Coming Home Through Acceptance

Acceptance of all as it is right this moment 

is not the same as giving up or getting stuck.
It's a method of finding your sea legs

amidst the ever changing elements of life.

To desist in struggling against what is 

(as if it should not be happening)

uplinks your small intelligence 

with a vast universal intelligence.

That's how to be the most available

to have good come through you.

From the perspective of a seemingly separate individual 

there is no way to perceive what is for highest good of all, 

no matter how hard you try to figure that out in your mind.

But if you take the plunge and join with the all

by accepting everything right now as it is

(which can feel like surrendering into not-knowing)

you'll find that you are able to play your small part perfectly,

relieved of the illusion of being the fixer, the healer, the judge.

Paradoxically, by operating from this surrendered perspective

what appears to come through you 

may heal more than you ever could have planned or imagined.

~

There have been moments of revelation when my head tipped back and my mouth opened into a Cheshire Cat grin and a belly laugh cavorted out through these lips in a spontaneous expression of joy and relief, realizing how much easier it is to not be mentally bound up in trying to control life. Suddenly I am simply "being lived through", there is no effort, just a wide open, surrendered, yet vitally alive feeling in the middle.

In order to grow up and be mature and successful in this world, we are taught to develop self will, self control, self discipline. This is important in order to develop an interior consistency, a unified operating system on the micro level. Independent initiative and goal setting is not a bad thing. But being able to call the shots is not the ultimate freedom. There is a radically different freedom that is only found through surrender and acceptance. Acceptance of all as it is, and most specifically, all of yourself as you are.

Sooner or later one will realize that no amount of effort to improve oneself or the world results in enduring security, success, or satisfaction. Whatever has been shored up will spring a leak, whatever assumptions have been made there will be unexpected changes, whatever roles have been established there will be alterations. Plans will change, people will change, no program is set in stone. One comes to see the endlessness of the improvement game.

With the relinquishment of trying to improve anyone or anything or any aspect of the self you appear to be, there can be access to a still point in which a deep alignment with everything and everyone takes place. I'm not saying this is easy or comfortable to get there. Getting to that may entail facing every bit of resistance your small self can muster. It may feel temporarily boring to stop trying to become anything. It may feel downright scary–as if, by stopping, you are laying yourself bare to be caught up with by something unknown and frightening which you have been trying to outrun. There is a hunch that if you stop planning and trying and scheming and dreaming that you may die.

Practicing acceptance and surrender into the present moment is given a lot of lip service as a "good thing", a spiritual thing, but in fact it can feel sort of like dying. Not in a dramatic way, more of a death into the ordinary. The mind scrambles to find more than "Oh. Just this." If any aspect of you resists, there will still be tension. It may feel as if you had been trying hard to get "home" but are now abandoning the journey, therefor risking the possibility of never reaching some better life that you were meant to live. But as more aspects of your seemingly separate self take the risk to surrender, the tipping point may come when the release of personal control is felt as true freedom.

When you are not bound up in being busy trying to attain anything or become anything (especially some preconceived idea of what "better" looks like), then you are releasing the breaks and going into neutral. Be open to being surprised. Life has a way of meeting you perfectly exactly where you are. When you are not trying to be any more than you are in this moment, not trying to compensate, not trying to bargain with life or anyone in particular, not fearfully struggling to improve anything in the world, then life can meet you perfectly in this moment as you are, and there will be no gap of disconnection, no disjunct between your little self and everything else. It's all one flow, and your part is clear because it is just this, now, completely whole.

Experiencing that is not the same thing as making the mark, attaining the goal, winning the game, or getting anything in particular under your control. In fact, part of the relief is the absence of all of that mattering. It has nothing to do with arriving into any sort of permanent arrangement, with nailing down stability in a career or relationship. But there is vitality, and flow, a sense of celebration, and possibly the feeling of being deeply penetrated and enfolded by love. You may suddenly find that things once out of reach are now given onto you, equal to or better than your most special secret dreams. New horizons of possibility open up unexpectedly. And the darnedest thing is, the way you feel inside may be more "at home" with yourself and in the world than ever before.

