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To Accept Or
Not To Accept? As you get more and more into the spiritual work of this life you will find teachings of ACCEPTANCE coming up. Many people doing spiritual work have come to believe that we should accept whatever life presents to us. Some think that the meaning of true surrender is accepting everything, and always trust that it is God's will. Well, I think one should question this. Although I am very devoted to the path of surrender to a Higher Power, I don't think it means embracing everything as it is. Some things are simply wrong. Our common sense reactions tell us to resist these things. Common sense also tells us to improve what isn't working in our lives. Acceptance doesn't mean staying in our own mess or staying in situations that are harmful to us. I think there are some things we need to accept. The first is the reality of the life situation we are in, the reality of this moment. The truth may be that you've over spent what was in your checking account, or that you slept too late to get to your meeting on time. It is the fact of the situation. It is what is. The truth also includes the larger scheme. It includes our True Nature, our Buddha Nature or our Christ nature, and the capacities of our souls, It includes the fact of impermanence, it includes suffering, grace and miracles. Our perception or how we see these truths depends in part, on our openness. It takes strength and a certain fierceness and fearlessness to open to all of these truths, both personal and universal, immediate and eternal. Another thing we must accept is our humanness. We must accept our feelings, our thoughts (the parts we are proud of and the parts we would rather hide) and not judge ourselves or others. Many people suggest that what we fully accept about ourselves we can then change, but what we push away or deny sticks to us like a burr!!! We cannot force ourselves to change. Change will come if we desire it and accept our faults. This change starts with acceptance. Acceptance means there is no denial, or turning away from the facts of our life situation. When we accept something, we fully acknowledge what is there. Eventually we may even open our heart to it. With the embracing comes the peace and relaxation of the mind, and this embracing often comes when we see the truth or rightness of the life situation. When you really commit yourself to the truth, the truth keeps opening up. It keeps getting bigger and clearer. To get to this larger truth, we have to accept the changing subjective truths without being too attached to them. We need to see that they are the whole reality. We can be passionately committed to something and still have the humility of knowing that our world view is not omniscient. This humility can take away some of the righteousness, softening the hard edge that is sometimes there. The world cannot be divided into good people and bad people. We're all good and we're all bad at times, and the existence of bad ("evil") may have a place in our world. So what I am saying is that we can accept that injustices exist, that we should do our best to change them, and that both their existence and our battle against them may be part of a larger movement serving the good of all. Yet the existence of evil doesn't exclude the possibility that there is something trustworthy here. Many things could be changed. Our job is to discriminate what to change and what to leave alone. We need to recognize when acceptance is bowing to a higher intelligence and when it is cowardice. How do we do this? I think it is primarily a matter of developing a capacity for seeing things clearly from the larger picture. The task we must learn is to see freshly, without attachments or preconceptions. It is the open mind, the relaxed mind, which can do this most easily. This is where contemplative, meditative practices come in. We need to be able to step aside from the surface activity of the mind in order to perceive things more directly. I don't think we are meant to accept without question. Why would we have the power of discrimination and choice if not to use them? Nothing suggests to me that the current situation is the way things are meant to be . I think it is up to us to fix the messes we've created. It is up to us to find solutions. I think this is what the Creator/God planned on when setting up this experiment: that there would be intelligence interacting with any given situation in each moment. Perhaps this is what makes life a challenge and keeps things interesting! Visit the Christine Breese website to read articles on consciousness and awakening, visit University of Metaphysical Sciences Video Satsangs to see talks on spiritual subjects. Read articles on Wisdom of the Heart Church. Visit Starlight Journal for blogs, newsletter, and forums on spiritual subjects. Visit Christine Breese's Metaphysical Sciences youtube channel to view free video satsangs. |
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