Source: http://secretoflife.typepad.com/the_secret_of_life/
Last time, I was talking about the concept of ‘acceptance’. If we can accept whatever is happening in our lives in any one moment, instead of ‘arguing with reality’, we can save ourselves an awful lot of unnecessary stress. After all, what is happening is always what’s happening, whether we like it or not. We can still take action to change what happens in the future, but just for the moment we have to accept what is.
If you think about it, this is the only sane attitude to have. ‘Arguing with reality’ isn’t going to get you anywhere. But this sort of acceptance isn’t always easy.
I got into an interesting discussion about acceptance over at Jon’s Post-Christian Journey. A reader made the (perfectly reasonable) point that if his child was being tortured, he would find it very difficult to accept this. Indeed, he didn’t even think that he should accept such a thing.
This appears to be a very powerful argument against ‘acceptance’.
Two points occur to me however:
- This example is very extreme. In practice, fortunately, most of us don’t have to deal with such extreme events very often, though terrible things do occur in most people’s lifetimes from time to time. What’s important to acknowledge is that many other much lesser ‘bad’ things happen in our lives on a frequent basis, and many of these we also class as ‘terrible’ simply out of habit. If we can ‘accept’ these – and save ourselves a lot of stress in the process – we are making a start.
- Acceptance does not entail inaction. It’s not a prescription for apathy. If we can ‘accept’ that our child is being tortured one moment, we can still take action to prevent it the next. Perhaps the formula should be ‘acceptance plus action’. The opposite of this would be ‘lack of acceptance plus doing nothing’, as in moaning about the state of the world while doing absolutely nothing to change it. This is a much more common state of being.
I suggested last time that ‘acceptance’ might be the cornerstone of enlightenment, of awakening to our true nature. Rather than traveling to cliff-top monasteries in distant lands to become enlightened, we simply need to accept ourselves and our lives the way they are.
We need to accept this from one moment to the next however. It is said that enlightenment, once reached, must be chosen in every instant. And perhaps there are times, when confronted with a tortured child for instance, when an ‘enlightened’ person might choose in that moment not to accept, might choose instead to enter into the drama of ‘normal’ human existence, and feel anger rather than acceptance before taking action. Jesus, after all, was reported as being angry when he threw the money-changers out of the temple. Perhaps, for a moment, he did indeed ‘argue with reality’. Perhaps he did not fully ‘accept’ what was going on. But does that mean to say that he also got upset the following day when someone stood on his toe in the marketplace? Or the day after that when he found a dead fly in his wine? I doubt it.
In his book Awakening Into Oneness, Arjuna Ardagh interviews people who have become enlightened (or, to use the term he prefers, ‘awakened’) through Deeksha. One of them comments on how things have changed now that they are ‘awakened’:
“When (emotions) happen, I feel them so much deeper. There’s no holding back. I think that might be the biggest difference of all. If I’m angry, I’m angry with every cell of my body. I’m not suppressing anything. And then it’s over. And then this stillness and peace and joy come back rapidly.”
This is how it may be then. Perhaps there are times when such people experience ‘difficult’ emotions instead of ‘acceptance’, but these are fully experienced instead of being suppressed. This allows the emotions to pass through, so that calm and acceptance can return. Most of the time such people accept what is. The occasional squalls are passing things only, like ripples on a sea of peace.
Well, I cannot agree more with Simon here.
And to make it simple:
=> Accept the reality, because it cannot be changed
=> Do something about it, because what we’re going to do will have great impact on what will be happening in the future.
So accept it, and do something about it!
Jeff
23 September, 2007
September 24, 2007 at 12:07 am
I can’t tell if I am being misrepresented or if you are redefining terms. I thought the other conversation was about whether actions could be labeled as good or bad. I certainly would have no trouble accepting that something was occurring. I however, would not hesitate to label that as bad (or sinister, or evil, or…).
I do agree with your summary here: accept that reality is reality and make plans based on that.
September 24, 2007 at 4:17 am
Hi びっくり. You’re referring back to the original discussion we had on Jon’s site and I’m sorry if I misquoted you. I should have checked exactly what you said. What I did, in effect, was to take the objection you raised to Jon’s original point and use it to reevaluate a previous post of my own. Jon’s discussion, as you say, was about labeling things good or evil, whereas mine was about accepting things. Your cited instance about a child being tortured was relevant to both.
I think the difference is subtle though. I am talking about ‘acceptance’ in the sense of not just believing something is happening but in being *fully willing* to believe it: to believe it without any internal resistance. A lot of the time, we ‘disagree with reality’. We say ‘this shouldn’t be so’ or ‘that shouldn’t be so’, willing it to be other than what it is. I suspect that this internal resistance goes along with labeling something as ‘bad’, and that to fully extinguish it, we need to drop that label.
As long as we *have* that resistance, we are giving ourselves a hard time and using up valuable energy which would be better channeled into action. And as Jeff says in his summary, it is that action which is going to make an impact.