Finding Acceptance

Sometimes we approach our spiritual practice and our life as a self-improvement project.  This may sound like a good idea, but the felt experience is of endless conflict.  Instead, great teachers urge us to begin where we are: to accept our current situation as it is.  This may seem like condoning our own shortcomings and the problems of the world.  But in practice, the turning toward our experience with kindness and compassion opens us to the possibility of transformation.

Transcript

Arrange your body comfortably.

Enter yourself in spaciousness,

Clarity,

Presence,

Well-being,

Peace,

Stillness,

And compassion.

Allow yourself to be with this moment as it is,

Fully alive,

Fully present.

Now gently recall a difficult emotion or situation that puts you at your edge.

Feel this in your body with an open mind and a sense of curiosity.

Notice if you are in any way craving or insisting that the situation be different than it is or was,

For yourself,

For someone else,

Or for the world.

For a moment,

Let yourself feel your opposition and push the experience away.

Notice how the resistance feels in your body.

What happens to any painful feelings as you resist?

What happens to your heart?

Imagine what your life would be like if,

For the next hours,

Weeks,

And months,

You continued to move through the world with the thoughts and feelings of resistance.

Now relax your body and let go of any tension that has arisen.

Bring back to mind the difficult emotion or situation.

Look to see what is the belief structure that underlies the difficulty.

Another way of saying this is to see if there's an implicit should statement,

Like,

Should things be a certain way,

When in reality they aren't?

See if you can calmly identify the reality that you've been pushing away.

Name the reality.

Name what is.

Say the sentence a few times that names what is.

Practice accepting the reality.

Bring it closer to you.

You can even imagine bringing it into your body,

That this helps to integrate the emotion into your being.

Be gentle and kind with yourself.

Now,

From the depth of your being,

From your calm center,

Relax any craving or insisting that the situation be different than it is.

Bring the challenging situation or emotion into greater and greater awareness,

To experience it directly and clearly with kindness.

This does not mean that you condone the situation.

Don't try to get rid of the emotion.

Instead ask yourself softly,

What would be a more caring,

Loving way to be than demanding that the situation be different?

How does the experience change internally when you drop your resistance?

This doesn't imply agreeing with the situation,

Simply acknowledging it deeply and holding it in awareness with care.

Tenderly,

Gently allow the situation to be as it is.

Allow any emotions to be as they are.

Hold the situation or emotion in your heart.

Don't judge any part of your experience.

Steadily and with care,

Look directly at things as they are.

Reviews

Thank you Karen for helping me to sort thru a situation 🙏💜

Very helpful and insightful!