Acceptance and Surrender

When I was laid flat for five yrs. with Rheumatiod Arthrits, and in pain beyond imagination (wanted to take my life)  I was blessed to come across this book. It helped me deal with inner and outer pain/acceptance and non acceptance. I could not accept where I was at the time and made that ok. Today, I can accept where I am and that's ok too.  It's from Eckhart Tolle's book Stillness Speaks...It has 10 little chapters (small book) and I typed every one.
Enjoy!
Wherever you are able, have a “look” inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment—where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing – and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what IS?
When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.
How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to have to say “I don’t want to be where I am.” What does it feel like when you don’t want to be where you are—traffic jam, your place of work, the airport lounge, the people you are with.
It is true, of course, that some places are good places to walk out of—and sometimes that may well be the most appropriate thing for you to do. In many cases, however, walking out if not an option. In all those cases, “I don’t want to be here” is not only useless but also dysfunctional. It makes you and others unhappy.
It has been said: wherever you go, there you are. In other words, you are here. Always. Is it so hard to accept that.
Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people> Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.
The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.
“I have so much to do.” Yes, but what is the quality of your doing. Driving to work, speaking to clients, working on the computer, running errands, dealing with countless things that make up your daily life—how total are you in what you do? Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered? This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make. Effort implies stress and strain, needing to reach a certain point in the future or accomplish a certain result. Can you detect even the slightest element within yourself of not wanting to be doing what you are doing? That is a denial of life, and so a truly successful outcome is not possible.
If you can detect this within yourself, can you also drop it and be total in what you do?
“Doing one that at a time” is how Zen Master defined the essence of Zen.
Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This surrendered action—empowered action.
Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper lever where your inner state as well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind’s judgments and “good” or “bad.”
When you say “yes” to the “isness” of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you that is deeply peaceful.
On the surface, you may still be happy when it’s sunny and not so happy when it’s rainy; you may be happy winning a million dollars and unhappy losing all your possessions. Neither happiness nor unhappiness, however, go all that deep anymore. They are ripples on the surface of you Being. The background peace within you remains undisturbed regardless of the nature of the outside condition.
The “yes” to what is reveals a dimension of depth within you that is dependent neither on external conditions nor on the internal conditions of constantly fluctuating thoughts and emotions.
Surrender becomes much easier when you realize the fleeting nature of all experiences and that the world cannot give you anything of lasting value. You then continue to meet people, to be involved in experiences and activities, but without the wants and fears of the egoic self That is to say, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place, or event should satisfy you or make you happy. Its passing and imperfect nature is allowed to be.
And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes not only satisfying but also harmonious, more peaceful.
When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way. This state of inner nonresistance opens you to the unconditioned consciousness that is infinitely greater than the human mind. This vas intelligence can then express itself through you and assist you, both from within and from without. That is why, by letting of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better.
Am I saying “Enjoy the moment. Be happy? “ NO.
Allow the “suchness” of this moment. That’s enough.
Surrender is surrender to this moment, not to a story, through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it.
For instance, you may have a disability and can’t walk anymore. This condition is as it is.
Perhaps your mind is now creating a story that says, “This is what my life has come to, I have ended up in a wheelchair. Life has treated me harshly and unfairly. I don’t deserve this.”
Can you accept the isness of this moment and not confuse it with a story the mind has created around it?
Surrender comes when you no longer ask “Why is this happening to me?”
Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.
Throughout history, there have been women and men who, in the face of great loss, illness, imprisonment, or impending death, accepted the seemingly unacceptable and thus found “the peace that passeth all understanding.”
ACCEPTANCE OF THE UNACCEPTABLE IS THE GREATEST SOURCE OF GRACE IN THIS WORLD.
There are situations where all answers ad explanations fail. Life does not make sense anymore. Or someone in distress comes to you for help and you don’t know what to do or say.
When you fully accept that you don’t know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind, and that is when a greater intelligence can operate through you. And even thought can then benefit from that, since the greater intelligence can flow into it and inspire it.
Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.
Do you know of someone who main function in life seems to be to make themselves and others miserable, to spread unhappiness? Forgive them, for they too are part of the awakening of humanity. The role they play represents and intensification of the nightmare of egoic consciousness, the state of non-surrender. There is nothing personal in all this. It is not who they are.
Surrender, one could say, is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from “no” to “Yes” When you surrender, your sense of self shifts from being identified with a reaction or mental judgment to being the space around the reaction or judgment. It is a shift from identification with form---the thought or the emotion---to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form---spacious awareness.
Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.
Leave Life alone. Let it be.