Last update: January 15, 2015
Acceptance is a magical door that closes out problems, and opens up to opportunities. (Rafael Hernampérez)
Refusal to avoid reality
In our life we ​​go through various painful experiences from which we cannot escape, such as illnesses, losses, disappointments, separations, etc. All this makes us feel bad. If we add an attitude of rejection to the pain of these experiences, we will generate suffering that could be useless and avoidable.
The attitude of rejection consists of a mechanism of resistance to reality, accompanied by feelings such as anger, disgust, opposition or indignation: that is to say, an emotional movement that deprives us of calm and clarity and, most of the time, confuses our ability to understanding.
Rejection causes an emotional storm that makes it difficult for us to identify the right solution. This emotion grows as we become aware of what is happening to us or that we have just learned. And if we can't control it, it can completely paralyze us.
In addition to the suffering that this position of rejection implies, what is produced is the impossibility of finding a solution or an adequate response to the unpleasant situation that caused it. This happens for several reasons: first of all because rejection prevents us from having a clear overview of the situation in which we find ourselves, and secondly because the emotions it causes us prevent us from remedying them in a practical way.
Rejection, therefore, not only increases our suffering, but makes it more difficult for us to find and implement a solution to the problem we are experiencing.
And even if the origin of rejection and resistance is completely natural, since it is human to try to avoid what hurts or harms us, and to get closer to what favors us, the problem arises when it is inevitable that it happens to us. even something we don't like. At this point, there is no other solution but to face it.
So we waste our energies by focusing them on the conflict that takes place within us, instead of trying to direct them along the path that will lead us to the correct solution.
Acceptance as an attitude of the present
If we don't resist, however, acceptance occurs: and through it we allow the reality we are experiencing to be as it is. We are not opposed to the present, but we recognize it and live in harmony with it. Even when we have gone through a period of strong rejection, and after feeling oppressed by the inevitability of what we do not want to accept, sooner or later we can decide to give up completely and stop opposing the reality of the facts. Acceptance, in fact, is often a gradual process, and it takes some time before it occurs.
When we accept, the suffering diminishes and we may come to be capable of feeling in tune with the present, experiencing what previously seemed a dead end situation as a starting point, and an opportunity to enrich ourselves. We accept, and so in a sense we allow the change to happen, because we leave room for the understanding of things.
Allowing things to be as they are, allying ourselves with reality, will very often force us to abandon projects we had for the future, or to move away from certain people or things, to keep moving forward.
But, as the saying goes, what you resist persists. Only when we begin to accept it can the situation change.
Image courtesy of Mark Hopper
