Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Acceptance of situations, allows us to flow with life rather than work against it. Working with life is the key to happiness. Resistance to what is creates pain and suffering. We can know this as an intellectual concept, however it can be challenging to practice it in daily life.
Self-acceptance is an important step on our journey to inner peace and happiness. When we don’t accept ourselves as we are, we falsely believe we are not good enough. This belief can separate us from our true, wise, loving nature; preventing us from experiencing the love that we are. We are already perfect. The journey to our true self is about changing our perceptions so that we can feel the goodness within, rather than understanding it as an intellectual concept.
Resistance to what is creates pain and suffering.
I have learned that when I truly accept myself, I feel lighter, happier, and more peaceful. Can you remember a conversation were someone seems to really get you? They seemed to be on your wavelength, and you felt understood. When we begin to get ourselves—we learn to appreciate us as we are, regardless of external circumstances. To understand and accept that we have both light and shadow, helps us to be more loving towards ourselves. From this place of acceptance, we can then develop skills to grow and evolve.
Sometimes we may not know the answers to questions, feel confused, and as though our life is in chaos. Accepting that we don’t know everything right now and having faith that the answer will come at the right time, allows us to flow with life rather than push against it. Accepting that we are grieving, sad, or angry helps us to stay in tune with our feelings and lets them flow and be processed in a natural way. Observing our feelings with love, rather than letting the emotion control us, is the key to emotional stability.
We don’t need to try hard or work hard on ourselves; that just creates unnecessary pressure and is exhausting. When things happen in life, when we accept the situation (in our timeframe), it helps us to process things naturally. When we resist or push against what is happening, that resistance maintains the stuck energy around it. Acceptance allows us to relax and tune into the appropriate course of action for us. When we relax, it is easier to listen to ourselves with love and find the right path. If later we find we are off course, we can always adjust and modify our actions until it feels right for us again. There are no mistakes, only learnings.
Acceptance helps us to transcend and move through circumstances. For example, accepting that we have an ego helps us to make choices around it. When we embrace and relax into our ego, we transcend it, allowing us to feel more peaceful and loving. When we deny our ego or struggle against it, it is more likely to maintain its power over us. What we resist persists!
However, when we accept our ego as part of our emotional development, we diffuse its power and the tension it creates. We are then free to develop a new level of emotional stability. When our ego tries to influence us with fearful thoughts, tuning into our awareness allows us to change those thoughts to loving ones that support us instead.
We feel more fulfilled when we accept ourselves just as we are. Rather than striving to be good, acceptance allows us to experience the natural goodness that ourselves and others are. Accepting the duality of life—our ego and our loving nature, our shadow and light, our pleasure and pain, and our judgement and non-judgement—helps us to relax. When we relax, we automatically do things from choice rather than from feeling driven. When we relax, our intuition or inner wisdom is more likely to flow.
When we don’t accept ourselves, we can be left feeling that we are wrong or not good enough in some way. Trying to fix ourselves or someone else, in a judgemental way, comes from a place of not feeling good enough. However, it is possible to change our perspective, to see ourselves and others through the eyes of love.
You will know what divine love is when you begin to feel your oneness with every human being,
not before. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
When we see a fault in or judge another, we are seeing a fault in or judging ourselves—as we are as one. There are no others. The perception of faults, reminds us of our fragmentation from The Universal Intelligence Field—the same energy that we all are made from that connects us all. The people in our lives are a gift, often guiding us back to our journey to wholeness. By shining love on any perceived faults, it supports us in returning to our natural loving state. This allows us to experience more flow, peace and joy.
