The Paradox of Acceptance and Action

I have struggled a long time over the seeming paradox of accepting everything as it is and yet taking action in this world. The way I have come to look at it is this:

When I accept this moment, the now, the moment is not static. Within every moment is a kind of momentum that moves us forward. Evolution is a simple example of some irresistible force that has continued to produce creatures more and more aware of themselves and their universe. The now I am embracing is not only the static moment of how things are, it is that life force, the chi, that runs through everything, that causes continual renewal and growth.

Accepting the now means being aware of and yielding to that force within me in this moment - the "still small voice", the path I am on, the person I have learned I am becoming. All of these things imply movement for the future, as well as integration of the past. So, do I accept my grumpy attitude today? Yes - but I also accept the energy within me today that is slowly moving me towards a life of more peace. This means I don't have to fix myself, or fix the world - I just have to dance with it - to "play the chess game", instead of thinking I have a thousand serious moves left.

And cherishing the now means to fully see the miracle of that energy flow within me, to fully appreciate it, to get to know it, to feel gratitude for it, to even become fond of it - to have a deep love for it, for the divine within me, within all of us.

That's the theory, anyway :-) That is the direction I want to move.

Is it logical to accept things as they are?

From a friend:

"I call it 'logical' (rather than mystical or spiritual) because what could be more reasonable than accepting things as they are *because they ALREADY ARE that way*, whether I like it or not?"

I call it spiritual as opposed to logical because it is based on experience, and how our spirit/feelings respond to it. I actually find no "reason" to accept things as they are - actually I find a lot of good reasons to dislike the world the way it is, and the only "reason" to accept it may be utilitarian - to not make myself miserable. But it is not a logical conclusion to me that just because the world is a certain way, that I should accept it, or say it is "okay" in any sense. For me, there is a step beyond reason that comes from my experience. I know, when I stop trying to change people, and start to accept them as they are, that things start to flow much better. I only know it from experience, not from logic. Spirituality, the way I use the word, is all about experience - gaining truth from sensing and feeling rather than from deduction or logic. That's why it can't be proven - it has to be picked up by each person in their interactions with life.

Reasons for living

My answer to why live: I have never wanted to take my own life, even in the depths of my pain. Somehow, I always believed that things could get better. There's an optimist within me underneath it all.

But that hasn't stopped me from feeling a lot of despair at times. At one point, I remember specifically, I was pondering my death, and the resulting ending of all my projects - everything that was important to me would cease. A part of me wanted to live forever, and if I couldn't have that, nothing seemed worthwhile - especially, as Brigitte said, if you are in pain in addition to not having purpose, it looks pretty bad.

I was standing in the back yard, I remember, trying to do some yardwork, and disgusted with how pointless it all was, everything. A hundred years from now, nothing I could do would matter one iota. I decided to stop fighting it and just give in. Okay, it's all meaningless. And suddenly, I went from frantically having to do all these things to achieve my goals, to realizing I don't have to do anything. I could do anything I want, and it didn't matter. Instead of wanting to die, I felt a tremendous burden lifted. I could work on my back yard now because it didn't matter what I did. It was boring to just sit down. And there was some pleasure I got from meaninglessly rearranging the stones around the garden. It pleased me. But it didn't have to mean anything any more. I didn't have to have a purpose - I could do it from pure pleasure.

When I went through my clinical depression several years back, the worst part of it for me was the inability to feel pleasure. I remember walking outside on a beautiful day with a light breeze on my arms, and dully remembering, oh, yeah, this is the kind of day that gives people pleasure. But the sensation was painful to me.

Since then, I have rediscovered joy in doing things just for the experience, and not for any purpose. To be sure, I still do a lot of things with a goal in mind - retirement, better health, plans for my son, etc. But often, now, I remember that all those goals are actually just nice "what if's". I might build up a beautiful retirement and get flattened by a truck going to pick up my first check. Planning on the future is always a risky thing, especially when it comes to waiting for something to happen before you can be happy. Now, there are many times in my weekly life when I just enjoy a moment, or a person, or a sensation, or a thought, and it doesn't have to fulfill any goal or solve world hunger to be worthwhile.

So, my answer is that even if I have no goals, there is enough enjoyable in life to make it worth going on. Most of my misery I create myself by demanding things of the universe that it can't deliver, or demanding that the past be different than it is, or demanding that the future meet my expectations, or demanding that people be different than they are. I find it hard to let go of my demands of the universe and of people, but when I can, I start to notice the things life gives me freely without any urging of my own. It's a matter of flowing in the same direction as life around me instead of swimming upstream all the time.

