Accepting Reality As It Is

The conditions of life won’t always change, but it doesn’t mean you can’t live the next moment well.

Some people go through a crisis and they fold. Others get stronger. Why?
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Here’s the truth. You can keep yourself from being destroyed even when you’re suffering. Because when you cannot readily solve the problem, or change your perspective about a situation, and you don’t want to stay miserable—your option is to get through the situation without making it worse

We do this first by radically accepting a situation. This is the experience of total surrender to the moment. You acknowledge what IS—with your mind and your heart. You stop fighting reality

When you’ve truly accepted what is there’s no struggle any more! You no longer are resisting reality. You’re not burying your head in the sand, you’re also not trying to control it or set your own special conditions around it. You’re taking it as it is

Pain is pain. No matter what. But pain that we resist—that we don’t accept—takes a special form that we call suffering. However when we accept what is we allow for the possibility of hope 
Later on I’m going to release a very practical video on the steps towards radically accepting reality. Watch for it please. These are important things to discuss and consider in trying times

Reality Acceptance

You have to sit with what is before you can experience what is to come

This is a painful reality. But bypassing is one of the easiest ways of escaping into fantasy. Imagining the world that is to come or what might happen on the other side is fine and well, but it depends on building on the solid ground Of clear eyed presence

Listen I get it. The human mind has a difficult time making sense of an entire way of being up ended. We move very quickly into meaning making. Our unconscious self imagines that if we can just reframe it or spin it or see the good, then it will suspend the pain

So I hear talk of the Great Awakening. I hear rumors of the Techno Utopia to come. I hear speaking of Transformation and Prosperity and Collective Manifestation. Good good. These are still dreams. They are still sleeping sounds

To wake up because of this chaos is to cry out in pain. It is experience the full weight of the moment. It is look at the grandmothers and grandfathers taken ill, the friends in lock down, the loved ones who have passed without anyone near to grant them passage, the collective economic upheaval, the businesses lost, the homes abandoned, the confusion, the anxiety

Radical acceptance, which takes pain and creates the possibility of hope, begins with “I do NOT wish to accept this!!” It begins with the admission that we are in Hell

To wake up is painful. People smiling and speaking of the-best-tomorrow-hopefully are only those who have put off that pain for a day. And who wouldn’t if they could? Certainly, none of us wish to consciously choose pain. And yet, perhaps by choosing the pain of awakening to what really is, without deferring it with dreams of what might be, we may forgo a deeper and self created suffering 
This present is difficult. Let it be so. That is where hope begins

However, there are many distractions. It’s easy to get derailed. 

There is a kind of nervous DOERism that creeps into this waiting place

When the world looms chaotic, when the world looks like a churning ocean some want to shut down. They are terrified and wish to hide. Still others, out of that same terror, wish to go harder, move faster and do more

The automatic and conditioned way of being—the ego—managing and controlling its environment, wants to feel useful, wants to feel anything at all. The best way it often knows to do this is by performing and producing 
You feel it right? The proliferation of INSTA LIVES, new podcasts, educational opportunities, catchy programs designed to get your attention even at the best of times. And of course, all of them tastefully toned to our present need, our current crisis 
As I read down the list my first response is simply exhaustion. My eyes feel blurry from the dizzying array of MORE and BIGGER being thrown at me. I also feel a sense of gratitude for many of them, as they represent people—good people and fine healers—taking their leap into the ocean in order to rescue souls adrift. For that I am grateful. There will be those saved

Yet—in part isn’t this exactly part of what has brought us here in the first place? The loud noise, the frenetic GOing, the busy-ing, and biggering

Isn’t the production and the performing part of the deep restlessness of the soul that cannot find any peace in itself and so must seek outward activity, outward validation? Yes. We would have to acknowledge it is

To would-be-healers and helpers, yes—this May be your moment. But may I implore you—just as I do myself—not to simply fill the air with words, with shiny new virtual programs, and Tinselly truths

Become like the earth itself must for a time. Fallow. Allow the soil of your heart to be restored. Become simple again. Become quiet again. Don’t simply go from hill to mountain with no rest. Use this moment to surrender to the reality of what lies beneath

In part this has to do with control.

There’s a kind of paralysis that the not knowing can create Or freedom
Some people I know believed that something like this could happen. No one I know prepared for it though. We went about our lives like things were drawn in pen and ink—with certainty. But when everything is stripped away we see the reality that we didn’t ever know to begin with 
folks have said for quite a while to live as though Today was your last. But it’s difficult to do that, isnt it? Truth is that the last americano I had a week ago tasted like every other one before. I didn’t savor it. I didn’t register that Hailee, the girl I always say hello to and who knows me by name, would be out of job soon. I didn’t imagine that my tiny ritual would evaporate, maybe forever. It was just what I did. Habit. Unconscious

Yesterday I visited a friend keeping watch over his business, waiting on foot traffic to keep him afloat. You could, at moments, hear even in an urban center, the sound of steps on the pavement. The few of us out and about running errands hurriedly looked at each other warily, all wondering what was next

Of course for many “What’s Next” means no longer leaving home in the foreseeable future. It means loss of job, eviction, and perhaps illness or death. Of course these are projections and who really knows. But ISNT that exactly the point? That what was unimaginable a month ago is now front of mind

I’ve had to tell my children the difficult truth that we live in uncertain times. That we do not know what tomorrow holds. That things like their school year, or the social systems they’ve become accustomed to are no longer certitudes. Life will, I said, not ever be the same. And isn’t that like speaking of a loss and the grief that comes with it

But did we ever know what life was going to be like tomorrow or next week, let alone next year? No. We were always clueless. And therein is both fear but also freedom.

For the world to change, She must rest. And so must you and I 

I remember running at breakneck speed down a hill, laughing till I felt like I might die of delight, the sunlight falling over me, warmth on top of warmth. I collapsed panting in the grass. Looking up at the clouds. I drifted to sleep 
The world of a six year old with a free afternoon and a country meadow to explore is somewhat different than the hustle and grind of our moments-ago-state-of-the-Union, yeah? We wake and check our phones, watch the markets, hit the gym, Pound the pavement, make the calls, Send the emails, trade our strategies, sell our souls. Relentlessly 
We are always connected. Always on. Always pacing and churning. Never resting. Never truly taking a moment

Yet here we are. Waiting. Our business is empty. Our school is out. Our family is home. Our lover is near. Our car is parked. Our life is—at a pause. We’ve tumbled down the hill. We’ve collapsed

Of course we don’t close our eyes because we still wonder what’s next. Tomorrow’s might-be robs our today of any peace. Our anxiety still throbs cresting new headaches. Even as we can do nothing to solve the problems we observe 
We agree, most people I know, that this blitzed out world is not the bliss we envision. It is certainly not the earth we wish to inhabit. But If it is going to change then we first must 
Surrender

Take a nap. Drift to sleep. Nourish your soul. Miss the phone call. Don’t check the news for a while. Turn off the thrum and the throb. Don’t have your finger on the pulse. Simply count the clouds. For a minute. Just return to your senses. Especially you helpers. Especially those of you who carry a weight for the world. I know. I know. If you’re not ON, then who will be? And yet....step into the river once more 

Feel again. Be free again. In this time of waiting. Rest. As you do. As I do. So also goes the world+