15. Acceptance

Where Energy Comes from

Imagine this: you didn’t sleep last night. You were up at 4 am and you had a long day at the office. You fought the boss and you fought the traffic. It’s now 6 pm and you are home, collapsed on the sofa, too tired to shower and too tired to eat.

Your phone rings, and it’s a very official-sounding lady. She verifies your name and address and says, “We have been trying to contact you all day. Congratulations! You are the winner of the state lottery – the sum of twenty million dollars.”

You leap three feet in the air. “Twenty million! We’re RICH!”

You race up and down the stairs to find the family. You call your mother, your brother, all your friends and neighbours. “Get over here! Let’s party!”

QUESTION: Where did you get all the energy from? It had to come from somewhere!

You say, “It’s the money!” But it’s not the money. You haven’t even got it yet. And it could be a hoax.

Here’s where the energy came from: energy flows into your being every time you say, “THIS IS A GREAT MOMENT!” It is how life works. It is the cosmic difference between “Oh, YES!” and “Oh, no!”

It’s why three-year-olds are unstoppable. To three-year-olds, everything is fresh and exciting. They are energy channels. If you could get a three-year-old to worry about mortgages and medical bills, he would be as tired as his grandparents.

Blockages

The Chinese understand energy. Chinese medicine explains why, when you get angry with your boyfriend, you get a raging headache. You tense up in your neck and shoulders, you choke off the energy flow in your “meridians” and you get a pain in your head.

Whenever we resist a situation, whenever we say, “This is not okay,” we block energy flow.

Massage or acupuncture removes the blockage. (So does forgiving your boyfriend.) You relax, the energy flows and there is no more headache.

We are all channels – we channel energy and inspiration. The word, “enthusiasm”, comes from the Latin, “enthusiasmus”, meaning divine inspiration, possessed by a god. When we are enthusiastic, we have life force flowing through us and we are connected to everything. But every time we say, “This is a bad moment!”, every time we find fault, every time we judge people and events, we clog our channel.

When electricity can’t travel down a wire or past a piece of plastic tape, we say there is “resistance”. When there is enough resistance, electrical energy stops flowing altogether.

It’s the same with you. When energy can’t flow into you, it’s due to a blockage, or resistance. How do we recognise resistance? It sounds something like this:

• “I hate this traffic.”
• “I hate my job.”
• “I’m always broke.”
• “I might get sick!”
• “I should have married her sister!”

Saving Energy

You can’t save up your energy like money in a bank. The less you love, the less love flows through you. The less energy you spend, the less energy flows through you.

Misery and apathy shut off your energy. That is why depressed people are mostly exhausted. Passion for life and people restores the flow.

How to Stay Stuck

Here’s how to stay stuck in any job, situation or relationship: look for things that are wrong.

The more reasons you can find to be disappointed or resentful, the more resistance you create, and the more slowly your life will move. You are not being punished; you are simply choking off your life force.

You say, “Do I need to be more tolerant?” No! Tolerance is resistance: it’s simply more polite. “I don’t like this, but I’m suffering in silence!”

We need to move from tolerance to …

Acceptance

Today I will judge nothing that occurs.²⁴

A Course in Miracles

Perhaps you are broke right now. Perhaps you have lost your job or lost a loved one. Maybe you are sick. You say, “I just don’t know what to do.”

Here is the first thing to do: accept where you are. To turn things around, you first make peace with your situation. Forget about blame, forget about guilt, forget the “what ifs”. Progress depends on acceptance.

Acceptance doesn’t mean, “I want to stay here.” Acceptance means, “This is where I am – and now I move on to what I want.”

Instead of, “My marriage is a mess and I’m angry and resentful,” it is more like, “My marriage is a mess. What a perfect learning experience! Now my life can begin to get better.”

Acceptance isn’t giving up. Acceptance is recognition that “This is a part of my journey”. Very often it means, “Right now I have no idea why this had to be a part of my journey, but I embrace it anyway.” “I needed to be here” doesn’t mean “I need to stay here.”

How Do I Practice Acceptance?

Do you want to prove to yourself that positive thinking works?

Try this: every morning when you wake up, say “This is perfect. Where I am is perfect. All my mistakes are perfect. My life until now is the perfect preparation to graduate to something better.”

Does the word, “perfect”, seem too extreme? Then try using the word, “okay”. Whenever things seem to go wrong – you miss a flight, you lose your house keys, you miss out on a promotion – tell yourself, “I don’t know why, but this is okay!” And then look for reasons to be happy now.

What will happen? Your energy will change and your life will change.

What happens when you accept what IS? Frustration dissolves into fascination. You still have challenges, but they resolve themselves almost effortlessly. You argue less, you quit trying to make other people wrong, you quit complaining. You look for good things, and as you look for good things, life heaps more good things upon you. Friends, lovers and opportunities appear almost magically. You get the feeling that the Universe is plotting to make you happy. “I needed to be here” doesn’t mean “I need to stay here.”

To have a beautiful life, you don’t have to know everything about everything and you don’t even have to be very smart! It is more about accepting where you are, seeing the best in people and believing life will turn out well.