I still believe there is a Purpose, beyond my small goals and plans - a grand Purpose for why we are here - but that is theory, and still hard for me to grasp with any certainty. I feel like it gets a bit clearer the more I am clear about myself.

Thoughts on the End of Life

It's my belief that just as everything living has its time to live, and it's time to pass on, so I believe that the human race only has so many years to flourish in the universe.

I don't believe we are destined to expand forever, living in other solar systems, spreading throughout the universe forever. We know, to the best of scientific opinion, that the sun will burn out in around 5 billion years - and even if the human race could escape that, there is the eventual collapse of the universe back into its pre-big bang state, or some other form not compatible to the delicate conditions we need to survive.

If that doesn't convince you, consider that humans have been around for about 5 million years, or 5,000 millennia. Within the last 10th of the last one millennium out of those 5,000 millennia, we have harnessed electricity and traveled to other planets, created the atomic bomb, threatened our atmosphere and our water supplies. We have created enough nuclear materials to wipe out all life on the earth thousands of times over, and have created chemical weapons potent enough for a thimble full to wipe out a nation. Yet it is fairly obvious that human nature has not evolved as quickly as our technology - we easily fall into believing the much of the human race must be destroyed, and we are often willing to destroy ourselves as well rather than let our enemy survive. Humans do not seem a likely candidate to handle the powers that science have put in our hands. What are our realistic chances of making it through the next 1,000 years, let alone a few million?

And if I believe the human race will end some day, whether near or far, for me it changes everything. When we as individuals reach an age where we understand on a deep level that we will die, and we only have so many years to live, our focus shifts from merely staying alive, to figuring out what to do with the precious amount of time we have left. It is not a matter of doing the most we can; it is a matter of finding some meaning to our lives, some meaning for having wandered around on this earth for so many years during this brief flash of glory, whether long or short, before we lie down with the rest of the people and animals and quietly decompose beneath the earth.

So what of the human race? If it is not our destiny to forever expand and grow in power and glory, if some day the planets will be quiet and cold, and nothing stir except the grinding of platonic slates under gravitational pull, then what is our purpose? Imagine we are sitting somewhere, looking back on the still universe, asking ourselves, what was that all about anyway? What was the purpose of our brief 5 million years, scurrying around like it really matters whether a certain president gets elected or if we land that new job? Going back to the first bit of life in the primordial soup, what was this strange journey of carbon-based life forms, multiplying until it reaches an awareness and intelligence capable of destroying the planet that gave it birth? What was it all about?

I believe it was Charlie Chapman who, when told there was no life on other planets, said, "I feel lonely." When I contemplate our mortality, I feel sad, even though I will probably live another 30 years and experience many wonderful things in life. For some reason, we humans are not happy without a purpose, without something to make sense of it all. And that is our glory as humans as well as our burden - the animals are not awake enough to feel the angst we feel.

Our looming death forces us to seek deeper, to stretch our inner powers to the max, to seek a relationship with the universe, before it is gone from us, and we from it. This is where spirituality steps in - to answer the despair left to us by science and reason, to create purpose where there is none, to let us find our home at last - a journey I have personally only begun to take.

Taming the Primitive Nature

Within each of us exists a primitive nature. This nature contains basic drives and desires and instincts. It is the source of our sexual drive, our emotions, our desire to connect, our needs. It is the source of our negative feeling that give us so many problems - selfishness, anger, the desire for revenge, the instinct to hurt someone we perceive as an enemy, the instinct to hide, lie, cover up, pretend.

We come by this nature honestly - it is the product of millions of years of evolution. In the jungle, the instinct to attack and kill something you perceived as a threat was a useful instinct, and humans probably owe their very existence to it. The ability to run and hide kept us from dangers we could not outrun. The fight to feed ourselves first helped weed out the weakest, and made our race strong.

However, those same genes are now finding themselves in the 21st century, where many of these instincts are not only of little use, but can be destructive to ourselves and those we love. So we find ourselves in a conflict - our intellect does a fairly good job at figuring out what is useful to us, but the power of our primitive nature often overrides our intellect and causes us to do things we regret.

The primitive nature cannot be denied. We know all too well the effects of repressing anger, or sexuality, or our own needs. It can be just as destructive as acting out on them. The primitive is a real part of us, and ultimately cannot be suppressed, denied, or willed out of existence.

However, there is a way out of this conflict. The primitive nature, while very powerful, is not intelligent. We may want to kill someone, but writing an angry letter will satisfy us, and the desire to kill will recede. We may have strong sexual urges, and no way to satisfy them, but we can use a lot of physical exercise to compensate. We may want to eat that cake when we are on a diet, but find that eating a small amount after a healthy meal may do the trick.

