Free Gifts With Acceptance

Free Gifts With Acceptance

You know how I love old saws. One of my many favorites is, “When you feel like you are at the end of your rope, let go.” Ahhh.

I had one of those moments in my kung fu lesson last night. It was a two-point letting go. I wasn’t getting the flow right and it was feeling effortful. I got the thinky part of my brain to focus on the blue sky and clouds, and *bam!* there was the flow. But there was still something amiss, until I thought of my little pet snails, so strong and so soft. I relaxed, and that was the solution. Strong like a snail, open like the sky.

Internal space.

When we are in the middle of stuff, and we all get there from time to time, we often feel like we are the stuff, or we are the feelings, or we are the thoughts. But, there is an added layer that makes everything suck: We fight it.

We identify with our suffering, and we hate it. Do you see what’s happening there?

When we fight what is, we suffer. When we want what is to be what isn’t, we suffer. When we try to deny the current moment, we suffer. We hate suffering, and we are suffering, and so we hate our own selves, too.

Poor we.

Clenched and angry and sad and despising our own sweet selves, and no internal space.

I have three main body parts that I clench. Shoulders, belly, and jaw. When I notice that I’m moving toward suffering, I check those parts and relax ‘em. Clenched often hurts a lot more than relaxed. I check my thoughts. My clenched thoughts are often resentful thoughts. Why is this happening to me? (Bad creative question, by the way.) What’s wrong with me? (Another bad creative question.) Why don’t things go my way? (And there’s a trifecta of bad questions.) There are, sadly, a gazillion variations on these bad creative questions. I know you have your own, uh, “favorites.”

When I accept this moment as it is, letting go of the judgmental thoughts, letting go of the clench in my body and in my feelings, I create space. Like unclenching a fist to make an open hand, soft and receptive.

I am not my pain, or my emotions, or my thoughts.

When I accept this moment as it is, my peaceful core gets stronger. The moment may be really exciting, or very sad, or super boring, but if I accept it, there is now space around it. That space gives me the room I need to respond, not react. That space gives me room to remember that I’m the boss of my thoughts. That space liberates me from the Pain-body that Eckhart Tolle talks about.

How have I changed from fighting my moments to accepting them with all the free gifts that come with that act?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 08092013