acceptance :: Dancing with your Dragon

Life happens.

Sometimes we might enjoy the way life is unfolding, other times it might feel challenging, painful and overwhelming.

The truth is that we cannot control what is happening in the world around us, yet we do have the power to find peace with life in our inner world. Paradoxically, when we come to peace inside, our energy shifts and we may find we are attracting different types of situations to our outer world. But even if nothing changes on the outer, peace on the inner will make life more pleasant and fulfilling.

In a world where change is the only constant, coming to peace requires a certain ability to go with the flow, to allow life to be as it is. It requires a certain surrender to the notion that try as we like, we don’t always get to have things how we want them and when we want them, which is usually “right now, thank you very much.”

So what is peace? Peace is a spiritual frequency that we can tune in to at any moment. It’s like a color or a sound. The color “red” or the note “G” are always vibrating on their individual frequencies whether we are currently experiencing them in our outer world or not. If we want to manifest them, we can use a medium or an instrument to bring them forth, like paint or a piano. When it comes to spiritual frequencies like peace, we become their instrument of expression on earth.

As human beings we have the capacity to sound the notes of the spiritual worlds, notes like peace, love, and compassion. Much like a properly tuned piano is designed to generate clear pure sounds, we are designed to generate the pure, clear energy of the Divine. We are built that way. Yet life’s challenges can cause us to get out of warped and out of tune. Tuning ourselves to the frequency of peace can help bring us back in balance.

Here are some practices to help you come to peace.

1. Accept what’s happening. Breathe into your feelings about the situation and allow them to be as they are. Often we may feel frustration, bitterness, anger or rage about a situation. Judging these feelings or expressing them to the other tends to cause more challenges. Repressing them will create problems as well. Find a way to allow them to move through you. Feel them and acknowledge them for yourself, then let them go. From this state of acceptance, your energy will relax and the next step will become clearer.

2. Do what you can. If action is possible take it, yet do your best to stay relaxed about the outcome. Let go of the “need” for success; yet remain open to the “possibility” of it.

If action isn’t possible, don’t dwell on the situation. Remain vigilant with your thoughts, if you find yourself running the situation over and over in your mind, stop, breathe into your heart and move into acceptance with the feelings you find there.

Sometimes action happens through non-action. It’s like being caught in an ocean current. The best way to come to the surface is to stop fighting and let the current carry you to the top.

3. Forgive yourself if you know what to do, but can’t make yourself do it. Sometimes we are incapable of taking the action that will help us. Beating yourself up for this will only make matters worse. If you know what to do but don’t have the capacity to do it, practice step one. Call in your heart. Find compassion for yourself. Give yourself a hug. With time, this practice of self-forgiveness and self-love may open the door to the energy needed for change.

4. Look for any lessons you are meant to learn. Often life’s most difficult situations can be used as teachers on the road to compassion, love and peace.

5. Remain open to opportunity and change. By practicing relaxation and acceptance, you become more present to the moment, and the moment births both peace and possibilities.

What do you do when someone or something is bugging you? I can tell you that for many years I would try to get the outer world to change so that I could feel better. Sometimes I might even succeed, but in the end I found that using my power to demand, insist or manipulate someone outside of me to be different simply led to more problems in the end. Blaming someone for my problems and feelings didn’t work so well either. In psychological terminology, this “blame game” is called “projection” by Freudian types and “shadow work” by the Jungians. I call it the “The Magic Mirror.” The idea of it actually roots in what’s known as the “Emerald Tablet,” said to be written by the Ancient Egyptian Master Hermes Trismegistus. In essence the message of the Emerald Tablet is this: “As above, so below, inner and outer are the same.” In other words, if you want to live your life as an empowered person, free to enjoy peace, harmony and fulfillment without requiring the outer world to be different, the pathway is through inner change. The process is one of self-responsibility and acceptance. You can learn a lot about it in my book, Dancing with your Dragon: The Art of Loving your Unlovable Self, but I want to share an exercise that you might find helpful here. I’d love to hear how the exercise works for you. Please feel free to leave me a comment, or send me an e-mail: shaeri (at) dancingwithyourdragon (dot) com.

Practice: Gazing in the “Magic Mirror”

Utilize this practice when you find yourself disturbed by a situation that is occurring in the outer world. Read the exercise all the way through before you try it.

Grab a pen and paper and sit quietly in a place where you are unlikely to be disturbed.

Take a couple of deep breaths and spend a moment or two allowing yourself to relax.

Close your eyes and bring to mind the person in the outer world who is causing you to feel disturbed. Now allow a 2 or 3-word description of this person to form inside your head. Stay with the first words that come and write them down. (This description is not meant to define the other person. It is simply a tool for mirroring the archetype that may be causing difficulties inside of you.)

Once you have the words in front of you, close your eyes again and ask your intuition to guide you to the place inside of your physical body where the energy represented by these words has taken up residence. Just scan your body and notice where you feel the words resonate inside.

When you find the place in your body where the energy resides, the next step is to simply let it be, allowing it to exist exactly the way that it is in this moment. You don’t need to change it, get rid of it or make it different.

If you find the exercise brings up a lot of emotional energy, allow yourself to express it in the safety of your own room until it is out of your body. Make sounds. Do air kicks. Scream, beat pillows, whatever you need to do to get it out.

If you notice resistance to accepting the energy, than allow yourself to accept the resistance as well. Whatever you notice, simply feel it and accept it.

The acts of feeling and acceptance engage the transformative quality of the heart, which allows the painful, challenging energies to melt and reform. This practice doesn’t require you to condone the behavior of the person that you are upset with, but by recognizing the places inside where you carry the very same qualities that are disturbing you on the outer, you can begin to discover a place of compassion toward these qualities and perhaps begin to relate to the outer person from a different state of being. The practice of acceptance will also lead to detachment from any painful energy that you might carry. A detached view will help you make choices and take action regarding the disturbing situation from a place of clarity, rather than a place of resentment, hurt or anger.

Make notes of any insights that may arise for you during the course of the process. Also repeat the process as often as necessary until the disturbing energies begin to melt and relax their hold on you.

Archive for acceptance

How to Come to Peace with any Situation

Here are some practices to help you come to peace.

The Magic Mirror: A Pathway to Transformation

Practice: Gazing in the “Magic Mirror”