The Dance of Acceptance

I have noticed I feel much fear when breaking out of my comfort zone. I feel I am being led more and more to branch out with my spiritual teachings and am resisting it due to "not worthy enough, not good enough, not smart enough, etc." Such old beliefs! Soooo, I am dancing with things I fear instead of resisting them....In my meditation this morning, I got "your heart is open and that is enough."  Here we go! xo
The Dance of Acceptance
So much of your life you spend judging yourself and others. Imagine what it would be like to affirm and bless all that you now judge and find wanting. It is a radical act to accept what happens in your life exactly as it is. When you do that, you stop questioning the validity of your experience. Your challenge lies in being with your experience or, when you can’t be with it, in being aware of your resistance, your judgments, your negative interpretations of it. Being aware of the thoughts that separate you from life creates a bridge back to simple acceptance of the moment as it unfolds. When you see your resistance, you don’t judge it. You don’t beat yourself up. You just notice your fear without judgment. When you identify fear, it no longer has the ability to run your life. When you notice your own fear, you no longer react to life out of that fear. Acceptance is a life-long dance. We get better at it the more we do it. But we never dance perfectly. Fear and resistance continue to come up and we do the best we can with them. Sometimes they slow us down, but slowing down might be exactly what is needed. In the dance of acceptance, unconscious becomes conscious. Your fear becomes your partner. You dance with the inside and outside situation. You dance with what happens and with what you think and feel about it. The inner and outer dance are going on all the time. There is never a time when you can get off the dance floor and go and take a nap. Even in our stillness there is movement. The stream never stops flowing. If it is not visible on the surface, then it continues underground. We live in a dynamic universe…always moving, always changing. Sometimes we get tired and we want to get off the merry-go-round. “I shall dance no more,” we self-righteously proclaim. But then, unexpectedly we fall in love, or someone makes us a business offer we can’t refuse. As soon as we really understand that the Emperor has no clothes, his designer show up with the latest fashion. No matter how hard we try, we cannot get out of the drama. We can’t stop the dance. It goes on with us or without us. That’s why our only hope of having a harmonious experience is to learn to move with the flow instead of against it. When you accept the eternal nature of the dance, it is easier to accept its specific content in the moment. That content may be that you are having a panic attack, yelling at your husband or kids, drinking too much, or even contemplating suicide, but as long as you know that its part of the dance you can come out of it. You never step into something you can’t step out of, no matter how difficult it seems. That’s one of the laws of the dance. When you take a false step, you take a breath and keep moving. When you lose the rhythm, you listen for a moment to the music and pick it up again. Mistakes are part of the dance. But some people don’t know this. Their business fails or their partner leaves them and the blow their brains out. They play for very high stakes. They think the dance is about success or failure, black or white. In fact, it’s about both, constantly. The dance is a dance of the opposites, a play of contradictions. It is paradoxical. It has always been paradoxical. One of the greatest paradoxes is this one: You can’t be in the dance if you are trying to figure it out. If you are always thinking about how to move your feet, you are going to have a very hard time dancing. But if you just move your feet, you will be dancing. You may not be doing the dance someone else is doing, but you will be dancing your dance. And your dance is as good as anyone’s. The greatest act of acceptance is to know that what happens is perfect for you. You are not given more than you can handle, nor is anything lacking in your life. To be sure, you can look at your neighbor’s yard and think the grass is greener. Maybe he has a bigger house and a nicer car. But you can’t see what that means to him. You can’t see if he’s happy about his house or his car. You can only see if you are happy about it. And, if you are not happy about it, then you can be sure you are feeling unworthy and unappreciated. And so that is what you must dance with. When you are not accepting your life as it is, you must dance with your lack of acceptance. You might learn to be with your resistance, your envy, your jealousy in a loving way. That’s why acceptance is so important as a spiritual practice. The more you accept your life as it is, the easier the dance becomes.