Opening the Heart in This World As It Is

"Growing up, in worldly terms, does entail building up defenses;

growing up spiritually means letting them go." ~ Rogier F. VanVlissingen

Yesterday I encountered an image (on facebook) of a new born baby and a half. Possibly (probably) due to the influence of depleted uranium introduced into that area of the world by my country during a war. This baby had other body parts emerging from it, another set of legs, and entrails visible, barely enclosed in a transparent sack. What struck me were two things. One, the uniqueness of that body, the unpredictable strangeness of such a sight, a one-of-a-kind mutation that my eyes had never before encountered. And two, what struck me equally, was how there was no flinching to be felt in my heart or belly. Not that I'm implying that flinching–in pain, sorrow, anger, devastation– would not be a valid response, especially for the parents and hospital personnel. My response, up close and personal, might have been different. But overall, something in my response to what used to horrify me and make me feel anxious and depressed has been changing. 

Does this change have to do with setting healthy boundaries, learning to separate what's mine from what is someone else's problem? Partly, perhaps. Does it have to do with learning how to maintain my separate bubble of well-being in spite of what goes on in the world around me? Partly, maybe. Does it have to do with numbing down feeling and pulling away so that traumatic things are no longer registered by my sensory apparatus? Hardly. 

Here's another picture, symbolic this time. Picture a capital U. On the descending side is learning to grow up in worldly terms, which involves building up one's defenses. The ascending side represents growing up spiritually, in which one experiences a dissolving or falling away of those defenses. 

Psychologically speaking, it is normal and natural to pull away from what frightens us, what causes us pain. The first time a toddler touches a hot wood stove might be the last. There is sudden learning about what is safe. The stove is impartial and impersonal. Learning about one's physical environment and how to navigate it safely, if we can control some of that, is valuable on a practical level. Physical and verbal abuse might be a lot less easy to get away from, and teach one to not trust other people. Even in a life with no such abuse, it is common for most people to learn, from more subtle negative experiences, to shore up the belief that it is not safe to keep one's heart open at all times. We learn to practice conditional loving as part of growing up, in order to try to not be hurt. Being somewhat defended is part of most people's personality profiles.

What is at the very bottom of the U? A turning point, at which one recognizes that any time one's heart is closed it hurts oneself. No matter what the reason, no matter how many valid excuses there are to remain defended, eventually the awareness comes in that opening the heart is going to help more than staying closed down, shut off, and pulled away is going to solve anything. (It's not as simple as a one time revelation, I'm pointing at a general trajectory.)

The ascent I've begun up the right slope of the U has entailed a reversal of much early learning. I've been given, by life, by grace, many instances of discovering that it is possible to open my heart in spite of what is happening. Deactivating the conditioning can be very intense. There is encountering what used to be taken as an excuse to close the heart, and then choosing to be willing to not shut down in anger, blame, fear, or numbness. To allow, to accept, to stand in the fire of strong feeling, to experience pain while staying open. (I'm not talking about being abused nor advocating that anyone "turn the other cheek" physically.) I'm talking about feeling whatever feelings come up when I encounter things beyond my control to change, those things which used to regularly make me feel out of control and hopeless, broken hearted, despairing. It's not that I don't still feel my heart breaking sometimes, I do.

Open hearted unconditional love is NOT the same as wearing rose tinted glasses, in fact it's closer to the opposite. The journey of spiritual maturing is more about taking those glasses off, one encounter at a time. What is it to be in the world as it is without withdrawing into the defense of self-protection, the defense of closing down and pulling away? Or the defense of getting angry and lashing out and fighting back, blaming the world for making one "have to" shut down one's heart? What does it feel like to allow the frozen, rigid, calcified, traumatized aspects of ourselves be melted back into awareness and rejoin aliveness?

It requires a hell of a lot of courage. But each application of courage releases more awareness to be employed in loving. Rather than searching for light in the darkness, waiting until there is proof that it is worth risking, one opens up one's own heart to let the light of love shine into the world anyway. As one grows in trust and willingness to let love in and through one's own very tiny vulnerable little self, at the same time this love is melting that sense of separate selfhood back into the all. Far from shutting down and pulling away from life, it is a re-emersion back into all of life. A gradual loosening of the boundaries of "me" to include "the rest of the world." If there is the willingness to participate, if we surrender to that inner yearning that longs to love unconditionally, then in spite of previous "lessons" we remember that opening makes it easier, not harder, to live in this imperfect world.