ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 29: “The entire quest is for acceptance. You run from pillar to post for being accepted as you are. This quest ends only when you realize that the most important in life is to accept yourself totally, wholly and completely. Unfortunately, that is a long-drawn process and it takes time to reach that level. However, once you reach that stage, you are at entire peace with yourself.” ― Neelam Saxena Chandra
This is it! I am so insecure, (aren’t we all???) that I cannot accept that you accept me. And, because I am so completely self-centered, I cannot stand the thought that you might just be indifferent to me. Ugh! I must have totality, it seems. I am okay with you hating me or loving me, but the middle ground just messes with my enormous ego. Ugh!
So, what really happens when I accept me. It becomes okay for me to stop trying so hard to win your approval. It only matters that I maintain my own. This is a daily process. I get to sit in meditation most mornings, so I can check into what is going on with me. I get to see what is lying under the surface of my incredible self-centered fears and find out what the stories are I am telling myself.
Some of them surprise me. I have only one thing or the other going on. What a surprise! More totality! I want to find what is called “the middle road” where something in-between black and white, love and hate, acceptable or unacceptable live.
This is the journey. Once I can accept that my thinking is not my friend, I begin to go there less often for advice. I learn to trust that inner space where my answers lie. It is not in the possession of anyone else, no matter how much I think they know more or better than I do. My answers are in ME! NOT my head, but my quiet heart.
This journey, the longest mile we can ever travel, takes all 12 steps and many hours of focused intention to access. (At least, that is my process.) I have to get quiet inside my heart.
This may take 10 or 15 minutes of sheer crazy to get to. Most of the time, because I have somewhat trained the Screaming Purple Monkeys, I am able to find my center. On days that I cannot, I am going to make fewer choices and be quieter in my walk around the planet.
If I don’t do it, there are always Steps 4-12. Then I get to start all over again, which is all we can do anyway. This is (at least for me), a never-ending process of living and breathing and learning and teaching. What a gift to have the rules for “HOW” to do this stuff! I was lost for so long.
Dolphin Hug 