These issues affect our present as we are too focused on them that we project them onto our present experiences, this limits our experiences of the present - this we call suffering.


When we accept our issues for what they are and we deal with them appropriately we become FREE from them. This freedom allows us to experience the present for what it has to offer, without clouding it with our past.

The past is done,

The future is yet to be,

The present is the real gift, that is why it is call the "present".

I recommend the book - Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach Ph.D. for more reading and information concerning the power of ACCEPTANCE.