Resistance meets resistance. My mom has said this to me hundreds of times.
I would justify why I was angry, and resisting the person/place/thing and she would validate me and life would go on painfully.
She’s right. Of course she’s right.
I knew acceptance was the antidote to resistance, but I was too attached to the outcomes. So my way of becoming accepting was to become complaisant. Which is a farmer fix.
I think I’m finally starting to see the difference.
Acceptance needs to be happening on a continual basis on the inside, and starts long before you get into a situation where resistance comes into play.
Are you feeling angry? Accept that you are angry, don’t fight it or talk yourself into it or out of it.
Is this moment happening differently that you wanted it to? Take a moment and accept this it for what it is… maybe it’s a bad moment. That’s ok, accept it as a bad moment.
Has your relationship with someone changed? Accept it for what it has become. Maybe it’s a deeper connection that scares you, or maybe they have moved on. Accept how you feel about it.
Where I got confused was that I thought if you accepted it, you had to like it.
If I didn’t like it, I would unhappily comply thinking that was the only other choice if I didn’t want to fight, but that only built feelings of resentment and left me feeling like the victim. Neither of which are healthy or productive. Resentment and victimhood would fester and before I knew it I was back into full resistance again.
You can accept that you don’t like it; you can accept that you are struggling; you can accept that you are scared…
The amount of time it takes you to fully accept something is in direct proportion to the amount of time it takes to heal it.
Our suffering lies in the resistance.