The Way of Acceptance

The Way of Acceptance by Gina Lake

One of the reasons we turn away from the moment is that we are programmed to reject life as it is. We want life on our own terms, but it can never be that way. Even if the ego could have life on its own terms, which the ego does experience briefly and occasionally, it would soon want more or different or better than that. The ego doesn't accept life, which is one reason the ego doesn't want to give it attention.


The ego would rather give attention to its fantasies, dreams, memories, opinions, judgments, and even fears than to the actual reality of any moment, which in addition to being imperfect (from the ego's point of view), is impossible to control or predict. The unpredictability of life and the ego's lack of control of it are deeply disturbing to the ego. Touching into reality makes the ego very uncomfortable because it is faced with the truth that it's not the one making life happen. As long as the ego remains in its made-up reality, it can play at being king. It pretends that it can make life go its way. It denies the obvious reality and chooses to believe what it wants to about reality.

Accepting whatever is happening drops us into Essence and into a state of happiness, peace, and contentment. That state is immediately uncomfortable for the ego, so the experience of happiness and peace doesn't usually last long. The ego finds fault even with peace, declaring it boring, and drums up a problem to think about and solve. If you agree with the ego's assessment of the moment, you are back in identification with it instead of with Essence. Fortunately, acceptance can bring you right back into the moment. Once you are aware of the power of acceptance to drop you into Essence, you can use acceptance more consciously to do that.

Acceptance is synonymous with love. Love accepts. You could say that acceptance is the definition of love. So when you accept what is happening, you land in love's territory. However, to stay there, you have to keep accepting what's happening, and that can be challenging because the mind comes into nearly every moment with a reason to leave it. You must say no to the mind again and again before its hold is loosened. The more you say no to the mind, the weaker it gets, and the more you say yes to it, the stronger it gets.

Detaching from the mind takes diligence, commitment, and choice, and you are the only one who can make that commitment and choice. To some extent, your spiritual evolution is in your hands. Other factors determine how and when you will unfold spiritually, but how fast you advance is largely up to you and your choices.

Accepting what is happening isn't as difficult as you may think. You only have to accept what is happening in the present moment, not in every moment throughout time. The ego has difficulty accepting what's happening because it spins a negative story about what it means for future moments. For instance, if you are feeling sick, the ego causes you to suffer over it by telling you how awful being sick is and what a negative impact it will have on your life. The stories it spins are all lies. It never predicts the future accurately.

Accepting what's happening is also not as difficult as you may think because accepting it doesn't mean you have to like it. All you have to do is accept that you don't like what's happening, if that is the case. Accepting what's happening just means you are willing to let it be the way it is. After all, what other choice do you have, since it is the way it is?

The only other choice is to argue with what's happening, complain about it, try to ignore it, or try to change it, which is what the ego does in nearly every moment. This is a recipe for suffering and doesn't change what is happening; it only makes what's happening unpleasant. By allowing whatever is happening to be happening, you align yourself with life instead of opposing it, and that makes every moment, regardless of what is happening, peaceful.

When the moment is okay just the way it is and your energy is not taken up in opposing it, you can really be present to whatever is happening. What you discover is that every moment has much more to it than what you like or don't like about it. Every moment is rich with complexity, dimension, and beauty. The ego paints the moment as black or white, good or bad. It has a simplistic view of what is happening according to its likes and dislikes, but the moment is not simple in the least. It's interestingly changeable, unpredictable, and intelligent. Who knows what will happen next? You never know. From the perspective of Essence, life's unpredictability is delicious, exciting, and fascinating. When you are in acceptance, you feel that way too about life.

When you are accepting, you are expressing Essence. And when you are accepted by others, you are experiencing Essence. Think of all the times in one day you are either accepting or experiencing acceptance from others. Every time acceptance happens, Essence is showing up in your life. Love is everywhere in the form of acceptance: You accept the sky, you accept gravity, you accept your breathing, you accept the color of the trees, you accept the silence between sounds, you accept the space between objects. You accept the majority of what is. This is You loving life and allowing it to be the way that it is.

The mind interrupts this peace, this love, by telling you that something is not right, not good, not desirable: "That dog shouldn't be barking." "The sun shouldn't be so hot." "It shouldn't be so windy." If you agree with the mind, you suffer. If you don't, you stay in Essence, in allowing whatever is to be the way it is.

The egoic mind will tell you that accepting life means you won't ever do anything. It tries to scare you out of accepting by making acceptance equal to passivity, laziness, and a lack of discrimination, which the ego deems dangerous to survival. Acceptance is dangerous to the ego's survival, but it's not dangerous to your survival. Acceptance is a more effective strategy for survival than anything the ego has to offer. Acceptance is love, and love connects us with everything because it connects us with who we really are, which is everything. What could be more beneficial to survival than being connected to everything and knowing you are everything? Is there any reason that You, as the Divine, would not take care of you, as the creation? You are being taken care of and so is everyone else. The ego not only can't take credit for your survival, but it has interfered with it more than it has helped.

Something else besides the ego is living your life, and the more you allow it to do that, the more it will take over. Essence has been living through you and expressing itself through you as much as you have allowed it to. Every person is an expression of Essence to a greater or lesser degree. The Divine is moving, speaking, doing, creating, laughing, playing, and working through each of us to the extent that we allow it to, but it is there in everyone. If you want to have an experience of the Divine, you are having it! And so is everyone else.

You are not separate from the Divine. The ego is the sense that you are a separate person apart from the Divine, but that is just an idea. The ego is just the idea, "I exist as a separate entity." It isn't true. You are the Divine in disguise as a human being. The more you come to see that you are not who you think you are, the more you will experience who you really are and who everyone else really is. The Divine is everywhere.