acceptance

The Facts

/ Tim / 1 Comment

Acceptance is a theme that comes up over and over again for me. I know enough to realize that what I haven’t learned and incorporated into my life will repeat over and over until I do. In this morning’s reading from The Daily Stoic, I read how Marcus Aurelius told himself not to give circumstances the power to incite his anger because the circumstances really don’t care at all how he reacted. Acceptance of what is, regardless of whether I like the reality before me or not, is imperative if I am going to move forward in this life.

I can easily balk against what is going on around me. There is always someone, or something, to blame. I can always pin my emotions and feelings to the first scapegoat I see and rail against the injustice, the unfairness, the cruelty and the pain that this is causing me. But in the end. It is a fact; it happened. All of the expressed or unexpressed emotion in the world is not going to turn back history to change what has occurred. That ship has sailed. It happened and I have to accept it.

Acceptance doesn’t mean that you agree with what happened. It doesn’t mean that you wanted it to occur on some level. It doesn’t mean that you caused this to happen. It is a simple acknowledgement of the fact that something occurred.

I remember almost ten years ago now, as I was lying on the grass beside my motorcycle, me facing uptown and my foot facing downtown, knowing that things were about to change, a lot. Ignoring my broken leg, railing against the driver who had not signaled and cut me off, wishing I had left the house five minutes earlier or later would not have changed the situation. My leg was broken and I would have to allow this fact to carry me forward to the next set of circumstances: ambulance, hospital, cast and recovery. It also meant surrendering my obsessive control over my business to others who could run it in my stead. No denial, no anger, no deal with the devil was going to turn back time and change the present fact of my circumstances. I still carry a plate and ten screws in my leg to remind me of this lesson.

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Change is the inescapable part of being alive. The birth of a child, the death of a pet, a slip on the ice or new technologies can toss us into the sea of resistance. It doesn’t mean I sit idly by and watch a fire consume my home, it means I call the fire department. The sooner I can get to acceptance, the sooner I can respond and incorporate change into my life.

When I am in acceptance, I am in the present moment. I am not in the past of woe or regret. I am not in the future of fear and worry. I am present in this moment. And when I am here, I can make wiser, saner choices for the next steps that I need to take.

Meditation shows you again and again a very simple yet powerful reality –

whatever you resist disturbs you, and whatever you accept cannot disturb you.

Seeing this simple truth at work in an almost infinite variety of ways in your life

can evoke a deeper letting go. We cannot always, or even often, control events or what happens to us.

We can, however, choose whether or not we obsessively resist and react to them.

And therein lies our freedom.

Letting go of resistance is an act of heartfelt surrender.

It is devotion to WHAT IS.

~Sacred Inquiry by Adyashanti

In this life, change is inevitable. Suffering, however, is a choice. It all depends upon my attitude.

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Happiness is My Choice

/ Tim / 1 Comment

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” John Lennon

I just finished reading a book called “Happiness is a Choice You Make,” by John Leland. He’s a journalist who followed six elders for a year. Through interviews he gained a great deal of insight into what keeps these people alive in spite of the many challenges of aging. Leland shares what he learned as a result: that happiness is a choice.

When I look outside myself for happiness I will probably never find it. Happiness that is linked to something outside of myself doesn’t last. If I tell myself that I’ll be happy when I get a new car. If only I get to go on that vacation I can be happy. Or when I finally publish that book I will be happy. What happens when the car gets old, the vacation is over or the book stops selling? Sorry to say, you probably won’t find happiness.

What our elders can teach us is that we find happiness when we choose it. In spite of the pain, the losses, the changes and the uncertainty of the future, the wisdom of old age demonstrates that it is up to us. Despite our problems, we can be happy. They don’t have to prevent us from being content right now, in this moment. Happiness is the choice of those who accept what is happening around them and move along through life with a positive attitude. Add a good dose of ‘selective forgetfulness’ and you’ll find a way of life that is pleasant regardless of storms raging around us.

“The lesson was to find happiness not in the absence of pain and loss, but in their acceptance.” John Leland

The mind will always be able to find reasons not to be happy. Is dissatisfaction our ‘go-to’ way of thinking? Perhaps that’s how we were raised. No one will deny that inventions and changes have been the result of this dissatisfaction with the way things are. But perhaps I can be accepting of the way things are and still work to change the things I can.

There will always be things that I can focus upon that will bring me down: politics, violence, poverty, weather. However, I can also acknowledge their existence without letting it send me into a depression. So, in spite of these things, I choose to be happy. I choose to focus on the present, the gift of today. Yesterday may not have been so good, but that doesn’t mean that today can’t bring many gifts.

two men holding red heart balloons

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The key to life, as John Lennon said, is happiness. And while the aged many have fewer moments in their future that I do, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for anyone. It is up to me to use happiness as the key to open the door to a life which is full of happiness, joy and freedom. It’s my choice to make. I choose happiness.

Terminally Unique

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I, like many others who arrive at the doors of recovery rooms, was suffering from a belief that went far beyond my addiction and was at the root of what was killing me. It was a belief that went deep and in many ways was the source of all of the problems that I was encountering in life. I arrived with the disease of ‘Terminal Uniqueness’.

I thought that I was unique. I believed that I was different. I knew that no one else had the challenges that I faced. I was convinced that if anyone else had been bombarded by the set of circumstances that I found myself in, they too would have found a way to escape this prison by over indulging in some sort of ‘medication’ to treat this disease.

Of course I ended up in recovery. I was sure I was the only white, gay, ex-catholic, male, farm boy from Southern Ontario that had ever been born. I had some lower back pain issues. I had a partner who didn’t understand me. I was depressed. I felt I was powerless over my situation and so, of course, I deserved some compensation for all of these difficulties. Getting loaded was my way of dealing with all of those things. I needed some relief from all of the things that were constantly prodding at my mind.

It took going through the Twelve Steps of recovery to allow me to see that I wasn’t ‘unique’ or ‘different’. I came to see that my ‘terminal uniqueness’ was another deadly form of Ego disease. I realized that I hadn’t accepted the package that made me who I was. Thinking I was different was my ego telling me to run away from all that I was instead of embracing it. My problems weren’t connected to my sexuality, my religion, or my environment. My problem was me and my solution was acceptance.

Recovery has helped me to face myself honestly, without judgement and without expectation. I have a garden variety addiction. My story is very similar to the stories of the other folks around the meeting tables. Some dove deeper into their addiction than I did but the result was the same and here we all sit. I learned to dig below the surface to see my past for what it was.  I learned to accept my story, my past. I learned to embrace the person I was discovering, perhaps for the first time.

Today I focus on gratitude. I am learning to be grateful that I have all of those qualities that I had been running away from. I have come to understand that I can’t change my past or those qualities, nor to I want to. They are part of my make-up and they are something to celebrate rather than escape from. My ego is a bit tamer these days. Oh, I still fall into the trap of thinking that I can’t make it through whatever I am going through. But, I have survived every challenge that has ever come my way. How do I know? I am still here.

I have learned that accepting what happens as ‘life’, makes it neither positive or negative. I live my life on life’s terms, not mine and that allows me to remember that I can and will make it through.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

man sitting on edge facing sunset

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