Acceptance
You live in the eye of constant chaos and although its winds may be calm at the axis of rotation, stronger winds will and do at times extend into where you reside. Chaos is the only constant in your life because from it, new life is constantly being spawned, the consequences of which you are mostly unaware of even though they continually affect you indirectly.
Therefore, you are blissfully unaware of your precarious existence which you manage the best way that you can whilst trying you do so to your advantage. Some of the time you may even think you are in control of your life. However, although essential, such thoughts arise from one of the many human frailties we all possess, which is that of sometimes being delusional. The hard truth of the matter is the only thing you can ever be in control of is yourself.
When you are directly affected by chaos, irrespective of whether it is initially a positive or challenging event, the consequences can be unexpected, unimagined, and devastating and you are totally unprepared for such times. The reality you carefully had created and nurtured since birth is changed out of all recognition, forever and you may or may not know why.
You find yourself faced with a situation where some of your long-held principles, the fundamental truths by which you had hitherto lived your life, no longer represent your values; and worst still, nor do they act in your best interests. Your dilemma is whether to hang onto them for the principle of it, even though you realise they have failed you.
Principles that fail do so because they are no longer relevant to your situation. As such, they no longer serve their purpose, and to stand by them would either result in you limiting yourself at best, or at worse, causing you to self-sabotage.
To recognise it’s time for you to let your life-long held principles go is not easy. They give you standards to go by which makes you feel safe, secure and in control, even though you are not. Merely the thought of bowing to the demands of chaos to let go of your principles before you have had time to replace them with those that align better with your situation is beyond comprehension.
Letting go of a long and cherished principle is arguably one of the most difficult choices any morally intelligent person has to make. It is a defining moment. Not only because principles are the very things that provide you with moral standards and contribute toward the structure you develop within to live your life the best way that you can, but by doing so, you are also opening the door to an unknown land with unknown consequences.
Furthermore, you remain semi-principled until you know the ley of the land to develop new ones. Nor will you be aware of the benefits gained and the expansion of choices you have created for yourself, which unbeknown to you, are waiting patiently for you in the wings, listening for a cue which is that of your acceptance to do so.
Although the sagest of words, acceptance is an internal process that if it suits you to do so, is a no-brainer, if not, it is mind-bending and complex and renders you powerless because you don’t have to like it, want it, choose it, or support it, to find yourself needing to do it.
What ‘it’ is, is the force of the reality you find yourself in is too great for you to handle because not some, but all the odds are set against you. And you do so because if you don’t, you will be overwhelmed by ‘it’ whilst achieving nothing.
Under these circumstances, acceptance means that you are going against every fibre in your now less principled being which is telling you not to because they are responding to your instinctual resistance to change. Although a natural, healthy, important reaction and an essential part of the process, the being in your fibres is either your ego which doesn’t usually serve you well at such times, or your intuition which more often does than doesn’t.
To accept at such a fundamental level means you need to put your ego aside, again, something that is exceedingly difficult to do. However, your reward is you enable yourself to open your heart and mind to the higher soul meaning of the word to reveal a way forward that simply isn’t apparent to you when your ego is in place.
The higher soul meaning of acceptance is to ‘allow’. It is a word of empowered authority, the lower meaning of which places you in a position where you permit, you give permission. The higher soul meaning of allowance enables you to embrace what you must accept, that which you did not ask for, and don’t want, need, or like, with dignity and forbearance.
Why is this necessary?
When you knowingly allow, you permit. When you permit you are in a position of authority and own what you are accepting. You seize control of a situation that you don’t like, want, choose, or support, yet you need to accept it so you can create a different kind of peace, rationality, and stability, in other words for the sake of your own sanity.
By doing so you step away from the disempowered individual you had been made to feel, to become the empowered I AM you truly are and were always meant to be. You walk away from such a soul-wrenching decision not only intact but far more aware, resilient, courageous, stronger, and wiser for the experience.
The higher meaning of acceptance allows you to transcend the emotional pain such decisions always inflict and by doing so you regain the enriched power you initially lost which enables you to embrace the freedoms only the higher soul meaning of acceptance can provide. By doing so you become a powerful force to be reckoned with within the beautiful, productive chaos of your life.
Article by More to Life Elder – Elizabeth Francis
Article published in More to Life – Edition 64
