“Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary it means accepting it as it comes… To accept is to say yes to life in its entirety.” -Paul Tournier

Hello Spiritual Warriors – ready to awaken your divine gift of acceptance?

Acceptance is a beautiful teaching with many different levels. It is the root and the foundation of many wisdom traditions including Buddhist compassion teachings, the Law of Least Effort, and Christ Consciousness. But regardless of your orientation to these belief systems, we can always find personal evolution and divine awakening in accepting ….

1) ACCEPTING that this moment is perfect, pure, whole, and every moment that has led to this moment was exactly the way it was meant to be. Imagine…this moment is the magnificent culmination of all of your choices; every experience that has woven itself in, around, and through you; and every one of the 31 million seconds that have ticked by in just this year alone! It couldn’t be any other way!!

2) ACCEPTING that you are a divine being who is sealed in this human body for the span of a lifetime and that you have made choices and decisions throughout your life from your highest level of consciousness at the time. Even though there are choices you may regret or torture yourself about, they are carved in stone and we must accept them, forgive ourselves, and make better choices in the future.

3) ACCEPTING others for what they are – not as we wish they would be. Allowing people’s differences, quirks, unique vibrations to just be and not necessarily fit into our box of how the world is supposed to be. Allowing others to be as they are. Understanding these three levels of acceptance could keep us busy for several lifetimes. I began the discussion of level one in this week’s video. Feel free to integrate it into your life and recognize that wherever you are, every moment of the past is carved in stone and for us to evolve our lives or improve our situation or find deeper fulfillment we must own the moment. Level two is where so many of us get stuck. We are our toughest critic and we know all the moments where we felt less than, or were sloppy, lazy, or casual with our decisions. We know when we were unsure of which road to take and we guessed “wrong”. We know where we could have been better, or stronger, or wiser, or more patient, or more truthful, or more engaged. But in that moment, we didn’t know it…we didn’t have access to a crystal ball of consequences; or maybe we didn’t take the time to really explore the depth of our actions or choices.

So we have two very clear choices:

1) beat ourselves up for not being clairvoyant and diminish the happiness in our lives by pointing a continuous finger of blame at ourselves OR

2) accept the past as a lesson so that we can make better choices and find deeper fulfillment in life. So often, we hold ourselves accountable for all the pitfalls and unhappiness in our lives and we point to some decision we made that was the root of it all. But this is unnecessary and harsh. And building up the blame case has no value except in a courtroom. In the real world, where a judge or jury of our choices doesn’t exist, attributing blame only gets in the way of making the best decision in this moment – especially self-blame because that is also self-defeating.

It takes the wind out of our sails and that doesn’t help us in any way. In business, in history, in politics, in sports…where the stakes are so high, the ability to step beyond the moment of blame and accept our individual mis-steps, mis-stakes, mis-speaks separates the winners from the losers. The ability to accept that we did our best from our own level of consciousness at the time, separates those willing to step out of the past (which is the stale, the old, the stuck) and into the present (which is rich, fresh, and filled with infinite opportunities).

Those mired in self-pity or finger-pointing are trapped in the past and destined to stay there because they will not accept what is carved in stone. They remain paralyzed in self-finger-pointing mode and that becomes their excuse for why they are unfulfilled; while those who have owned and accepted their decisions are able to move forward and make new, proud, exciting, restorative choices. We can keep complaining about the rain or accept that it’s raining, find an umbrella, and dance in the cleansing fall. We get to choose. We are choice-making beings. No one can ever take that away from us – not even ourselves. We just need a little reminder now and then. I wish you many conscious choices this week. See you in the gap!! Peace. –davidji

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