Ripples On A Sea Of Peace

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.

(There have been some interesting discussions on previous posts: See here for 'Making Plans' and here for 'How Does It Feel To Win A Million?' (the latter including what I humbly suggest is the world's best-ever spiritual budgerigar analogy). Also, largely thanks to Liara Covert of Dream Builders, there have been further discussions on earlier posts, such as How To Have It All , How To Deal With Difficult Emotions and How To Slow Down Time. Feel free to take a look, and join in if you wish!)

 

These may also be of interest:

The Ultimate Truth

How Does It Feel to Win a Million?

Comments

[Jon F]

Hi Simon,
Either we are not reading the same books or I have got the wrong end of the stick on this one. My big thing is that I can create my own reality - not just accept whatever is happenning as reality, but actually choose myself what reality I want. This is a big deal for me as a de-converting christian, because it makes me feel very empowered that I can actually do something now about my situation, rather than just "waiting on the Lord" and hoping He will do something. So in this context, I understand this idea of acceptance to mean that whatever happens, happens. Don't try and pretend it isn't happenning. Embrace it, and experience the full flow of emotions that it evokes within you. BUT, then decide how you wish to label this event. If you choose "bad", that's fine. If you choose "good", thats fine too. But you decide what the event is, not the other way around.
Jon

[surjit]

Hi Simon,
I fully agree with your words of wisdom:
...accept whatever is happening in our lives in any one moment, instead of 'arguing with reality..'
The ultimate is reality is God.There can never be 'argument' with Him but only prayer..
Thanks for another good post.
God bless.

[Liara Covert]

Jon F makes great points. Another way to see things is to sense that whenever you perceive anything that evokes discomfort, and you react unfavorably, you have judged yourself unworthy and felt guilty. When you desire and experience only love, you will see nothing else. Reality is only what you create and desire to see.

Consider if you choose to see suffering, then you will project it in forms that disturb you. In order to value and perpetuate guilt, you must believe it. This means you identify with the ego and continue thinking about images of pain you consciously feel you don't want. Yet, by thinking about them, you create them, you make guilt real. Your ego prompts you to remember the intolerable so you might forget why you exist.

[Simon]

Hi Jon – Thanks for your thought-provoking comment.

As I understand it, it is indeed one of the important lessons of the Conversations With God books that we can create our own reality (aka the law of attraction). So if we pray, it’s not a case of *asking* God for something but of giving thanks *as though it had already come to pass* (and then taking whatever action may be necessary to bring it about). Or if we’re not happy with the concept of ‘God’, we can ask ‘the universe’ instead, or ‘put the intention out there’ or however we want to phrase it. These are all variations on the same thing.

Where I diverge from many people who are into self-development, though, is that I don’t think the law of attraction is all that easy to use in practice. In order to make it work for you, you have to make sure you are *not attached* to the outcome you wish to create. Otherwise all sorts of ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ thoughts tend to get in the way. (I’ve explained this fully in an earlier post, ‘How To Have It All’.) In other words, even as you put out a particular intention, you have to be willing to accept whatever may happen. So in my own personal development, I prioritize acceptance over intention. Once you have mastered the former, the latter will follow, for the negative thoughts will no longer get in the way.

Please understand that I’m talking about *me* here. I fully accept that others of a more naturally positive disposition are able to make the law of attraction work without fully having mastered acceptance – and good luck to them, honestly! But I wonder how large a proportion of people that actually is.

As for labelling things, I wonder why you think it is so important that everything must be labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Another important teaching of Conversations With God is that there is light and dark in the world and this is intended. The darkness is needed so that we can recognize the light. That is the whole point of this world. So the things we might label as ‘bad’ aren’t really bad at all. They’re just in the nature of things.

Why this need to label? Acceptance requires *not* labelling things, *not* making judgments. Could it be that you have so absorbed the Christian concept of everything having to be either good or evil that although you now understand that God doesn’t make such judgments, you feel the need to do it yourself? I keep going on about this in the comments I leave on other blogs (I really must put it in a post here sometime!) but I like the interpretation of the Adam & Eve story which says that ‘the fall’ is not about sex at all but about being judgmental. Once Adam and Eve had knowledge of 'good' and 'evil', they started labelling everything. That was why they had to leave the garden. After all, how can you possibly be in paradise when you’re surrounded by lots of stuff you’ve labelled as ‘evil’? Drop the label, and everything can be blissful again!

