5/31 – Surrendering to the inevitable

The acceptance of the reality is an everyday struggle for everybody. In the today’s article, we will be looking at the term Acceptance from a different view, maybe even too advanced for a regular reader, therefore, be ready. This topic is, again, inspired by another podcast by Cory Muscara.

I am not going to lie. Before I started writing this article, I had a real trouble to actually formulate for myself what the term acceptance actually means. I resisted the notion of one word defining such an abstract concept.

According to the Definitions from Oxford Languages, the acceptance is:

1. the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.
2. the process or fact of being received as adequate, valid, or suitable.

However, as I was looking at these two general definitions, both of them are focused on so called “cognitive acceptance”. In other words, both imply that in order to consent to something or to consider something as valid is decided by our mind within our experience.
Many of us struggle with this to the various extent due to the fact that our finite mind/limited mind can never accept everything due to various reason that can influence our survival or well-being. This is actually alright, it protects us from general threats or situations that are not beneficial for our life, therefore we accept only what we consider acceptable from our point of view. Yet, this is the resistance that we feel every day, often right after we wake up – we already resist the idea that it is a Monday again. The thought sometimes feel excruciating, even though it is just the fact we have to face.

One may ask, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just feel an acceptance towards what reality keeps throwing at us without the unpleasant feelings?

However, the issue is that surrendering to the all cannot be “done” by accepting anything that comes to us with our mind – intellectually or conceptually. The acceptance in this way is not possible if we want to stay balanced (we cannot say yes to staying hungry forever). Sane mind should not accept anything due to the basic survival mechanisms.

How can we surrender to the reality and feel the least resistance?

We are already able to do it. In fact, we are doing it all the time. It is our awareness being able to take on anything that is presented “in front of it”, or better to say, “within it”. The awareness cannot say no to anything. Awareness accepts it all and it surrenders anything because it is not a mental activity. The events that keep coming into our lives, whether pleasant or unpleasant, our awareness does not choose which ones it accepts and which it does not. It let’s us observe the world as it is. It is only our thoughts that judge, accept or resist.

The awareness is like a canvas that is being painted and has not power to resist the painting. Only the thoughts are able to resist to what arises as a part of the painting of the awareness.

If we truly want to surrender and keep our mind free as possible, we have to first stop resisting to what arises in our reality and stop suppressing the existence of that given event. Instead, we let our awareness to show us that this is the next picture being painted and then once we accept its existence, we can make much better mental decisions without the unpleasant feelings of resistance and be able to move forward more easily, instead of being stuck in the denial.

This sounds probably complex and simple at the same time. However, if you find resisting this – your awareness had already come across this article which now became another painting on the canvas of your awareness. You already surrendered to the inevitable and there is no way you can deny it happened.

🙂