 Acceptance is key for One Life Awareness. It is a foundation for stability and fuel for abiding in One Life Awareness. It is usually understood as something like “loving What Is” and seems easy unless you find yourself in the midst of suffering. What does acceptance in the midst of suffering really entail? Essentially, it means not resisting the natural unfolding, seeing things the way things are, and letting go of the notion that you are something permanent or special. Like most people, your tendency is to attempt the creation of a self that reflects your notions of perfection, or the ideal. You want to be loved and admired, to be a good person, to feel like you are leading a meaningful life. In essence, the desire is to be the best you can be, whatever that sense of best might be for you. Having those aspirations is laudable. However, if you become attached to achieving those aspirations and find yourself constantly criticizing your current level of attainment, you may be perpetrating a mistaken sense of self. You may be holding yourself to impossible standards, or not holding yourself to any standards. Neither of these stances is acceptance, both are operations of the ego. Acceptance is not approval, nor is it a result of disapproval. Acceptance is not ambivalent, it just is the natural unfolding of reality. Most thoughts you entertain are thoughts about yourself. They are about “I” and “me” or “mine.” You tend to make all your thoughts, opinions, and commentary important and you view them as “yours.” In the midst of suffering, doubt and hesitation arise. As you focus on your self, self-acceptance becomes more important than any other sort of acceptance. Especially if self-acceptance has become the imagined result of attaining some state of pre-determined perfection, doubt about who you are may fill your thoughts. Everyone invokes a version of perfection from time to time, but some get lost in constant comparison of self to an idealized version of self, believing either or both of these versions of self are real. Your self is a fabrication of ideas that is changeable and reflects your moment-to-moment sense of reality. Practicing unconditional self-acceptance means noticing and not avoiding what you are thinking and feeling in the moment, and noticing and stopping this avoidance when it becomes chronic. This is particularly true in the midst of suffering, when you want to stop the thoughts that are uncomfortable. Avoidance of the moment’s full experience is usually the outcome of seeing the experience as painful and causing suffering. Of course, it seems easiest just to sidestep the pain, put blinders on, and not see the suffering. The trouble is that when this becomes a pattern of behavior, you become trapped in an unconscious resistance that tends to blame all sorts of outsiders like fate, karma, parents, government, spouse, etc. for your suffering. This is disempowering, and if everything outside of you is blamed for your experience, there is no way out. Embracing What Is allows you to step out of your unhealthy habits of resistance and into true liberation. It does not require approval, you do not need to condone or judge the experience at all, you just need to allow it to be what it is. It’s easy to think your suffering is special, that no one else has suffered like you. That could seem true—you might even look for evidence to support that notion. However, you are most likely trying to make your self seem special because in your suffering, you have judged yourself to be less than you want to be. A special self might seem to answer “why” this suffering has come down upon you. You might think that it alleviates pain, but this kind of thinking actually increases the pain for most people. The pain of self-judgment is a trickster. There is no judgment—positive or negative—that limits or reduces pain. Judgment always leads to a lack of Awareness, not an increase in Awareness. This is because true Awareness, One Life Awareness, is always obscured when there is a lack of acceptance of What Is. Notice if you are fighting against reality with ideas like “It shouldn’t be this way”. Acknowledge that life is magnificent even in the midst of pain and suffering. Love life for all of its complexity and diversity of experience. Let go of striving to be what you believe you are not. Open your mind and heart to love What Is without complacency or ambivalence. Acceptance is not becoming a doormat or hiding on a cushion atop a mountain. Unconditional self-acceptance is an active state of wisely allowing the experience to be whatever it is. Let it be, and you will be, all will be as it is.
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