Of course, as you go through life (and go through lives!) you start to realize that some things serve you better than others. How is it phrased in CWG? Some things reflect who you truly are (or something like that). But this is a more instinctive turning towards the light. It is different from this conscious labelling of everything as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Such judgments can only bring pain. For once you start, it is difficult to stop. So things become ‘bad’, situations are ‘bad’, people are ‘bad’, what you did to me is ‘bad’, this is ‘bad’, ‘that is bad’… So arguments start and wars are fought because of all these things that are perceived to be ‘bad’, so people are killed which of course is ‘bad’ in itself, which means that we have to fight further wars and so on and so forth… Until before you know it, the world is in the state that it is at the moment.

So I humbly suggest that you, me, all of us, *stop* labelling things. I’m not going to fall into the trap of calling this ‘bad’, but it doesn’t serve us!

One postscript to this rather, er, lengthy response: no you are right, acceptance is not about pretending. If emotions flow, let them come. Let them be fully expressed and then they will dissipate. But don’t get into an inner dialog about them. Once we do that, once we get fixated on the ‘badness’ of what has happened, we start to generate further unhelpful emotions. In the context of this post, we start to send out further (unnecessary) waves on the sea of peace.

[Simon]

Hi Surjit - Great to hear from you and thanks for your encouragement. I think there are many ways to describe the ultimate reality and 'God' is certainly one of them. It's not a term that suits everyone, but it's fine with me. And looking at things in this way, the ideal is for life to become a process of continuous prayer, praying for what we want by giving thanks *as though we already had it*, then taking whatever action is needed to bring it into being. So life becomes an endless process of intentional creation: 'praying without ceasing'.

[Simon]

Hi again Liara - Your prolific comments are welcome! People forget that the law of attraction is a double-edged sword. I have mentioned that we may find it hard to get it to work in the way that we consciously want, but we are nevertheless using it all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. Commonly, it is bringing us stuff we may label as 'bad' in response to our fearful thoughts, and - perhaps most commonly of all - it is bringing us a load of confusion because of our muddled thoughts. And the ego may indeed have a vested interest in bringing us all this stuff we can label as 'bad'. You mention one mechanism, and there is also the need to feel smugly superior to all these ‘bad’ things – to say nothing of simply feeding our labelling habit.

[Sridhar Varma]

Simon, Link to ur blog is up.
see under great blogs cat!
Sorry for being late.

have a great time
& keep in touch.

Sridhar

[carole]

Hello Simon,
This all reminds me of the Serenity Prayer:
Lord, give me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,The Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.

[Simon]

Hi carole - good to hear from you again! This is a case of 'great minds thinking alike' because Marion also mentioned the Serenity Prayer after the previous post. On that occasion, I was impertinent enough to suggest that it might have to be changed a little to make it clear that we should also accept the things we *can* change (before we change them).

On this post, I have relaxed my position a little, so I am able to give the Serenity Prayer a reprieve! Which I reckon is for the best, because I don't think that my version would resonate in quite so many hearts and minds through so many years as the wonderful original.

[Liara Covert]

In re-reading this thread, I was drawn to the idea of how people may grow to instinctively 'argue with reality.' As our minds go wandering, they may mix up world of dreams and conjured illusions. We create our own "ripples" so to speak. Yet, we can also find key to salvation among our many thoughts. The point is, when will you realize you know yours?

[Simon]

Hi Liara - I think the key for me has been not in thoughts but in experience: in the fleeting glimpses of a different way of being which I have experienced first hand - whether in meditation or spontaneously. Thoughts can be needed to help us find our way back there - or more specifically to help us find our way out of the labyrinth of the mind into which we've fallen. Which, to a large extent, is what our blogs are about, I suppose. But ultimately, I think we'll only find our way back if we *stop* thinking. If we allow the internal dialog to quieten so that we can hear and experience what's real.

[Ajay Prajapati]

I think the key for me has been not I was drawn to the idea of how people may grow to instinctively 'argue with reality