The fact that our primitive energy can be fooled also explains some of the puzzling destructive acts that people do. Someone was abused by his father, and he winds up abusing his wife. It is clear he is taking revenge, but his primitive nature does not realize it is on the wrong person. A few characteristics that remind him of his father is all it takes to set in motion that desire for revenge, for eliminating the danger that hurt him so much before.

Our primal energy cannot be bottled up without destruction to ourselves; however, it can be channelled into other directions that are not so harmful. Our intelligence can be used to look at the various acts that would satisfy a primitive energy, and pick one that would not be harmful. One kind of therapy does anger work, where the client takes a large foam rubber bat, or a tennis racket, and beats on pillows. Amazingly, all the trapped anger and desire for revenge can pour forth in this setting, because the client will not hurt anyone or anything. The results is a release and a relief from anger that has been buried, and less of a desire to act that anger out in the world.

What stops us the most is shame. Our society looks down on primitive energies - on sexuality, violence, selfishness - and for good reasons. But the result is to cause us to be ashamed of our primitive self, and attempt to deny it is there, or prevent it from having any voice. This denial is what creates the shadow - the part of us we don't want to know, and reliably turn our eyes from, so that we can live up to an artificial standard of having no primitive side. But these powers grow in the shadow, since they are not being satisfied or channeled in a useful direction.

Primitive energies are ultimately good - they derive from life itself. But it takes awareness of them to capture that potent energy in them and use them for good. Sexuality can be used to build a deep relationship. Anger can be used to energize us to take action against some wrong in the world. Selfishness can be harnessed into helping us love ourselves so that we can be more present in the world. The desire to hide can be channelled into a time of meditation that can renew us rather than separate us.

All that is within us is good. The more we are aware, the more we can actualize our goodness.

Projection and self-acceptance

Coming to accept ourselves just as we are is a difficult battle for many people. Realizing they don't accept themselves as they are often becomes one more stick to beat themselves with. We are too often blind to our own attitudes, and trying to change alone is very difficult.

A very simple method for discovering the places where you do not accept yourself is by looking at people who bother you. We are only bothered by characteristics that we have judgment about. If I have no judgment about baldness, then I will have little reaction to someone who is bald, or to noticing that my own hair is thinning. However, if I have judgment about talking too much, I will be annoyed by those who do so.

Think of people you know, and pick the person who bothers you the most. Then pick the attitude that they have that annoys you the most. This is a judgment against that attitude - a decision that having that attitude is not okay, and anyone who has that attitude is not okay. Any judgment that we carry against others, we also carry against ourselves. We do not accept something in others, because we do not accept it in ourselves. Ask yourself what it would be like if you had that same attitude yourself. You will probably find a sudden self-hatred welling up. Then ask yourself if you have ever had that attitude, or ever struggled with it. Since it has an emotional charge to you, it is likely that you have had, or currently struggle with that attitude yourself.

You have now pin-pointed something in yourself that you vehemently reject - a part of you that you are not okay with. This is a restriction you have placed on yourself that keeps you from true acceptance. Every judgment of others comes from a lack of acceptance of yourself. We cannot hate another unless we hate ourselves first, just as we cannot truly love another unless we learn to love ourselves.

Does that mean I should go out and do the things I despise and think are evil? No, not at all. But it does mean that we need to recognize that on some level, we are all human, and have primitive desires, and that we need compassion in dealing with those desires. When we pretend we are above all that, that is when we reject those who are not, and we create a division between us and them, creating the illusion that we are different, better than, other.

Unity comes through recognizing our common nature in all of its forms.

Judgment

Judgment consists of two things - opinion, and rejection. When someone does something that we disapprove of, and we feel angry, we have an opinion about what they did, and what should have been done instead. However, the harm is not in the opinion - the harm is in the rejection. On some level, we, the ones who judge, create an imaginary separation between us and them. They should have done differently, we believe, and since we know that, we feel somehow superior to them.

Often we shun someone in obvious or subtle ways - we talk to them less, we decide we don't want them as a friend, we avoid them, we smile politely rather than being real, we talk about them behind their backs. All these acts are ways of causing separation, of denying the underlying commonality we all have as human beings.

Acceptance can be a difficult thing - it means the willingness not to push someone away, or to remove ourselves from them, simply because we don't like a characteristic. But the separation we create causes us to live in an increasingly narrow world, where only certain people meet our standards. The danger in narrowing our world down to only those people who are good enough, is that we might find we ourselves don't qualify. The horrible fear of everyone who lives in judgment is that they will ultimately be the ones who are judged and rejected, and their fear spurs them on to even greater efforts to be right, to be righteous, and to shun those who might taint them in some way.

It is when we let go of our fear, and accept who we are, that we discover we are in a world full of brothers.