The Power of Acceptance

It just so happens that I'm currently in a perfect storm: quite a number of my family, friends and associates are going through the greatest challenges of their lives. They are living in their darkest moment of fear and despair. When bad things happen to good people (the title of a book, by the way), how do you reconcile it? It's one thing to inventory your own past actions and decisions, to see and accept responsibility for how you have created your current reality, but what about those times when true, gut-wrenching tragedy hits - the kind that makes no sense in this world? While I believe we attract certain events to us, in some cases, that is too easy an answer. Sometimes, things just happen. What is important, what is our true test, however, is how we react to that event or information. That is where we have an opportunity to grow. There are two characters in Chinese which stand for the word 'crisis'. One character means 'danger' and the other means 'opportunity'. Perhaps this is where the answer lies.

If we look within ourselves and within our communities, we may see what opportunities there are for us to grow out of this adversity. If that's not possible, and the issues are solely internal, it's tougher. The trick is to learn to accept where we are now and what's happening. When we stop fighting the situation, and align our energies with it, we move towards resolution in our hearts and towards sorting out the remaining issues. Acceptance slays anger, and frees you up emotionally and psychologically to step forward.

On a personal note, this is an area under construction for me. I like to be in control of my life, the captain of my ship. Accepting life is not one of my strengths, because I believe we are responsible for creating our own destiny. I'm all Yang and not enough Yin. BUT, I'm learning the power of acceptance, of working with the flow and not against the tide. And I'm rooting for all of you in the same boat.

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Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater.
-- Nicholas Evans

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable,
but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
~Agatha Christie

Thorns and stings
And those such things

Just make stronger

Our angel wings.
~ Emme Woodhulle-Bache

The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.

~ Morris Mandel