Accepting What We Can’t Change

Accepting What We Can’t Change
by Dr. Lynn

To accept what life hands us on a moment to moment basis in a state of quietude, without emotion, with the ability to transcend is probably the most difficult path of being human. We all attach ourselves to life through emotions, cravings, greed, ego, pride, and conceit. We are terrified to fail, to hurt, and to die. In fact our three greatest fears (from which all other fears arise) are fear of not being loved, fear of rejection, and fear of dying. If we could accept our worse possible fear from a place of balance and understanding we would soon realize that all of life is simply an opportunity to grow and learn. Life is meant to be a spiritually learning path made possible through earthly interactions. The risk of not living fully presents a far greater failure.

Finding balance and accepting life as it presents it self to us is the path of yoga. Life is seen as an opportunity to gain wisdom. Our only true goal in this earthly life is the attainment of wisdom. For in the end it is all that we have as we depart.

Wisdom can not be found without the ability to live and take the risk of living. Take love for instance. Without taking the risk to love and be loved we miss a tremendous opportunity in life. If the worse should happen and we should lose the love or not be loved in return, we at least have known love and knowing love is a wonderful part of the human experience.

To accept with balance we must learn to detach from the emotionality of attachment, control, and fear. To detach means that we are able to sit quietly and observe what comes into and out of our lives with a joy that transcends the emotionality of anger, greed, deceit, and pride. Void of the emotionality we are able to let go by accepting and thereby gain insight and knowledge rather than getting lost in fear and anger. Life becomes a process for learning. We realize that the only way to know true love is to know the opposite. We can never know a thing until we know the opposing force. A thing only has meaning as it relates to it’s opposite. So joy and sadness are both opportunities to learn and experience and it is from learning and experience that wisdom is gained.